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Genuine question: how much does plastic recycling benefit us? My understanding was that producing new plastic is quite energy efficient and only contributes to

Genuine question: how much does plastic recycling benefit us? My understanding was that producing new plastic is quite energy efficient and only contributes to under 5% of global carbon emissions, which is pretty impressive for the amount of plastic we make. I'm all for eliminating single use plastics where sensible to do so, and arguably the possible biological effects of plastic should make us consider reducing overall plastic usage, sustainable or otherwise.

lm28469 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_pollution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_pollution
- cjblomqvist 4y ago
  It's probably a lot easier to burn than recycling it though... If the problem is the waste
  - lm28469 4y ago
    I'm under the impression that burning it simply displace the problem from land to air, it's still pollution/waste.
    - actionfromafar 4y ago
      Sort of. CO2 wise it's worse burning. But free floating plastic creates problems from toxic addivites causing hormonal problems, and from the microplastics (which all plastic degrades to in the ocean eventually) clogging the stomachs of krill etc. Burning the plastic in a properly fitted plant largely "cleans" the toxic additives by burning them too. Plastic in nature will eventually turn into CO2, just slower and with a lot of bad side-effects. "Recycling" the plastic has been shown to instead be sold to whatever-place-du-jour which ignores laws. Often it's burned in open pits, creating both immediate CO2 release, as well as new toxins created in the imperfect burning, and leaching of the old toxins, as well as large chunks of unburnt plastic floating in the wind. And burning plastic is a waste, but a lesser waste, because it's turned into some electricity. Upholding recycling structures for plastic also creates a false sense of "this is fine". Instead, it should be treated as low-level-dangerous refuse which should be burnt and only used for applications where this trade-off is acceptable.
- cameronh90 4y ago
  The specific question was about recycling. Whether we recycle, landfill or incinerate, I'm not sure what difference that makes to plastic pollution. To deal with plastic pollution, we need to reduce overall plastic usage and improve collection and waste management.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - lm28469 4y ago
    Pretty sure the plastic your recycle has less chance to end up in the ocean, soil, your body, &c.
    - scatters 4y ago
      Compared to burning it?
    - HPsquared 4y ago
      Counterintuitively, recycling plastic tends to involve shipping plastic waste long distances and trading in the waste. Incinerating or burying it is simpler and more reliable. From the wiki article: "The trade in plastic waste has been identified as "a main culprit" of marine litter."
      - gruez 4y ago
        >Counterintuitively, recycling plastic tends to involve shipping plastic waste long distances and trading in the waste. Only 2% of plastic waste is traded between countries. Further, most of that is traded within the same region, so the amount of waste that's shipped across "long distances" is probably under 1%. https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-waste-trade https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-waste-trade
      - lm28469 4y ago
        > Counterintuitively, recycling plastic tends to involve shipping plastic waste long distances and trading in the waste That's just because the clown world we developed only cares about money, as long as the numbers fit in the excel tables we'll do all kind of dumb shit like sending trash to Africa to have it burned in open dumps There is a very easy solution which seemingly isn't even conceived, recycle it locally... really mind blowing I know...
- some_random 4y ago
  Lets be real here, within a rounding error none of that was going to be recycled. Metal recycling is incredibly efficient and profitable but there's still metal that's dumped and not recycled.
JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
I’m realizing how messed up it is that we probably polluted the earth more by fake recycling schemes that just shipped it overseas (fossil fuels moving it, lots of it ending up in the ocean), instead of just burying it in a landfill.
- jcynix 4y ago
  Burying plastic in landfills? That would be a waste of resources, as it could at least be burned in power plants as a second use, if it cannot be recycled.
  - automatic6131 4y ago
    No, it's an excellent use. Burning it produces all kinds of toxins from impurities and carbon. Landfill is comparatively small, and concentrates plastics for potentially later extraction, if plastics ever become sufficiently valuable - or recycling sufficiently viable.
    - yarky 4y ago
      > Burning it produces all kinds of toxins from impurities and carbon. Which can be trapped/filtered to avoid pollution. > if plastics ever become sufficiently valuable - or recycling sufficiently viable. If that was remotely probable, you'd have banks offering plastic-storage related ETFs already.
      - bm-rf 4y ago
        I was curious as to how effective scrubbing was, turns out Packed Tower Wet Scrubbers can filter out 99%+ of VOCs from incinerated plastic. You still get carbon emissions however.
        mschuster91 4y ago
        At the scale humanity is using plastics, 99% is lacking after-comma 9s in orders of magnitude. We're at 400 million tons of plastic waste a year [1], so even 1% inefficiency means that the VOCs of 4 million tons end up in the environment. Yes, it's better than burning it outright in open fire pits (as it's done in an awful lot of "third world" countries to concentrate metals out of the waste), but it's way worse than a dump yard. And most of the places that have a lot of plastics waste don't have the resources to install decent scrubbers, much less perfect scrubbers. [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/recycling-global-statistics-facts-plastic-paper/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/recycling-global-stat...
melling 4y ago
5%? 100,000 commercial flights a day, every day of the year contributes 2%. Actually, maybe that’s all of aviation, including all those private jets people complain about. Then we have all this discussion of plastic in our food and water. Genuine question: why are we even having this discussion? In the third decade of the 21st century, common sense ain’t so common
- mrpopo 4y ago
  Because the issue of plastic waste isn't about the carbon emissions? Only you and OP brought that up.
  - ubercow13 4y ago
    Yes because they are low. The reason it is relevant is because a plastic alternative may create more emissions. Carbon isn't the issue with plastic but it is an issue with possible solutions.
    - mrpopo 4y ago
      Plastic alternatives are not considered because they are more expensive for companies and less customizable, not because they would create more emissions. Companies would do cost-cutting on product wrapping way before the emissions become a problem.
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    Kind of the point, though. To the extent those other issues are competing for attention and willpower with carbon emissions in public and political consciousness, we should pretty much ignore them until the climate situation is resolved. A turtle occasionally eating a plastic bag for breakfast is a bad thing, but the turtles wouldn't be happy if they knew they're about to die off because we're distracting ourselves with bans on single-use bags and plastic straws.
    - mrpopo 4y ago
      Climate change is taking most headlines but it's not the only planetary boundary being breached. In fact, the IPBES reports are much more alarmist, and the quantified risk is a lot higher. Granted it's a difficult task to compare these things. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries Plastic pollution is affecting the "novel entities (chemical pollution)" boundary
Amezarak 4y ago
We focus way too much on carbon emissions. There are a lot of other environmental disasters impacting everyone on earth.
- 9dev 4y ago
  People need something easy to grasp, or they will flat-out ignore a topic. So news outlets pick out a simple, easily digestible factoid that can be measured - like carbon emissions. It's great! You can even calculate the "carbon footprint" of a single person. No matter that isn't correct anyway, as long as it makes you feel good when buying your electric SUV.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  Do we? That's the one big thing that's an immediate, across-the-board threat to both human civilization and the environment as we know it. The "other environmental disasters impacting everyone on earth" are either partially caused by climate change, or aren't really disasters. Like microplastics - unless there's been some new research in the past year, AFAIK they're still just something worrying, but we're yet to identify any actual harm caused by them. Which means it's good to keep them on our radar, but dealing with them shouldn't be a priority - not when we have problems (like carbon emission induced climate change) that are directly harmful and are only going to get worse.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Like climate change, there's no scientific consensus. The mainstream scientists, European governments, China etc all think that recycling plastic is better than burning or landfill for reasons they've documented in depth in multiple Lifecycle Analysis papers and meta reviews of LCAs. But, there is a very loud minority, funded by the same network of think-tanks representing fossil fuel interests that fund climate change deniers who say this is all nonsense and really everything you've been told by the "consensus" actually either does nothing, or actively makes things worse, so you might as well keep using and burning fossil fuels.
- eropple 4y ago
  This post reads more in line with what it seems like you're actually saying with some sarcastiquotes around "no scientific consensus".
Symmetry 4y ago
Honestly I'm happy to have plastic production locking up hydrocarbons in a long term stable form to keep it out of the atmosphere where it might otherwise end up.
Symmetry 4y ago
Relatively little. Glass and aluminium recycling are a huge boost in energy efficiency compared to the alternative but plastic and paper recycling a pretty marginal. Trying to recycle paper doesn't really have any downsides but trying to recycle plastic might result in it ending up in the ocean rather than a landfill so I think that, unless you've researched your local recycling infrastructure and trust it, its better to just throw plastic out.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

lm28469 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_pollution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_pollution

cjblomqvist 4y ago
It's probably a lot easier to burn than recycling it though... If the problem is the waste
- lm28469 4y ago
  I'm under the impression that burning it simply displace the problem from land to air, it's still pollution/waste.
  - actionfromafar 4y ago
    Sort of. CO2 wise it's worse burning. But free floating plastic creates problems from toxic addivites causing hormonal problems, and from the microplastics (which all plastic degrades to in the ocean eventually) clogging the stomachs of krill etc. Burning the plastic in a properly fitted plant largely "cleans" the toxic additives by burning them too. Plastic in nature will eventually turn into CO2, just slower and with a lot of bad side-effects. "Recycling" the plastic has been shown to instead be sold to whatever-place-du-jour which ignores laws. Often it's burned in open pits, creating both immediate CO2 release, as well as new toxins created in the imperfect burning, and leaching of the old toxins, as well as large chunks of unburnt plastic floating in the wind. And burning plastic is a waste, but a lesser waste, because it's turned into some electricity. Upholding recycling structures for plastic also creates a false sense of "this is fine". Instead, it should be treated as low-level-dangerous refuse which should be burnt and only used for applications where this trade-off is acceptable.
cameronh90 4y ago
The specific question was about recycling. Whether we recycle, landfill or incinerate, I'm not sure what difference that makes to plastic pollution. To deal with plastic pollution, we need to reduce overall plastic usage and improve collection and waste management.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- lm28469 4y ago
  Pretty sure the plastic your recycle has less chance to end up in the ocean, soil, your body, &c.
  - scatters 4y ago
    Compared to burning it?
  - HPsquared 4y ago
    Counterintuitively, recycling plastic tends to involve shipping plastic waste long distances and trading in the waste. Incinerating or burying it is simpler and more reliable. From the wiki article: "The trade in plastic waste has been identified as "a main culprit" of marine litter."
    - gruez 4y ago
      >Counterintuitively, recycling plastic tends to involve shipping plastic waste long distances and trading in the waste. Only 2% of plastic waste is traded between countries. Further, most of that is traded within the same region, so the amount of waste that's shipped across "long distances" is probably under 1%. https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-waste-trade https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-waste-trade
    - lm28469 4y ago
      > Counterintuitively, recycling plastic tends to involve shipping plastic waste long distances and trading in the waste That's just because the clown world we developed only cares about money, as long as the numbers fit in the excel tables we'll do all kind of dumb shit like sending trash to Africa to have it burned in open dumps There is a very easy solution which seemingly isn't even conceived, recycle it locally... really mind blowing I know...
some_random 4y ago
Lets be real here, within a rounding error none of that was going to be recycled. Metal recycling is incredibly efficient and profitable but there's still metal that's dumped and not recycled.

JohnJamesRambo 4y ago

I’m realizing how messed up it is that we probably polluted the earth more by fake recycling schemes that just shipped it overseas (fossil fuels moving it, lots of it ending up in the ocean), instead of just burying it in a landfill.

jcynix 4y ago
Burying plastic in landfills? That would be a waste of resources, as it could at least be burned in power plants as a second use, if it cannot be recycled.
- automatic6131 4y ago
  No, it's an excellent use. Burning it produces all kinds of toxins from impurities and carbon. Landfill is comparatively small, and concentrates plastics for potentially later extraction, if plastics ever become sufficiently valuable - or recycling sufficiently viable.
  - yarky 4y ago
    > Burning it produces all kinds of toxins from impurities and carbon. Which can be trapped/filtered to avoid pollution. > if plastics ever become sufficiently valuable - or recycling sufficiently viable. If that was remotely probable, you'd have banks offering plastic-storage related ETFs already.
    - bm-rf 4y ago
      I was curious as to how effective scrubbing was, turns out Packed Tower Wet Scrubbers can filter out 99%+ of VOCs from incinerated plastic. You still get carbon emissions however.
      - mschuster91 4y ago
        At the scale humanity is using plastics, 99% is lacking after-comma 9s in orders of magnitude. We're at 400 million tons of plastic waste a year [1], so even 1% inefficiency means that the VOCs of 4 million tons end up in the environment. Yes, it's better than burning it outright in open fire pits (as it's done in an awful lot of "third world" countries to concentrate metals out of the waste), but it's way worse than a dump yard. And most of the places that have a lot of plastics waste don't have the resources to install decent scrubbers, much less perfect scrubbers. [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/recycling-global-statistics-facts-plastic-paper/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/recycling-global-stat...

melling 4y ago

5%? 100,000 commercial flights a day, every day of the year contributes 2%. Actually, maybe that’s all of aviation, including all those private jets people complain about. Then we have all this discussion of plastic in our food and water. Genuine question: why are we even having this discussion? In the third decade of the 21st century, common sense ain’t so common

mrpopo 4y ago
Because the issue of plastic waste isn't about the carbon emissions? Only you and OP brought that up.
- ubercow13 4y ago
  Yes because they are low. The reason it is relevant is because a plastic alternative may create more emissions. Carbon isn't the issue with plastic but it is an issue with possible solutions.
  - mrpopo 4y ago
    Plastic alternatives are not considered because they are more expensive for companies and less customizable, not because they would create more emissions. Companies would do cost-cutting on product wrapping way before the emissions become a problem.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  Kind of the point, though. To the extent those other issues are competing for attention and willpower with carbon emissions in public and political consciousness, we should pretty much ignore them until the climate situation is resolved. A turtle occasionally eating a plastic bag for breakfast is a bad thing, but the turtles wouldn't be happy if they knew they're about to die off because we're distracting ourselves with bans on single-use bags and plastic straws.
  - mrpopo 4y ago
    Climate change is taking most headlines but it's not the only planetary boundary being breached. In fact, the IPBES reports are much more alarmist, and the quantified risk is a lot higher. Granted it's a difficult task to compare these things. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries Plastic pollution is affecting the "novel entities (chemical pollution)" boundary

Amezarak 4y ago

We focus way too much on carbon emissions. There are a lot of other environmental disasters impacting everyone on earth.

9dev 4y ago
People need something easy to grasp, or they will flat-out ignore a topic. So news outlets pick out a simple, easily digestible factoid that can be measured - like carbon emissions. It's great! You can even calculate the "carbon footprint" of a single person. No matter that isn't correct anyway, as long as it makes you feel good when buying your electric SUV.
TeMPOraL 4y ago
Do we? That's the one big thing that's an immediate, across-the-board threat to both human civilization and the environment as we know it. The "other environmental disasters impacting everyone on earth" are either partially caused by climate change, or aren't really disasters. Like microplastics - unless there's been some new research in the past year, AFAIK they're still just something worrying, but we're yet to identify any actual harm caused by them. Which means it's good to keep them on our radar, but dealing with them shouldn't be a priority - not when we have problems (like carbon emission induced climate change) that are directly harmful and are only going to get worse.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

Like climate change, there's no scientific consensus. The mainstream scientists, European governments, China etc all think that recycling plastic is better than burning or landfill for reasons they've documented in depth in multiple Lifecycle Analysis papers and meta reviews of LCAs. But, there is a very loud minority, funded by the same network of think-tanks representing fossil fuel interests that fund climate change deniers who say this is all nonsense and really everything you've been told by the "consensus" actually either does nothing, or actively makes things worse, so you might as well keep using and burning fossil fuels.

eropple 4y ago
This post reads more in line with what it seems like you're actually saying with some sarcastiquotes around "no scientific consensus".

Symmetry 4y ago

Honestly I'm happy to have plastic production locking up hydrocarbons in a long term stable form to keep it out of the atmosphere where it might otherwise end up.

Symmetry 4y ago

Relatively little. Glass and aluminium recycling are a huge boost in energy efficiency compared to the alternative but plastic and paper recycling a pretty marginal. Trying to recycle paper doesn't really have any downsides but trying to recycle plastic might result in it ending up in the ocean rather than a landfill so I think that, unless you've researched your local recycling infrastructure and trust it, its better to just throw plastic out.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]