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> They're shredded and the plastic/metal chunks separated mechanically for the raw materials. The plastics recycling industry is over 90% fraud, just like the

> They're shredded and the plastic/metal chunks separated mechanically for the raw materials. The plastics recycling industry is over 90% fraud, just like the carbon credits market. There are thousands of cases of Australian garbage turning up in indonesia with trash bags marked with the name of the local authority responsible for managing it. Plastic from UK is either burned in Poland to power cement production, or is sorted in Turkey and send to the third world to kill children and sea turtles. I throw plastic in the trash to make sure it never leaves the country, but stays here and goes into landfill and doesn't hurt anyone. And to make sure the true cost of disposing of it is paid.

gruez 4y ago
>The plastics recycling industry is over 90% fraud [...] >Plastic from UK is [...] sorted in Turkey and send to the third world to kill children and sea turtles. So in other words, they're sending recycling to third world countries to be sorted because the cost of labor is cheaper, and those countries have bad waste management practices so the unrecyclable materials end up in rivers or whatever. I guess this counts as fraud if you think that putting something in recycling means that it'll definitely be reused somehow. Many people might even legitimately hold this belief. However, if you do a little bit of thinking you know this is an impossible goal/strawman. For one, people frequently miscategorize their recycling, which means things that can't be recycled end up in recycling. Obviously those won't be reused. Also, no recycling technology is perfect, and there's bound to be something that gets up too degraded/contaminated to be properly recycled. Meanwhile, I'm not aware of any active efforts to portray recycling as some sort of 100% perfect waste remediation, so I'm not sure where the fraud angle is from. It's a case of mismatched consumer expectations at best.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > because the cost of labor is cheaper, and those countries have bad waste management practices... If you are running any kind of business, say house insulation, you take money to fully insulate a house, don't insulate 90% of the house, and then attempt to mislead the customer into thinking the job is done, you have commited fraud or embezzlement. If these companies are paid to recycle but recycling is not happening, then someone has commited fraud. Also the contract does not say 'you can dump unresycleable stuff into the ocean' - they are suppose to dispose of it properly. It is their job to audit their supply chains and to make sure the job is done. If I know from public sources that majority of plastic that goes to their contractors in Turkey are commiting fraud, then a company with an army of lawyers knows it too. If they continue using contractors in knowledge that their contractors are fradulent, but are telling me that plastic is being recycled, they are defrauding me. When major western media publishes a video of masked armed men chasing their reporters in Indonesia for investigating 'recycling', it should be clear to anyone that this is massive organised crime. You don't get to blame this on 'those countries' because our countries are not doing shit either. We created the problem and we outsourced it by contracting literal mafia in Indonesia. Your taxpayer dollars are used to pay mafia bosses and to bribe Indonesian officials, sponsoring corruption in 'those countries'. This is not just my opinion, there have been multiple investigations and convictions for recycling fraud. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/brothers-sentenced-for-148-million-electronic-waste-fraud https://www.gov.uk/government/news/brothers-sentenced-for-14... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/18/uk-recycling-industry-under-investigation-for-and-corruption https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/18/uk-recyc...
  - gruez 4y ago
    >If you are running any kind of business, say house insulation, you take money to fully insulate a house, don't insulate 90% of the house, and then attempt to mislead the customer into thinking the job is done, you have commited fraud or embezzlement. Okay, but even in your example of insulating a house, there are areas that can't be insulated. For instance, it'll be insanely expensive to insulate the studs themselves, because they're load-bearing. A reasonable consumer would understand that you can't replace the entire surface of a house with insulation, just like a reasonable consumer would understand that not everything they put in recycling is going to be recycled. >If these companies are paid to recycle but recycling is not happening, then someone has commited fraud. Also the contract does not say 'you can dump unresycleable stuff into the ocean' - they are suppose to dispose of it properly. Without specifics it's hard to argue either way. I'm not aware of recycling contracts that stipulate x% must be recycled. Can you provide some references here? Here in the US counties/cities only does recycling as a money-making measure. If they market rate for recycled outputs drops too much, some jurisdictions end up landfilling the recycling. >https://www.gov.uk/government/news/brothers-sentenced-for-14 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/brothers-sentenced-for-14... Looking at the story it seems like it's less "taking e-waste and dumping it in a river somewhere" and more "submitting fraudulent invoices". >https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/18/uk-recyc https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/18/uk-recyc... >The exporters make millions by charging retailers and manufacturers a fluctuating tonnage rate for plastic waste recovery notes – currently £60 a tonne. Retailers buy these plastic export recovery notes – Perns – to satisfy the government they are contributing something to recycling plastic packaging waste. This seems like an issue with a government program intended to curb plastic waste, rather than consumers being misled. Prior to your comment I wasn't even aware of the existence of such a program. That's not to say the fraudulent behavior is acceptable, but it's slightly different than what we were originally discussing which is consumers being somehow deceived that what they put in recycling actually ended up in a river somewhere.
    - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
      > Okay, but even in your example of insulating a house, there are areas that can't be insulated. For instance, it'll be insanely expensive to insulate the studs themselves, because they're load-bearing ignoring for a second that modern insulation is just blown onto whatever surface you want, and obviously doesn't affect load bearing properties, the analogy is about doing 90% of your job and acting like you did 100% of it even if you personally think that extra 10% is hard even if you personally think that extra 10% shouldn't be your responsibility you still have to do it for it to not be fraudulent
Scoundreller 4y ago
> Plastic from UK is either burned in Poland to power cement production' It's basically burning fossil fuel. Too bad about the dioxins though.
- userbinator 4y ago
  Depends on which type of plastic. Burning anything halogenated is really bad, but e.g. polypropylene or polyethylene is comparable to natural gas in terms of emissions (CO2+H2O) because they contain only C and H.
  - formerly_proven 4y ago
    Yeah but if you ask people no one thinks "burning it" would count as recycling, but it does.

gruez 4y ago

>The plastics recycling industry is over 90% fraud [...] >Plastic from UK is [...] sorted in Turkey and send to the third world to kill children and sea turtles. So in other words, they're sending recycling to third world countries to be sorted because the cost of labor is cheaper, and those countries have bad waste management practices so the unrecyclable materials end up in rivers or whatever. I guess this counts as fraud if you think that putting something in recycling means that it'll definitely be reused somehow. Many people might even legitimately hold this belief. However, if you do a little bit of thinking you know this is an impossible goal/strawman. For one, people frequently miscategorize their recycling, which means things that can't be recycled end up in recycling. Obviously those won't be reused. Also, no recycling technology is perfect, and there's bound to be something that gets up too degraded/contaminated to be properly recycled. Meanwhile, I'm not aware of any active efforts to portray recycling as some sort of 100% perfect waste remediation, so I'm not sure where the fraud angle is from. It's a case of mismatched consumer expectations at best.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> because the cost of labor is cheaper, and those countries have bad waste management practices... If you are running any kind of business, say house insulation, you take money to fully insulate a house, don't insulate 90% of the house, and then attempt to mislead the customer into thinking the job is done, you have commited fraud or embezzlement. If these companies are paid to recycle but recycling is not happening, then someone has commited fraud. Also the contract does not say 'you can dump unresycleable stuff into the ocean' - they are suppose to dispose of it properly. It is their job to audit their supply chains and to make sure the job is done. If I know from public sources that majority of plastic that goes to their contractors in Turkey are commiting fraud, then a company with an army of lawyers knows it too. If they continue using contractors in knowledge that their contractors are fradulent, but are telling me that plastic is being recycled, they are defrauding me. When major western media publishes a video of masked armed men chasing their reporters in Indonesia for investigating 'recycling', it should be clear to anyone that this is massive organised crime. You don't get to blame this on 'those countries' because our countries are not doing shit either. We created the problem and we outsourced it by contracting literal mafia in Indonesia. Your taxpayer dollars are used to pay mafia bosses and to bribe Indonesian officials, sponsoring corruption in 'those countries'. This is not just my opinion, there have been multiple investigations and convictions for recycling fraud. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/brothers-sentenced-for-148-million-electronic-waste-fraud https://www.gov.uk/government/news/brothers-sentenced-for-14... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/18/uk-recycling-industry-under-investigation-for-and-corruption https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/18/uk-recyc...
- gruez 4y ago
  >If you are running any kind of business, say house insulation, you take money to fully insulate a house, don't insulate 90% of the house, and then attempt to mislead the customer into thinking the job is done, you have commited fraud or embezzlement. Okay, but even in your example of insulating a house, there are areas that can't be insulated. For instance, it'll be insanely expensive to insulate the studs themselves, because they're load-bearing. A reasonable consumer would understand that you can't replace the entire surface of a house with insulation, just like a reasonable consumer would understand that not everything they put in recycling is going to be recycled. >If these companies are paid to recycle but recycling is not happening, then someone has commited fraud. Also the contract does not say 'you can dump unresycleable stuff into the ocean' - they are suppose to dispose of it properly. Without specifics it's hard to argue either way. I'm not aware of recycling contracts that stipulate x% must be recycled. Can you provide some references here? Here in the US counties/cities only does recycling as a money-making measure. If they market rate for recycled outputs drops too much, some jurisdictions end up landfilling the recycling. >https://www.gov.uk/government/news/brothers-sentenced-for-14 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/brothers-sentenced-for-14... Looking at the story it seems like it's less "taking e-waste and dumping it in a river somewhere" and more "submitting fraudulent invoices". >https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/18/uk-recyc https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/18/uk-recyc... >The exporters make millions by charging retailers and manufacturers a fluctuating tonnage rate for plastic waste recovery notes – currently £60 a tonne. Retailers buy these plastic export recovery notes – Perns – to satisfy the government they are contributing something to recycling plastic packaging waste. This seems like an issue with a government program intended to curb plastic waste, rather than consumers being misled. Prior to your comment I wasn't even aware of the existence of such a program. That's not to say the fraudulent behavior is acceptable, but it's slightly different than what we were originally discussing which is consumers being somehow deceived that what they put in recycling actually ended up in a river somewhere.
  - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
    > Okay, but even in your example of insulating a house, there are areas that can't be insulated. For instance, it'll be insanely expensive to insulate the studs themselves, because they're load-bearing ignoring for a second that modern insulation is just blown onto whatever surface you want, and obviously doesn't affect load bearing properties, the analogy is about doing 90% of your job and acting like you did 100% of it even if you personally think that extra 10% is hard even if you personally think that extra 10% shouldn't be your responsibility you still have to do it for it to not be fraudulent

Scoundreller 4y ago

> Plastic from UK is either burned in Poland to power cement production' It's basically burning fossil fuel. Too bad about the dioxins though.

userbinator 4y ago
Depends on which type of plastic. Burning anything halogenated is really bad, but e.g. polypropylene or polyethylene is comparable to natural gas in terms of emissions (CO2+H2O) because they contain only C and H.
- formerly_proven 4y ago
  Yeah but if you ask people no one thinks "burning it" would count as recycling, but it does.