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Think that your plastic is being recycled? Think again

68 points by rippeltippel 3y ago

h1fra 3y ago
It's terrible, plastic recycling is a myth told by the petrol industry, that purposefully messed up the recycling labels and greenwashed the entire industry. It's physically not possible to recycle plastic and get the same propriety back. About 10% of the plastic is "recycled" worlwide, meaning it's been reused to do something else but can't be used for the same thing (e.g: bottle -> insulation)
- Kuinox 3y ago
  It's not feasibly impossible, it's very hard, but for some type of plastic, you can recycle it infinitely (like PLA).
  - h1fra 3y ago
    There is some nuance here, PLA is not a petrol based "plastic". It has the similar proprieties than regular plastic but is made from organic material. I was only referring to petrol based plastic, but not all bio-plastiscs are recyclable either.
- tokai 3y ago
  >but can't be used for the same thing Eh no, why would that be? Where I live 87% of all recycled plastic bottles are reused for new bottles.
  - eimrine 3y ago
    Does it mean that a half (87% minus some losses of plastic material after melting it and forming again) of the brand new plastic bottles in your country are from reused material?
    - tokai 3y ago
      Yes. Or more likely over half of every new bottle is reused plastic. Multiple European countries where this is the case.
      - eimrine 3y ago
        Last thing remaining is to make clear of what "bottle" word means in the calculations. I mean that a bottle can be containing either some food (pure water, soda, milk products) or some chemistry. Former (Coca-cola in my mind) is kind of never reused in my country, but latter (some P&G products for example) is almost always from reused material.
  - h1fra 3y ago
    I'm genuinely curious and would love to be wrong. Do you have some source? Most of the time they say they do it, but it's much more expensive and recycled plastic quality degrades quickly, can't be mixed with other PET, so you still need to add a majority of regular plastic to the mix. Quoting wikipedia "approximately 15% of collected PET bottles were actually recycled into new bottles" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PET_bottle_recycling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PET_bottle_recycling
    - tokai 3y ago
      https://danskretursystem.dk/klima-og-miljoe/genanvendelsen-af-plastikflasker/ https://danskretursystem.dk/klima-og-miljoe/genanvendelsen-a... From the text: "A full 87% of all collected plastic bottles were therefore recycled into new beverage bottles in 2022." The used plastic is recycled multiple times: "PET plastic bottles are also good materials for many other products, but it is best when they become new beverage bottles. This preserves the high quality of the plastic so that it can be reused again and again" Why did you write that they "can't be used for the same thing" when even wikipedia says its happens?
      - h1fra 3y ago
        Good for danemark but I would still take this information with precaution. PET which is the most common type of plastic for bottles but loose it's propriety after 2-3 cycle. It's not recyclable forever like glasses. That means your bottle of water will be a bottle of water max 2-3 times until it's not possible to use this plastic again for making bottle. Wikipedia is not contradicting this, PET is reused in a mix of brand new plastic and old one.
    - varjag 3y ago
      In Scandinavia plastic bottles are usually returned to recycling machines at the point of sale.
      - goda90 3y ago
        In Chile there are thick 3 liter bottles that actually get reused. They have a deposit charge that you get back when you return the empty bottle to the store. New bottles will often be all scuffed up from being reused so many times.
- p0w3n3d 3y ago
  One fascinating thing is that on the one hand, the petrol industry messed up the recycling labels, but meanwhile, I am being made responsible by my government for the amount of plastic "I create".
  - kmeisthax 3y ago
    I absolutely hate the ongoing effort to shift the costs of pollution and environmental damage onto end consumers who have no say in the actual production of the products they purchase. "Carbon footprint" was heavily pushed by the oil industry to blame people who buy their shit for buying their shit.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      > "Carbon footprint" was literally coined by oil industries to blame people who buy their shit for buying their shit. Where did you learn this?
      - kmeisthax 3y ago
        https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-footprint-pr-campaign-sham https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-footprint-pr-campaign-sh... I misremembered the story. It wasn't literally coined by the oil industry, but it was heavily pushed by them. BP had an ad campaign talking about "personal carbon footprint" in 2005 which put the phrase into the public consciousness.
        amanaplanacanal 3y ago
        Carbon should be taxed when it comes out of the ground. It’s the only way that price signals can actually change people’s behavior. Is also the most market friendly way to do it. But at least in the US it seems politically impossible.
        robertlagrant 3y ago
        Well, consumption is what drives it. Education-based messages that convince people to consume less/differently are the non-authoritarian way to effect change.
- varjag 3y ago
  It is highly region specific. In EU 42.1% plastics are recycled, 39.3% are burned as fuel and 18.5% go to landfill. So it's absolutely possible to do better than 10%. https://circulareconomy.europa.eu/platform/sites/default/files/euric_-_plastic_recycling_fact_sheet.pdf https://circulareconomy.europa.eu/platform/sites/default/fil...
  - h1fra 3y ago
    As I said recycling is most of the time actually downcycling. Don't get me wrong it's better than burning, but the fact we think bottle to bottle is the norm while it's absolutely not is a sign that we have failed somewhere.
    - baal80spam 3y ago
      > the fact we think bottle to bottle is the norm Do people actually think so? I know nothing about recycling and I'd think that AT BEST 25% of materials are actually "got back" from a product.
    - phero_cnstrcts 3y ago
      As the system currently is it’s actually more environmentally friendly to burn plastics instead of shipping it to China where it will either be burnt or dumped in the ocean.
      - anticensor 3y ago
        What if we threw those thermoplastics in the oil refinery and let them pyrolyse under the heat of the distillation&cracking column?
    - soco 3y ago
      That's a question I always had: is burning plastics bad? I mean, if we had a clean burning, no toxins and toxic ashes...? If this is true, then at least we are not damaging the environment with it (the overconsumption issue aside)
- lolinder 3y ago
  When you quote a number like 10% you need to be more specific what you mean, and preferably provide a source. Most of the percentages I see quoted are percent of plastic in the entire use stream that ends up recycled, but then people interpret it as "there's no point in putting plastic in the recycling because it has a 1 in 10 chance of being recycled". But that's not what the number means, the number means that most plastic doesn't even get to a recycling center.
  - h1fra 3y ago
    Well I'm quoting the OP: "Only 9% of the plastic ever produced has been recycled" And it's true not all plastic ends up in the recycling system.
    - lolinder 3y ago
      Yes, that number is dangerous when it's used to imply that recycling programs throw most of the stuff away. That's not what it means. There are several people here who have actually said that they would rather send plastic to the landfill than to the recycling center because they read numbers like that and interpret them wrong.
      - amanaplanacanal 3y ago
        Well, plastic in the landfill is a form of carbon capture. Eventually something will evolve to eat all that stuff, though it might take a really long time.
    - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
      That 9% is of all plastic produced between 1950 and 2015. > it’s estimated that in 2015, around 55 percent of global plastic waste was discarded, 25 percent was incinerated, and 20 percent was recycled. Of the plastic waste produced between 1950 and 2015, only 9 percent was recycled. https://ourworldindata.org/faq-on-plastics#how-much-of-global-plastic-is-recycled https://ourworldindata.org/faq-on-plastics#how-much-of-globa...
Kuinox 3y ago
It's a different story between country, in Europe some country recycle a big part of their plastic: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20181212STO21610/plastic-waste-and-recycling-in-the-eu-facts-and-figures https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/201...
doubleg72 3y ago
I think education is a major issue here. I know I used to recycle plastics, but after reading through comments on here, I would rather just throw it in the trash and know it will be at a landfill. This makes me feel better than the alternative, in which it is sent overseas and more likely to be dispersed throughout the environment.
- lolinder 3y ago
  Read the actual article rather than the comments here. The article doesn't say that your recycling that goes to recycling plant doesn't get recycled. It says that most plastic doesn't even make it to the plant, and even the plastic that does can only be recycled the one time. The article does not argue that we should not bother recycling, it argues that in addition to recycling we need to stop plastic at the source. It just has a bad title that sparked an unrelated conversation on HN.
hackeman300 3y ago
Good article, but unfortunately it propagates the oft quoted "you eat a credit card worth of plastic each week" myth. Good video here explaining why it likely isn't true https://youtu.be/2Ntp6BqhSng https://youtu.be/2Ntp6BqhSng
- user3939382 3y ago
  Given the studies on microplastics i.e. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34484127/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34484127/ I don't think it's necessary to minimize the situation. If anything it needs more attention.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    If OP is correct that the quantity mentioned is an exaggeration, we should be open about that. Popular trust in science—especially in the domains of health and the environment—is extremely low lately and won't be helped by lying to people to try to get them to change their behavior. (I don't know whether or not the number is correct, but OP isn't wrong to warn against exaggerating.)
    - user3939382 3y ago
      I would say, if OPs claim is correct, "x is not happening but y is" To say only the first minimizes the issue, even if unintentionally.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    Removing an exaggerated claim is not minimising.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
If you live in a well run democratic society, then your plastic packaging waste has a good chance of being recycled or incenerated with energy recovery: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Packaging_waste_statistics#Recycling_and_recovery_targets_and_rates https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
- londons_explore 3y ago
  > incinerated with energy recovery Turns out the amount of energy recovered pays for the whole process.
- layer8 3y ago
  There’s quite a lot of non-packaging plastic being thrown away though.
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    Packaging is a big chunk though (30-50% depending on how you count it) and the obvious place to start. https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution#plastic-waste-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution#plastic-waste-b... It's also what most people think of when they hear "plastic recycling", not plastic lawn chairs or deep sea fishing equipment or textiles (though there's programs to reduce impacts of those things too)
- chpatrick 3y ago
  Is putting it in the air better than putting it in the ground?
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    Yes, especially while fossil fuels are being burned on the same energy grid. Over time as more, cheaper renewable energy enters the grid this tilts the balance towards recycling and away from incineration, but it's unlikely that incineration with energy recovery will ever get worse than landfill, which is generally considered lower on the waste hierarchy, and cheap energy lets you invest more in treating the emissions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_hierarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_hierarchy
lolinder 3y ago
This is a good article that has almost nothing to do with the title. The title implies that once you put your plastic in the recycling it isn't actually recycled—this may or may not be true, but the article doesn't say either way. Unlike what would be implied by the title and the comments here so far, they actually have a pretty positive view of recycling programs, they just argue that they're not sufficient. What the article is actually about is how recycling programs don't actually end up receiving most of the plastic that is consumed, and how even if they did it wouldn't be enough to solve the problem. We need to actually use less plastic in the first place, not recycle it once only to have it enter a landfill on the second use.
- avery17 3y ago
  Ever since ive learned that recycling is basically a scam perpetuated by the plastic industry ive been disgusted with how much plastic there is everywhere all the time. Its impossible not to interact with a vast amount of plastic in our daily lives. Hell, i wear plastic around all day. Its gross... Not that i dont support recycling, it just isnt the answer that the plastic industry pretends it is. We need to reduce! Massively!
  - phero_cnstrcts 3y ago
    Many plastics can’t even be recycled. And the symbol on bottles for example looks like a recycling symbol but it isn’t. Only the number on the symbol indicates wether a bottle can / will be recycled. And most don’t.
    - nine_k 3y ago
      PET and polyethylene, which comprise most of the bottle material around me, can be recycled almost perfectly. Aluminum would recycle even more perfectly, but it takes a bit more energy to melt.
      - orev 3y ago
        Once you factor in all the energy and materials required to actually recycle those plastics (water to clean, fuel to transport, personnel to sort, etc.), the act of recycling plastic itself is a net loss. And that’s only if you can find someone to actually do it, since the resulting recycled product is usually more expensive than using virgin material. Aluminum on the other hand takes so much energy to mine that the cost and effort of recycling makes it far more desirable to use the recycled version and is well worth the effort.
fzeroracer 3y ago
Ultimately it's clear that we need to accept the disruption and lobby our governments to just ban single-use plastics entirely. The amount of microplastics we're seeing in samples across the world in addition to the general pollution and hazards they cause poses a problem.
freitzkriesler2 3y ago
I thought that this was mostly known that for a long time our "recycled" stuff was getting shipped to China and burned. That ended not that long ago so I wonder what they're actually doing with it now. Maybe actually recycling it perhaps? It's a shame that this stuff is happening. Lots of feel good measures that aren't helping anything.
- lolinder 3y ago
  The article does not claim that recycling programs don't actually recycle, it just has a really bad title given to it by a really bad editor. What the article is actually about is how not enough plastic ends up at the recycling center in the first place, and how even if it did it couldn't be recycled a second time, so we still need to stop plastic at the source.
chromaton 3y ago
Please remind me why landfills are so bad again.
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill#Social_and_environmental_impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill#Social_and_environmen...
  - amanaplanacanal 3y ago
    Most of those problems don’t apply to plastic waste.
    - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
      I believe all of them do, which ones were you thinking don't? It seems common to falsely believe that burying plastic in landfills has less greenhouse gas emissions than recycling it, so I'll assume that's what you are referring to. > The existing literature on LCA of plastic waste management is vast and the results reported are generally consistent, showing that recycling generates the lowest GWP and TEU environmental impacts. LCA: lifecycle analysis GWP: global warming potential TEU: Total Energy Use https://watermark.silverchair.com/140001_1_online.pdf https://watermark.silverchair.com/140001_1_online.pdf
deleted 3y ago
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jmclnx 3y ago
And yet no national government will ban single use plastic bottles. Where I live we are back to paper grocery bags, which I like better. But I can drive a few miles in state to get plastic bags for groceries. I am old enough to have seen paper and glass replaced by plastic, time to go back and charge at least 1 USD per bottle to encourage recycling instead of 5 Cents. For people out side of the US, we are almost at the point were nothing costs less than 1 USD.
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago
  > And yet no national government will ban single use plastic bottles. The Nordic countries have a deposit system by which the population is highly incentivized to return the bottle to the supermarket, the deposit is so high and one can get cash back, not just store credit. Even if a consumer feels well-off enough to just throw the bottle in a normal bin (or, as often the case with people boozing in parks, is too drunk to dispose of the bottle), hungry students or migrants will seize on the chance to return the bottle themselves and get the deposit back. This system seems so effective that no one even talks about a ban.
- bzzzt 3y ago
  Think of all the fuel spent transporting and cleaning tons of glassware and tell me if you think that's 'greener'.
  - mariusor 3y ago
    As opposed to blowing the glass from scratch and then transporting it? Definitely.
- sumtechguy 3y ago
  that is the annoying thing of all of this. plastic one use bottles have a nice use in some cases. we at one point had a very nice reduce reuse recycle system in place for glass bottles. the caps were easy to pick out with magnets and the bottles could be reused hundreds of times before being needed to be crushed up into more bottles. it was also in the best interest of the companies to reduce how many bottles were out there. then we upended the whole thing thinking we can recycle the plastic.
NikkiA 3y ago
I assume my plastic recycling is what my council states - that it is burned (with the exhaust passing through scrubbers) to produce steam which is used to heat local businesses and public buildings, and generate a small amount of electricty, then the melted slag is collected and used as an asphalt replacement in road maintenance. It seems fair enough, maybe not ideal, but it generates some extra use from the waste.
Simulacra 3y ago
Ever since 2015, when China said that they know would no longer buy American waste plastic, it just gets sent to landfill. Almost all municipal plastic recycling programs in America have shut down.
jbotdev 3y ago
I wonder why there hasn’t been more effort behind replacing single use plastics for food/beverages. People get all up in arms about plastic straws, but then stick their paper straw in a big plastic single-use cup. I also find it sad that some companies like Snapple are regressing, changing from glass to plastic bottles.
fredgrott 3y ago
Interesting thing to do: 1. Go to McDonalds and read the recycle notice on their drink cups. 2. Ask an employee if they recycle those drink cups. 3. Then go out into McDonalds parking lot and notice that their garbage containers do not separate out drink cups for recycling. And this is the same whether the city that the McDonalds is in recycles plastic or not.
cainxinth 3y ago
Think I think my plastic is being recycled? Think again.
Aurornis 3y ago
As the article and other commenters have mentioned: The fate of plastics that end up in the recycling bin is complicated, but that doesn’t mean it all goes into the trash. I’ve been fascinated by how much the cynics, contrarians, and people with certain political leanings latch on to this story and exaggerate it. I worked on a large campus where rumors began to spread after they installed recycling bins. The rumors, fueled by stories like this one, escalated to the point that some people insisted that the maintenance crew was secretly collecting recycling bins and dumping them into the trash at night when nobody was watching. They all had variations of the myth claiming they knew a guy who saw it happen one night or they talked to a friend who knows the maintenance people who admitted it was all fake. I endured some painful lectures from older people who explained that recycling was actually a psyop conducted to train us to be obedient because that’s how the elites wanted us to be. People in this camp stopped recycling aluminum and glass on principal, defiantly throwing it in the garbage and making a big deal about it in the process. Eventually we got an email newsletter explaining where the recycling goes, what the recycling pickup company does with it, and including photos of where it ends up. This didn’t stop the hardcore conspiracy theorists, but it did stop the recycling wars from being a constant topic of debate.
nine_k 3y ago
Common plastic trash, AFAICT, is one of the least unpleasant kinds of trash. It's not toxic, it's not runny and does not get into the water table, it does not decompose into noxious gases, it does not self-ignite and does not burn easily, it can be compacted quite a lot. I think storing waste plastic in a dry place, some desert, covered from wind, might be a pretty good solution, until we find a way to recycle this huge pile of simple organic molecules.
0xbadc0de5 3y ago
The real shame is that plastic is used on so many immediately disposable things like packaging. Plastics have so many legitimate uses with no other material substitute, the fact that we just throw away so much of it needlessly is a huge part of the problem.
MichaelRo 3y ago
Well I'm old enough to have lived during Ceaușescu's times for a while and I remember very little plastic from back then. Plastic bottles were basically unheard of. Glass or metal containers it was and they were also recycled. Bags were mostly cloth. Again, no plastic. So it's definitely possible to live in a much-less plastic polluted world. Unfortunately we live in the society of "It's pretty amazing that our society has reached a point where the effort necessary to extract oil from the ground, ship it to a refinery, turn it into plastic, shape it appropriately, truck it to a store, but it, and bring it home is considered to be less effort that what it takes to just wash the spoon when you're done with it..."
oldbbsnickname 3y ago
The problem is economics: plastic is too cheap. Perhaps we should consider taxing plastic on the producer side until renewable, durable, and recyclable materials are substituted.

68 points by rippeltippel 3y ago

It's terrible, plastic recycling is a myth told by the petrol industry, that purposefully messed up the recycling labels and greenwashed the entire industry. It's physically not possible to recycle plastic and get the same propriety back. About 10% of the plastic is "recycled" worlwide, meaning it's been reused to do something else but can't be used for the same thing (e.g: bottle -> insulation)

Kuinox 3y ago
It's not feasibly impossible, it's very hard, but for some type of plastic, you can recycle it infinitely (like PLA).
- h1fra 3y ago
  There is some nuance here, PLA is not a petrol based "plastic". It has the similar proprieties than regular plastic but is made from organic material. I was only referring to petrol based plastic, but not all bio-plastiscs are recyclable either.
tokai 3y ago
>but can't be used for the same thing Eh no, why would that be? Where I live 87% of all recycled plastic bottles are reused for new bottles.
- eimrine 3y ago
  Does it mean that a half (87% minus some losses of plastic material after melting it and forming again) of the brand new plastic bottles in your country are from reused material?
  - tokai 3y ago
    Yes. Or more likely over half of every new bottle is reused plastic. Multiple European countries where this is the case.
    - eimrine 3y ago
      Last thing remaining is to make clear of what "bottle" word means in the calculations. I mean that a bottle can be containing either some food (pure water, soda, milk products) or some chemistry. Former (Coca-cola in my mind) is kind of never reused in my country, but latter (some P&G products for example) is almost always from reused material.
- h1fra 3y ago
  I'm genuinely curious and would love to be wrong. Do you have some source? Most of the time they say they do it, but it's much more expensive and recycled plastic quality degrades quickly, can't be mixed with other PET, so you still need to add a majority of regular plastic to the mix. Quoting wikipedia "approximately 15% of collected PET bottles were actually recycled into new bottles" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PET_bottle_recycling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PET_bottle_recycling
  - tokai 3y ago
    https://danskretursystem.dk/klima-og-miljoe/genanvendelsen-af-plastikflasker/ https://danskretursystem.dk/klima-og-miljoe/genanvendelsen-a... From the text: "A full 87% of all collected plastic bottles were therefore recycled into new beverage bottles in 2022." The used plastic is recycled multiple times: "PET plastic bottles are also good materials for many other products, but it is best when they become new beverage bottles. This preserves the high quality of the plastic so that it can be reused again and again" Why did you write that they "can't be used for the same thing" when even wikipedia says its happens?
    - h1fra 3y ago
      Good for danemark but I would still take this information with precaution. PET which is the most common type of plastic for bottles but loose it's propriety after 2-3 cycle. It's not recyclable forever like glasses. That means your bottle of water will be a bottle of water max 2-3 times until it's not possible to use this plastic again for making bottle. Wikipedia is not contradicting this, PET is reused in a mix of brand new plastic and old one.
  - varjag 3y ago
    In Scandinavia plastic bottles are usually returned to recycling machines at the point of sale.
    - goda90 3y ago
      In Chile there are thick 3 liter bottles that actually get reused. They have a deposit charge that you get back when you return the empty bottle to the store. New bottles will often be all scuffed up from being reused so many times.
p0w3n3d 3y ago
One fascinating thing is that on the one hand, the petrol industry messed up the recycling labels, but meanwhile, I am being made responsible by my government for the amount of plastic "I create".
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  I absolutely hate the ongoing effort to shift the costs of pollution and environmental damage onto end consumers who have no say in the actual production of the products they purchase. "Carbon footprint" was heavily pushed by the oil industry to blame people who buy their shit for buying their shit.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > "Carbon footprint" was literally coined by oil industries to blame people who buy their shit for buying their shit. Where did you learn this?
    - kmeisthax 3y ago
      https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-footprint-pr-campaign-sham https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-footprint-pr-campaign-sh... I misremembered the story. It wasn't literally coined by the oil industry, but it was heavily pushed by them. BP had an ad campaign talking about "personal carbon footprint" in 2005 which put the phrase into the public consciousness.
      - amanaplanacanal 3y ago
        Carbon should be taxed when it comes out of the ground. It’s the only way that price signals can actually change people’s behavior. Is also the most market friendly way to do it. But at least in the US it seems politically impossible.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        Well, consumption is what drives it. Education-based messages that convince people to consume less/differently are the non-authoritarian way to effect change.
varjag 3y ago
It is highly region specific. In EU 42.1% plastics are recycled, 39.3% are burned as fuel and 18.5% go to landfill. So it's absolutely possible to do better than 10%. https://circulareconomy.europa.eu/platform/sites/default/files/euric_-_plastic_recycling_fact_sheet.pdf https://circulareconomy.europa.eu/platform/sites/default/fil...
- h1fra 3y ago
  As I said recycling is most of the time actually downcycling. Don't get me wrong it's better than burning, but the fact we think bottle to bottle is the norm while it's absolutely not is a sign that we have failed somewhere.
  - baal80spam 3y ago
    > the fact we think bottle to bottle is the norm Do people actually think so? I know nothing about recycling and I'd think that AT BEST 25% of materials are actually "got back" from a product.
  - phero_cnstrcts 3y ago
    As the system currently is it’s actually more environmentally friendly to burn plastics instead of shipping it to China where it will either be burnt or dumped in the ocean.
    - anticensor 3y ago
      What if we threw those thermoplastics in the oil refinery and let them pyrolyse under the heat of the distillation&cracking column?
  - soco 3y ago
    That's a question I always had: is burning plastics bad? I mean, if we had a clean burning, no toxins and toxic ashes...? If this is true, then at least we are not damaging the environment with it (the overconsumption issue aside)
lolinder 3y ago
When you quote a number like 10% you need to be more specific what you mean, and preferably provide a source. Most of the percentages I see quoted are percent of plastic in the entire use stream that ends up recycled, but then people interpret it as "there's no point in putting plastic in the recycling because it has a 1 in 10 chance of being recycled". But that's not what the number means, the number means that most plastic doesn't even get to a recycling center.
- h1fra 3y ago
  Well I'm quoting the OP: "Only 9% of the plastic ever produced has been recycled" And it's true not all plastic ends up in the recycling system.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    Yes, that number is dangerous when it's used to imply that recycling programs throw most of the stuff away. That's not what it means. There are several people here who have actually said that they would rather send plastic to the landfill than to the recycling center because they read numbers like that and interpret them wrong.
    - amanaplanacanal 3y ago
      Well, plastic in the landfill is a form of carbon capture. Eventually something will evolve to eat all that stuff, though it might take a really long time.
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    That 9% is of all plastic produced between 1950 and 2015. > it’s estimated that in 2015, around 55 percent of global plastic waste was discarded, 25 percent was incinerated, and 20 percent was recycled. Of the plastic waste produced between 1950 and 2015, only 9 percent was recycled. https://ourworldindata.org/faq-on-plastics#how-much-of-global-plastic-is-recycled https://ourworldindata.org/faq-on-plastics#how-much-of-globa...

Kuinox 3y ago

It's a different story between country, in Europe some country recycle a big part of their plastic: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20181212STO21610/plastic-waste-and-recycling-in-the-eu-facts-and-figures https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/201...

doubleg72 3y ago

I think education is a major issue here. I know I used to recycle plastics, but after reading through comments on here, I would rather just throw it in the trash and know it will be at a landfill. This makes me feel better than the alternative, in which it is sent overseas and more likely to be dispersed throughout the environment.

lolinder 3y ago
Read the actual article rather than the comments here. The article doesn't say that your recycling that goes to recycling plant doesn't get recycled. It says that most plastic doesn't even make it to the plant, and even the plastic that does can only be recycled the one time. The article does not argue that we should not bother recycling, it argues that in addition to recycling we need to stop plastic at the source. It just has a bad title that sparked an unrelated conversation on HN.

hackeman300 3y ago

Good article, but unfortunately it propagates the oft quoted "you eat a credit card worth of plastic each week" myth. Good video here explaining why it likely isn't true https://youtu.be/2Ntp6BqhSng https://youtu.be/2Ntp6BqhSng

user3939382 3y ago
Given the studies on microplastics i.e. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34484127/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34484127/ I don't think it's necessary to minimize the situation. If anything it needs more attention.
- lolinder 3y ago
  If OP is correct that the quantity mentioned is an exaggeration, we should be open about that. Popular trust in science—especially in the domains of health and the environment—is extremely low lately and won't be helped by lying to people to try to get them to change their behavior. (I don't know whether or not the number is correct, but OP isn't wrong to warn against exaggerating.)
  - user3939382 3y ago
    I would say, if OPs claim is correct, "x is not happening but y is" To say only the first minimizes the issue, even if unintentionally.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  Removing an exaggerated claim is not minimising.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

ZeroGravitas 3y ago

If you live in a well run democratic society, then your plastic packaging waste has a good chance of being recycled or incenerated with energy recovery: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Packaging_waste_statistics#Recycling_and_recovery_targets_and_rates https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

londons_explore 3y ago
> incinerated with energy recovery Turns out the amount of energy recovered pays for the whole process.
layer8 3y ago
There’s quite a lot of non-packaging plastic being thrown away though.
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  Packaging is a big chunk though (30-50% depending on how you count it) and the obvious place to start. https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution#plastic-waste-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution#plastic-waste-b... It's also what most people think of when they hear "plastic recycling", not plastic lawn chairs or deep sea fishing equipment or textiles (though there's programs to reduce impacts of those things too)
chpatrick 3y ago
Is putting it in the air better than putting it in the ground?
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  Yes, especially while fossil fuels are being burned on the same energy grid. Over time as more, cheaper renewable energy enters the grid this tilts the balance towards recycling and away from incineration, but it's unlikely that incineration with energy recovery will ever get worse than landfill, which is generally considered lower on the waste hierarchy, and cheap energy lets you invest more in treating the emissions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_hierarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_hierarchy

lolinder 3y ago

This is a good article that has almost nothing to do with the title. The title implies that once you put your plastic in the recycling it isn't actually recycled—this may or may not be true, but the article doesn't say either way. Unlike what would be implied by the title and the comments here so far, they actually have a pretty positive view of recycling programs, they just argue that they're not sufficient. What the article is actually about is how recycling programs don't actually end up receiving most of the plastic that is consumed, and how even if they did it wouldn't be enough to solve the problem. We need to actually use less plastic in the first place, not recycle it once only to have it enter a landfill on the second use.

avery17 3y ago
Ever since ive learned that recycling is basically a scam perpetuated by the plastic industry ive been disgusted with how much plastic there is everywhere all the time. Its impossible not to interact with a vast amount of plastic in our daily lives. Hell, i wear plastic around all day. Its gross... Not that i dont support recycling, it just isnt the answer that the plastic industry pretends it is. We need to reduce! Massively!
- phero_cnstrcts 3y ago
  Many plastics can’t even be recycled. And the symbol on bottles for example looks like a recycling symbol but it isn’t. Only the number on the symbol indicates wether a bottle can / will be recycled. And most don’t.
  - nine_k 3y ago
    PET and polyethylene, which comprise most of the bottle material around me, can be recycled almost perfectly. Aluminum would recycle even more perfectly, but it takes a bit more energy to melt.
    - orev 3y ago
      Once you factor in all the energy and materials required to actually recycle those plastics (water to clean, fuel to transport, personnel to sort, etc.), the act of recycling plastic itself is a net loss. And that’s only if you can find someone to actually do it, since the resulting recycled product is usually more expensive than using virgin material. Aluminum on the other hand takes so much energy to mine that the cost and effort of recycling makes it far more desirable to use the recycled version and is well worth the effort.

fzeroracer 3y ago

Ultimately it's clear that we need to accept the disruption and lobby our governments to just ban single-use plastics entirely. The amount of microplastics we're seeing in samples across the world in addition to the general pollution and hazards they cause poses a problem.

freitzkriesler2 3y ago

I thought that this was mostly known that for a long time our "recycled" stuff was getting shipped to China and burned. That ended not that long ago so I wonder what they're actually doing with it now. Maybe actually recycling it perhaps? It's a shame that this stuff is happening. Lots of feel good measures that aren't helping anything.

lolinder 3y ago
The article does not claim that recycling programs don't actually recycle, it just has a really bad title given to it by a really bad editor. What the article is actually about is how not enough plastic ends up at the recycling center in the first place, and how even if it did it couldn't be recycled a second time, so we still need to stop plastic at the source.

chromaton 3y ago

Please remind me why landfills are so bad again.

ZeroGravitas 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill#Social_and_environmental_impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill#Social_and_environmen...
- amanaplanacanal 3y ago
  Most of those problems don’t apply to plastic waste.
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    I believe all of them do, which ones were you thinking don't? It seems common to falsely believe that burying plastic in landfills has less greenhouse gas emissions than recycling it, so I'll assume that's what you are referring to. > The existing literature on LCA of plastic waste management is vast and the results reported are generally consistent, showing that recycling generates the lowest GWP and TEU environmental impacts. LCA: lifecycle analysis GWP: global warming potential TEU: Total Energy Use https://watermark.silverchair.com/140001_1_online.pdf https://watermark.silverchair.com/140001_1_online.pdf

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jmclnx 3y ago

And yet no national government will ban single use plastic bottles. Where I live we are back to paper grocery bags, which I like better. But I can drive a few miles in state to get plastic bags for groceries. I am old enough to have seen paper and glass replaced by plastic, time to go back and charge at least 1 USD per bottle to encourage recycling instead of 5 Cents. For people out side of the US, we are almost at the point were nothing costs less than 1 USD.

OfSanguineFire 3y ago
> And yet no national government will ban single use plastic bottles. The Nordic countries have a deposit system by which the population is highly incentivized to return the bottle to the supermarket, the deposit is so high and one can get cash back, not just store credit. Even if a consumer feels well-off enough to just throw the bottle in a normal bin (or, as often the case with people boozing in parks, is too drunk to dispose of the bottle), hungry students or migrants will seize on the chance to return the bottle themselves and get the deposit back. This system seems so effective that no one even talks about a ban.
bzzzt 3y ago
Think of all the fuel spent transporting and cleaning tons of glassware and tell me if you think that's 'greener'.
- mariusor 3y ago
  As opposed to blowing the glass from scratch and then transporting it? Definitely.
sumtechguy 3y ago
that is the annoying thing of all of this. plastic one use bottles have a nice use in some cases. we at one point had a very nice reduce reuse recycle system in place for glass bottles. the caps were easy to pick out with magnets and the bottles could be reused hundreds of times before being needed to be crushed up into more bottles. it was also in the best interest of the companies to reduce how many bottles were out there. then we upended the whole thing thinking we can recycle the plastic.

NikkiA 3y ago

I assume my plastic recycling is what my council states - that it is burned (with the exhaust passing through scrubbers) to produce steam which is used to heat local businesses and public buildings, and generate a small amount of electricty, then the melted slag is collected and used as an asphalt replacement in road maintenance. It seems fair enough, maybe not ideal, but it generates some extra use from the waste.

Simulacra 3y ago

Ever since 2015, when China said that they know would no longer buy American waste plastic, it just gets sent to landfill. Almost all municipal plastic recycling programs in America have shut down.

jbotdev 3y ago

I wonder why there hasn’t been more effort behind replacing single use plastics for food/beverages. People get all up in arms about plastic straws, but then stick their paper straw in a big plastic single-use cup. I also find it sad that some companies like Snapple are regressing, changing from glass to plastic bottles.

fredgrott 3y ago

Interesting thing to do: 1. Go to McDonalds and read the recycle notice on their drink cups. 2. Ask an employee if they recycle those drink cups. 3. Then go out into McDonalds parking lot and notice that their garbage containers do not separate out drink cups for recycling. And this is the same whether the city that the McDonalds is in recycles plastic or not.

cainxinth 3y ago

Think I think my plastic is being recycled? Think again.

Aurornis 3y ago

As the article and other commenters have mentioned: The fate of plastics that end up in the recycling bin is complicated, but that doesn’t mean it all goes into the trash. I’ve been fascinated by how much the cynics, contrarians, and people with certain political leanings latch on to this story and exaggerate it. I worked on a large campus where rumors began to spread after they installed recycling bins. The rumors, fueled by stories like this one, escalated to the point that some people insisted that the maintenance crew was secretly collecting recycling bins and dumping them into the trash at night when nobody was watching. They all had variations of the myth claiming they knew a guy who saw it happen one night or they talked to a friend who knows the maintenance people who admitted it was all fake. I endured some painful lectures from older people who explained that recycling was actually a psyop conducted to train us to be obedient because that’s how the elites wanted us to be. People in this camp stopped recycling aluminum and glass on principal, defiantly throwing it in the garbage and making a big deal about it in the process. Eventually we got an email newsletter explaining where the recycling goes, what the recycling pickup company does with it, and including photos of where it ends up. This didn’t stop the hardcore conspiracy theorists, but it did stop the recycling wars from being a constant topic of debate.

nine_k 3y ago

Common plastic trash, AFAICT, is one of the least unpleasant kinds of trash. It's not toxic, it's not runny and does not get into the water table, it does not decompose into noxious gases, it does not self-ignite and does not burn easily, it can be compacted quite a lot. I think storing waste plastic in a dry place, some desert, covered from wind, might be a pretty good solution, until we find a way to recycle this huge pile of simple organic molecules.

0xbadc0de5 3y ago

The real shame is that plastic is used on so many immediately disposable things like packaging. Plastics have so many legitimate uses with no other material substitute, the fact that we just throw away so much of it needlessly is a huge part of the problem.

MichaelRo 3y ago

Well I'm old enough to have lived during Ceaușescu's times for a while and I remember very little plastic from back then. Plastic bottles were basically unheard of. Glass or metal containers it was and they were also recycled. Bags were mostly cloth. Again, no plastic. So it's definitely possible to live in a much-less plastic polluted world. Unfortunately we live in the society of "It's pretty amazing that our society has reached a point where the effort necessary to extract oil from the ground, ship it to a refinery, turn it into plastic, shape it appropriately, truck it to a store, but it, and bring it home is considered to be less effort that what it takes to just wash the spoon when you're done with it..."

oldbbsnickname 3y ago

The problem is economics: plastic is too cheap. Perhaps we should consider taxing plastic on the producer side until renewable, durable, and recyclable materials are substituted.