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Plastics recycling is a sham, invented by the plastic industries to defuse criticism for an explosion in single-use packaging. The vast majority of plastics ar

Plastics recycling is a sham, invented by the plastic industries to defuse criticism for an explosion in single-use packaging. The vast majority of plastics are never recycled and end up in landfills or dumped at sea. It's not economical to recycle plastics because separating plastics is expensive, the percentage of material that has to be chucked because of contamination (food, chemicals, labels, etc) and the recovered material itself has little to no value due to degradation of the polymers. Methods like these are important, but what's more important is replacing, reducing, etc.

and-not-drew 4y ago
Not disagreeing, but do you have a source? I'd like to know more about this.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
  "Plastic recycling sits quite low in the waste hierarchy as a means of reducing plastic waste. It has been advocated since the early 1970s,[11] but due to severe economic and technical challenges, did not impact plastic waste to any significant extent until the late 1980s. The plastics industry has been criticised for lobbying for the expansion of recycling programs, even while industry research showed that most plastic could not be economically recycled and simultaneously increasing the amount of virgin plastic, or plastic that has not been recycled, being produced." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_recycling https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_recycling
- xxs 4y ago
  It's pretty much a well known fact. Recycling is extra hard due to the need to separate the plastics and then the molding new plastics requires specific type of plastic molecule. Many plastics are even blends, e.g. ABS + PC, or glass fiber filled ones. "Plastics" are just so many types, different in all kinds of ways. So separating them and using them in anything sensible doesn't happen often at all.
algo_trader 4y ago
I was just reading about TheOceanCleanup [1] and its depressing. It is hard to collect the garbage, it cant be disposed off, and there is a huge ongoing flow of new garbage. Can we at least recycle plastics into other low-quality plastic which can be degraded/mix-quality/blended or something? I am not an expert. [1] https://theoceancleanup.com/ https://theoceancleanup.com/
- aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
  And what happens with this low-quality plastic when it's no longer needed? Make even lower quality plastic?
  - ISL 4y ago
    In some countries, lower-quality garbage is incinerated to generate electric power.
mediaman 4y ago
This is a claim that's often repeated ad nauseum: plastic recycling doesn't work and it's a sham. There's an element of truth to it: plastics recycling in the USA today is, in aggregate, in a sorry state. But it's become "common knowledge" that there's no way to make it better. That's not true. Turn, for example, to British Columbia, which passed an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) law several years ago, which created a system to stabilize the prices of recycled plastics so that recyclers could raise money to build the facilities to process the material. Now they have the most sophisticated sortation and recycling centers in North America. Laser-based systems identify plastic types and use shots of compressed air to automatically direct plastic onto the proper conveyor. Each stream is shredded and ground, and then hot washed and dried. Then it's sorted again, this time for color, by computer vision and more compressed air to create streams of clear material and streams of green or other colors. The result is that 56% of rigid plastic packaging in BC is recycled. That's not perfect, but it's pretty good, and definitely not a "sham". The problem we have in America is that, broadly, we need public-private partnerships to invest in the sort of equipment that can do this. The technology exists, it works, and it's already being used. Virgin plastic should be taxed and then that tax should subsidize and stabilize the price of recycled material so that private capital can supply the equipment financing. And regional authorities should organize recycling so that enough material can go through one facility to amortize the $30m in equipment over the poundage. (These contracts can be bid at auction to keep them fair.) In other words, this is not an area where a pure free market works, and it typically requires coordination across regional population centers of 7m+ to get enough poundage through the system. If we can do what BC did, the rewards are big: plastic is, by far, a lower emitter of GHG than paper-based packaging, does a better job reducing food shrink than any other material, and offers massive weight savings (and GHG savings) versus glass. Today, of course, it's become much more en vogue to pursue high GHG packaging solutions ("because everyone knows plastic is bad!") rather than build public pressure to adopt the political steps required to implement already proven production technology.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  California has something like this passed recently: https://calmatters.org/environment/2022/06/california-recycling-plastic-trash/ https://calmatters.org/environment/2022/06/california-recycl... In the EU: https://packagingeurope.com/news/how-the-soft-drinks-industry-is-responding-to-the-record-high-prices-of-rpet/7830.article https://packagingeurope.com/news/how-the-soft-drinks-industr...

and-not-drew 4y ago

Not disagreeing, but do you have a source? I'd like to know more about this.

aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
"Plastic recycling sits quite low in the waste hierarchy as a means of reducing plastic waste. It has been advocated since the early 1970s,[11] but due to severe economic and technical challenges, did not impact plastic waste to any significant extent until the late 1980s. The plastics industry has been criticised for lobbying for the expansion of recycling programs, even while industry research showed that most plastic could not be economically recycled and simultaneously increasing the amount of virgin plastic, or plastic that has not been recycled, being produced." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_recycling https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_recycling
xxs 4y ago
It's pretty much a well known fact. Recycling is extra hard due to the need to separate the plastics and then the molding new plastics requires specific type of plastic molecule. Many plastics are even blends, e.g. ABS + PC, or glass fiber filled ones. "Plastics" are just so many types, different in all kinds of ways. So separating them and using them in anything sensible doesn't happen often at all.

algo_trader 4y ago

I was just reading about TheOceanCleanup [1] and its depressing. It is hard to collect the garbage, it cant be disposed off, and there is a huge ongoing flow of new garbage. Can we at least recycle plastics into other low-quality plastic which can be degraded/mix-quality/blended or something? I am not an expert. [1] https://theoceancleanup.com/ https://theoceancleanup.com/

aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
And what happens with this low-quality plastic when it's no longer needed? Make even lower quality plastic?
- ISL 4y ago
  In some countries, lower-quality garbage is incinerated to generate electric power.

mediaman 4y ago

This is a claim that's often repeated ad nauseum: plastic recycling doesn't work and it's a sham. There's an element of truth to it: plastics recycling in the USA today is, in aggregate, in a sorry state. But it's become "common knowledge" that there's no way to make it better. That's not true. Turn, for example, to British Columbia, which passed an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) law several years ago, which created a system to stabilize the prices of recycled plastics so that recyclers could raise money to build the facilities to process the material. Now they have the most sophisticated sortation and recycling centers in North America. Laser-based systems identify plastic types and use shots of compressed air to automatically direct plastic onto the proper conveyor. Each stream is shredded and ground, and then hot washed and dried. Then it's sorted again, this time for color, by computer vision and more compressed air to create streams of clear material and streams of green or other colors. The result is that 56% of rigid plastic packaging in BC is recycled. That's not perfect, but it's pretty good, and definitely not a "sham". The problem we have in America is that, broadly, we need public-private partnerships to invest in the sort of equipment that can do this. The technology exists, it works, and it's already being used. Virgin plastic should be taxed and then that tax should subsidize and stabilize the price of recycled material so that private capital can supply the equipment financing. And regional authorities should organize recycling so that enough material can go through one facility to amortize the $30m in equipment over the poundage. (These contracts can be bid at auction to keep them fair.) In other words, this is not an area where a pure free market works, and it typically requires coordination across regional population centers of 7m+ to get enough poundage through the system. If we can do what BC did, the rewards are big: plastic is, by far, a lower emitter of GHG than paper-based packaging, does a better job reducing food shrink than any other material, and offers massive weight savings (and GHG savings) versus glass. Today, of course, it's become much more en vogue to pursue high GHG packaging solutions ("because everyone knows plastic is bad!") rather than build public pressure to adopt the political steps required to implement already proven production technology.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
California has something like this passed recently: https://calmatters.org/environment/2022/06/california-recycling-plastic-trash/ https://calmatters.org/environment/2022/06/california-recycl... In the EU: https://packagingeurope.com/news/how-the-soft-drinks-industry-is-responding-to-the-record-high-prices-of-rpet/7830.article https://packagingeurope.com/news/how-the-soft-drinks-industr...