10 ms·

Plastics producers deceived public about recycling, report reveals

174 points by cromulent 3y ago

celias 3y ago
Somewhat related article in The Washington Post - "The plastics industry would like a word with your kids" https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/02/13/plastics-schools-plastivan-recycling/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/02/13/plastics-...
noughtme 3y ago
Or, "Public has head in sand about plastic recycling." In my city it's public knowledge (even if not well known) that nearly all plastics that get collected on recycling day end up in the local landfill, yet everyone dutifully washes, separates and collects plastics for recycling. This costs tax payers hundreds of millions of dollars, just so they can feel good about not putting plastic in the trash.
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  Instead of blaming the public who are doing their best and making an effort, send the bill to the people who are lying and not making the effort. Maybe send some of them to jail too, the US has far too much tolerance for corporate fraud.
  - gallego2007 3y ago
    This is really the only way to improve the situation. Hold the companies generating the plastic “trash” responsible via taxes/fines. The regulatory pressure will make a difference.
  - plussed_reader 3y ago
    Maybe instead of jail we can get those convicted to have the recycle logo branded on their forehead?
  - throw10920 3y ago
    > Instead of blaming the public who are doing their best and making an effort, send the bill to the people who are lying and not making the effort Evidence for this? I can point to dozens of members of the public that I know who aren't making an effort or doing their best, and people in companies who are. It seems like you just have an axe to grind.
    - anigbrowl 3y ago
      The people who are recycling their plastics are doing their best, even though their well-intentioned actions aren't effective. A previous post was suggesting that they are somehow at fault for not paying ore attention and compelling regulators to act.
- mikestew 3y ago
  In my city it's public knowledge... As in, a URL that you could post or something? Because if Redmond, WA came out and made it "public knowledge" that Waste Management was tossing our plastic straight into the landfill, someone's getting a spanking. Now, that's not to say that it doesn't happen, I'm just questioning that any municipality would be so upfront as to make public want many already suspect. But if that's actually the case, I'd love to read up.
  - noughtme 3y ago
    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-recycling-program-1.6432519 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-recycling-p... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/enquete-recycling-plastics-montreal-1.6345558 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/enquete-recycling-pl... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/recycling-glass-eight-boroughs-landfill-1.6899978 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/recycling-glass-eigh...
    - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
      None of these links back up your initial allegation. They mostly talk about a recycling center that is producing low quality recyclables with other materials mixed in because they've had issues with their sorting machines, currently involving a lawsuit with the manufacturer. The closest parallel is the use of crushed mixed glass as landfill cover, which is down-cycling, since they'd need to buy sand instead, which crushed glass is a substitute for.
    - mikestew 3y ago
      Thank you for going to the effort to post links. However, I wasted my time on the first link only to find that it doesn't support your assertion. I will assume the other two links are equally unsupportive of your point (and sibling comment confirms).
xnx 3y ago
It was easy to deceive the public about recycling because it is what we wanted to hear.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  That misses an important point: Recycling as a "solution" was easy to fund for "awareness" programs and other forms of essentially propaganda, because corps could easily see the ROI for reducing a potential cost, so there was ample money (read: force, power, or simply human resources) to tell people that "this is the way". Who could possibly have comparably the same level of funding for a "hey this isn't doing what they say it's doing" awareness campaign? That took like twenty years to organize. That's the central problem of any capitalist system; It by definition produces ready made organization of resources towards whatever a capital class wants, while making it inherently harder for the non-capital class to similarly put their technically significant resources towards their own goals. Capitalism inherently puts more control over large amounts of resources in the hands of those that prioritize individual rewards and have strong individual incentives against collective improvement. It inherently pressures the Capital class to be against collective improvement that has any cost on them, even extremely vague or distant costs, or hell, even just "costs" that are actually just personal subjective preferences, because they can afford that.
techgnosis 3y ago
My trash can is very small and expensive but my recycling can is huge and basically free. So even though plastic recycling is a scam I put my plastic in the recycling container.
bdcravens 3y ago
These days I only recycle numbers 1 and 2, the only ones that have a chance of being turned into something else. Everything else I just put in the trash (with an eye on avoiding plastic in the first place, opting for things in glass containers, cooking from base ingredients, etc)
- zumu 3y ago
  In my area they recycle 1, 2 and 5, so that's what I do. PET #1 is very recyclable in general. Not so sure about 2 or 5. My biggest frustration is all the recycling labels smeared on things that aren't recyclable leading to everyone calling it a 'scam' when in fact some recycling of plastics (namely PET) is much better than the alternative (burning or landfill).
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
Quoting someone from Exxon saying that you can't recycle plastic, and so need to buy more of their inputs to make more isn't quite as conclusive as an impartial lifecycle analysis. Most of which conclude that recycling is a good economic and environmental option once you have reduced and re-used all that you can. Getting the corps to pay for the externalities, as Extended Producer Responsibility laws do, is a much stronger strike against fossil fuel using/producing corporations than repeating their stale propaganda out of context.
r3trohack3r 3y ago
The arc of recycling bothers me. When I was a kid, you'd be socially shamed for not recycling or questioning it as a solution. Moving into college, people started feeling socially safe to quietly call out that the recycling program might be net-negative for the environment. Slowly the conversation evolved in my circles to rewriting recycling's history as a "raising awareness" program. Where the goal was to bring awareness to this issue or that issue by socially pressuring a bunch of people into sorting and washing their rubbish. Finally we are getting to the point where we can have an honest conversation about recycling. But it's a real bummer because we've spent _decades_ misallocating capital into potentially worthless infrastructure that fails to meaningfully move the needle on the problem. Would have been really cool if, instead of this whole social/political signaling thing we did, we instead spent that time and tax money developing processing facilities for compostable materials that are suitable for shipping/packaging and food storage. Many current social/political ecomovements seem to be going through the same trajectory.
- darepublic 3y ago
  There was reduce and reuse.. but then those snakes in the garden conspired to add a third R.. an evil R.
- johnea 3y ago
  social/political signaling? Let's just call it plasti-corps propaganda. This really is the fault of the corps. Recycling _could_ be practical, but corps want to throw it out and make more, because that's cheaper. And if the article wants to talk about lying, it really needs to include the lying that US waste disposal corps are doing about what can go in their recycling bins. 3/4 of what current waste disposal says is recyclable goes straight to the landfill.
  - marmaduke 3y ago
    Is it really the fault of corps? I mean, is that a useful explanation? Corps exist to maximize profit don't they? Perhaps we have to consider why single use plastic is appealing in the first place. The culture of use once and throw away might have started with plastic but didn't stop there.
brikym 3y ago
Also contributing to the problem is the marketing departments in every company wanting their package to be a unique color and shape. Before 'recycling' glass milk bottles and beer bottles would be a standard size and be bought back by the shop. This is what we need to return to but the corporations are always peddling greenwash nonsense about how eco-friendly their (PFAS coated) cardboard packaging is or how you don't need to feel bad because 5% of the bottle is from recycled sources.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  We used to have a pretty great system in the Netherlands with reusable PET bottles for soft drinks. These were much thicker than the current types (so thick you couldn't crush them), and they'd be returned for a fee, washed and refilled. Unfortunately this system was dumped in favour of the usual single use "recyclable" bottles. I still lament their disappearance :( the current bottles (the same as everywhere else) are a huge step back for reuse.
  - XorNot 3y ago
    I am somewhat suspicious as to whether this works out as being environmentally friendlier - i.e. the dishwasher paradox (in short: a dishwasher makes things easier, and uses less power and water and detergent to wash dishes then doing it by hand - people mistake struggle for effectiveness). Because at a large scale, you've got a couple of parameters I can think of: 1. the mean lifetime before a bottle fails / is removed from service 2. the failure mode of the bottle (i.e. if it shatters, does it go to landfill or do you end up with pieces in the environment?) 3. the amount of water and detergents needed to wash them properly, given the uncontrolled nature of the environment they come from, and the amount of power. 4. revalidating that the bottle is in fact clean - again - due to the uncontrolled nature of the environment they come from 5. the extra shipping involved in moving the bottles around for reuse. It's easily possible they reusable bottles don't actually work out being lower resource use then single-use disposables with controlled disposal (i.e. stabilized landfill). Cleaning things when you don't know where they've been is fraught and difficult. Basically it can easily be possible that reusing bottles you already have in your possession and wash yourself is better, it's not necessarily true that it works at a larger scale.
Areading314 3y ago
This is specifically about plastic recycling. Metal, glass, organic waste recycling are very much economical and good for the environment.
res0nat0r 3y ago
Frontline did a whole episode about this about four years ago. Sure the plastic container holding your strawberries has a recycling symbol on it with a number 3 in the middle, but there may be only one facility in the entire state or region who can process that type of material. Since most can’t, it goes in the trash. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/plastic-wars/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/plastic-wars/
elzbardico 3y ago
Oh no, the press can't get away that easily with putting all the blame on the industry as if they never jumped on this wagon never caring about doing their due diligence. Neither can the government.
notfed 3y ago
The free market works great most of the time, but is a tragedy when it comes to externalized costs. The earth is screaming at us to begin a steady, regulated phaseout from plastic, at least in disposable consumer products. The government will need to take action here, and it will happen faster if more consumers stop being so complacent about the problem.
justinclift 3y ago
Re-cycling glass work as advertised though yeah? So, it's not "all recycling is useless"?
- pasttense01 3y ago
  A problem with recycling glass is that it comes it several different colors.So do you want consumers to put clear glass in one container, green glass in a second container, brown glass in a third container...? And note that window glass is different from bottle glass.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    Seems like the kind of thing that would be better solved at the recycling place itself? ;)
apapapa 3y ago
Recycling is a joke from mass polluters. Maybe aluminum is worth recycling but not much else.
Guthur 3y ago
Recycle was always suppose to the last resort. It was Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. But it doesn't take much thought to realise which one had the highest economic incentives.
gipp 3y ago
Pretty sure I saw an episode of Penn and Tellers "Bullshit" pointing this out like 20 years ago
- RandallBrown 3y ago
  Looks like you're right! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0771119/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0771119/
amelius 3y ago
Others long suspected it.
_ink_ 3y ago
I am shocked!
- boring-alterego 3y ago
  Hi shocked!, I'm boringalterego. Yes I felt bad typing that.
proee 3y ago
Can we switch to aluminum and add in a small recycle "deposit" like they do on soda cans? If there is money to be made on the deposit, this creates a strong incentive to recycle the containers.
- gs17 3y ago
  >and add in a small recycle "deposit" like they do on soda cans? I would be happy if we started with just a deposit on every aluminum can all over. Pathetically few states in the US have them.
- evrimoztamur 3y ago
  Recently introduced in the Netherlands, alongside glass and PET bottles. At least in the Amsterdam city centre it's led to a substantial increase in trashcan scavenging. It's sort of a weird tax on beverages for many, but it does keep the stuff out of landfills!
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  Where it makes sense to switch from plastic to aluminum, id say it makes perfect sense.
andy_ppp 3y ago
I had always suspected this to be true and also wondered how it’s allowed to spray cardboard with plastic making that also impossible to recycle. I’m willing to bet even glass is still difficult to recycle let alone plastic with hundreds of different types and colours. So now that we know this can we start making changes now? I often wonder what happened to feeding seaweed to cows reduces their greenhouse gas impact from methane… I presume we never actually implement these findings and just carry on boiling ourselves alive.
- malfist 3y ago
  Glass is awful for recycling. It takes nearly as much energy to recycle as it does to make new. And it's raw materials aren't rare
  - smegger001 3y ago
    Glass containers are great for reuse though. For years beer, soda, and milk bottles used to be returned washed and reused. You don't need to melt them down and remold them. Reduce Reuse Recycle in that order. Big plastic really wants you to ignore the first two.
    - nerdbert 3y ago
      I love that in Germany it's still fairly normal to get drinks in obviously reused bottles. Very rare most other places these days.
      - nemo44x 3y ago
        It has led to massive uptake of single use containers. I believe as of this year the German regime felt it necessary to levy an additional tax on these because the people are rejecting schlepping their containers back and forth.
    - nemo44x 3y ago
      Probably uses less energy to toss them and manufacture new ones close to the filling source.
JohnMakin 3y ago
Even single-use items like plastic forks/spoons that typically come wrapped in a ton of plastic these days, it's everywhere. In a typical delivery order they'll give you several of these even if you don't ask for them. CA tried to reduce single use plastic bag waste by mandating the 10c surcharge and "sturdy" bags, but now you just added a meaningless cost to the consumer who's going to largely use the bags in the exact same manner as before, but now they're even HEAVIER plastic. It's just a mess.
- ComputerGuru 3y ago
  The western concept of "dirty" has contributed a lot to waste. In certain other cultures, human hands are considered to be clean (with the onus being on the handler to make sure their hands are, in fact, clean) and it's quite OK to touch something someone else will touch with their bare skin (or even eat from). It's not even a rational obsession with zero human contact. A (true) chef is not expected to cook with gloves on. His hands are going to be all over your food while he's in the back. Chefs probably will taste something out of the pot to see if it's coming along ok. We know this (though perhaps try to avoid thinking about it). We'll eat nasty hotdogs at the ball game that have been handed to you down the bleachers by eight pairs of hands, but insist that our plastic cutlery come wrapped in further plastic.
  - mattmaroon 3y ago
    That hot dog is wrapped in foil and probably was prepared by someone wearing gloves though. Health depts around the country are more and more insisting on glove wearing for basically everything, though that has its own problems and is debatably less sanitary in certain ways. Health depts are particularly obsessed with utensils too. The plastic is because of all of the hands that might be reaching into wherever they are if they're self-serve, if they're dropped, etc.
    - m000 3y ago
      I wonder, is this obsession with sanitary utensils founded on some real-life study? Or is it pure paranoia and made-up lab tests ("What would happen if I dip my fork in this anthrax solution?").
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gotoeleven 3y ago
The plastic industry knew, but not the government or environmental activists shaming everyone into sorting their garbage like a hobo for the past decades? This is the one thing they trusted the oil companies on? Give me a break.
- goatlover 3y ago
  It’s easier to put all the blame on the producer than come up with more effective solutions and messaging. You see this with climate activism all the time.
- smegger001 3y ago
  the oil gas and coal industries also spread fud about nuclear and funded anti nuclear environmental groups (including but not limited to; Friends of the Earth, Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Greenpeace) starting in the 50s till the present day. So its not the only BS thing environmentalist believed big oil about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement#Fossil_fuels_industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement#Fossil_f...
cellularmitosis 3y ago
The real problem with having a sham mixed in with non-shams is that I've seen folks develop the attitude of "all recycling is a sham!". For those not aware, recycling aluminum is absolutely not a sham. It takes about 2x the energy to make new steel than to melt down old steel. For aluminum, that energy difference is 20x!!! This is why people will actually pay you to recycle aluminum, because running electrolysis through bauxite ore to make new aluminum is incredibly energy expensive.
- mattmaroon 3y ago
  I think asking whether they pay you or you pay them is probably a great way to guess which is good and which isn't. The cost of recycling something is probably mostly energy (i.e. carbon emissions) as is the cost of manufacturing a replacemement (even the materials cost itself is probably largely a function of energy spent to dig them up and get them to you) so if they pay you, it is saving carbon emissions and if not it isn't. You can get paid for dropping many metals off somewhere, you have to have your city pay to do anything with the plastic. I realize there are other factors but if one needs a quick guess that would be a good way. If people can wrap their head around the idea that landfills are not dumps and are instead very safe and borderline irrelevant, then the carbon emissions should clearly determine what one recycles.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    > If people can wrap their head around the idea that landfills are not dumps and are instead very safe and borderline irrelevant Yeah... I'm not having an easy time with that one... https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2020/09/us/september-11-cancer-rates-fresh-kills/ https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2020/09/us/september-11-... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5005946/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5005946/ https://apnews.com/article/health-cancer-st-louis-missouri-1d21a08de21dae4242bd9d42831b871f https://apnews.com/article/health-cancer-st-louis-missouri-1... https://abc7ny.com/brookhaven-landfill-frank-p-long-intermediate-school-belport/3082900/ https://abc7ny.com/brookhaven-landfill-frank-p-long-intermed...
    - 3y ago
mattmaroon 3y ago
It wasn't a secret. Penn and Teller did an episode of Bullshit on it in 2004 which itself was based on an older study showing that recycling almost everthing is bad for the environment. It's been public knowledge for just as long that most of it was going on a boat to China.
ericmcer 3y ago
This gave me a flashback to a public speaking class in college back in... 2006ish. I gave a speech about how recycling was bullshit and a waste of time. It was very poorly received haha.
GolfPopper 3y ago
Plastic recycling was marketed with the goal of getting consumers to keep using plastic. In that respect, it worked perfectly.
- Spivak 3y ago
  There's got to be more to this theory because it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense on the surface. There aren't that many instances where consumers are given a choice about the plastic content of the products they buy or the packaging they come in. And consumers that can afford to pay more to avoid plastic seem to do so, not for any environmental reason but because wood, metal, glass, cotton are perceived as higher quality. It doesn't really seem that consumers as the end buyers of goods need to be convinced when we're mostly takers of goods.
  - garbagewoman 3y ago
    It increases consumer acceptance of plastic goods. If plastic bottles were correctly labeled as garbage, consumers would feel more guilt buying them
  - brikym 3y ago
    It makes a lot of sense. Corporations make more money the more junk they produce. If you have 10 minutes I recommend watching this video about how the lobby groups invented the whole idea of recycling plastic with the little numbered resin identification code that looks like a recycling symbol. https://youtu.be/PJnJ8mK3Q3g https://youtu.be/PJnJ8mK3Q3g
  - GolfPopper 3y ago
    In the mid-1970s, the growing environmental movement tried hard to tax or ban plastics, especially plastic packaging. The plastics industry responded by promoting recycling purely for its public-relations value. It was never economical, and often isn't even practical, even today. I.e. An Exxon VP in 1994: "We are committed to the activities, but not committed to the results." [1] 1. https://www.opb.org/article/2024/02/16/plastic-recycling-waste/ https://www.opb.org/article/2024/02/16/plastic-recycling-was... Also see: https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...
uSoldering 3y ago
If anyone is feeling doom and gloom, the field of plastic pyrolysis looks promising. It will require processing similar in scale to manufacturing hydrocarbons, but there is still hope.
kazinator 3y ago
> However, it is still better to recycle plastic at home than throw it away. After acknowledging that recycling is a scam, you cannot introduce a statement like this without a lot of careful justification. If everything previously in the article is true (which it is) it is not better to recycle plastic at home than to throw it away: it is approximately equivalent. Your recycle bin ends up shipped somewhere halfway around the world, where most of goes into a landfill.
- hbosch 3y ago
  It's not that recycling plastic is 100% a "sham". Recycled plastic is real, and products made from recycled plastic are real. The "sham" is that recycling plastic is not efficient. Still marginally better than straight into a landfill.
  - kazinator 3y ago
    Yes; recycling is really downcycling. Firstly, there are too many plastics mixed together (and the article touches on that). There is also the issue that even if you have waste that is made exactly of one kind of plastic, and it's the right one for some application, recycling works by chopping plastic into pieces. This chopping shortens the long-chain molecules that give the plastic some of its important qualities like impact strength. The resulting plastic is inferior to the original, even if pure and homogeneous.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    The 100% is doing a lot of work there. If 85% of the plastic I deliver into my county's recycling program ends up in a landfill, I would consider that basically a sham. If 15% of that plastic ends up in a landfill, that's not a sham (though there should be some openness about what is really going on).
  - berniedurfee 3y ago
    I was thinking the same thing. The article didn’t go into what percent is actually recycled vs landfilled. I’d hate for this movement to push people to simply skip the recycling step. The narrative that recycling plastics is never effective isn’t accurate and drives demand for more plastic manufacturing as stocks of recyclable plastics diminish. Huh, wonder who started this rumor anyway?
kazinator 3y ago
Here is a thought: you never see PET bottles labeled "I used to be a sweater". :)
dougmwne 3y ago
I think the real scam is the way recycling shifts the blame and responsibility for sustainability from government and corporations where it rightly rests and onto consumers. Shifting that blame does nothing to improve sustainability, but is great at keeping the issue out of politics and boycotts. It’s a classic tragedy of the commons situation and our best tool is government regulation of producers.
fwlr 3y ago
If recycling was profitable in the main, someone would be auctioning off old landfill sites to mining companies. If it was predicted to be profitable with new technology, someone would be operating landfills while developing that technology. And so on. The fact that it needs consumers to sort recycling for them (in aggregate, this is a large amount of unpaid labor) hints to me that the fundamentals of a profitable enterprise simply don’t exist to be found.
- jhaenchen 3y ago
  That is because this waste is the natural excrement of an exploitative economy that lives in disharmony with its own natural ecosystem.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  That’s right. Im not sure how this is controversial. Its a sad reality of plastic.
- maxerickson 3y ago
  Such facilities do exist, dirty and/or wet material recovery facility is the search term you'd want. Most material recovery facilities want a clean input stream though. It's not particularly lucrative, but it often makes sense for a landfill operator to do material separation, because the combination of selling the separated material and not using the landfill space makes financial sense. Given that my county landfill is the beneficiary and will either need more tax money or close down and increase my disposal costs, separating the saleable stuff into a clean stream doesn't bother me too much.
_heimdall 3y ago
I assume we'll have similar articles a decade or two from now calling out another obvious one, that everyone knew corn ethanol fuel is a farce as well. The problem with so many of these programs is that you may subsidize an industry but that won't make it more efficient than physics allows for. Politicians love putting their names on expensive programs that sound great and won't prove to be a waste for decades. By then we're all left holding the bag after they've retired or died.
zx8080 3y ago
Humans are professionals in misleading other humans for profit.
openrisk 3y ago
The "wishcycling" challenge and response of the city of Amsterdam might be relevant. A couple of years ago the dedicated plastic recycling bins were removed and the separation is done centrally. https://www.uvagreenoffice.nl/post/against-wishcycling-amsterdam-city-recycling-guide https://www.uvagreenoffice.nl/post/against-wishcycling-amste...
knowaveragejoe 3y ago
This thread is so filled with doomerism and it's depressing how common this is in seemingly any thread on this site that isn't explicitly about some specific product(and even then!) So what are we going to do about this? Is recycling as a concept doomed to failure?
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andrewstuart 3y ago
Plastic SHOULD go into landfill. We need to stop demonising landfill. I love landfill - it is a focused area to put toxic waste. There is a massive problem with society's obsession with keeping stuff out of landfill. Tell me would you rather have waste plastic in the contained area of landfill, or would you rather than plastic was put into roads and leeched into land, air, food, water, people, ground, earth and air as cars and trucks grind it out of the roads.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  Its a good point tbh. We are continuing to learn about the harms of plastic and dividing and heating them are always central in this equation. Plastic roads just sound like a recipe for microplastic runoff.
- brikym 3y ago
  That’s a fair point. I cringe when I see some dumb invention like turning plastic junk into toxic bricks. But even better would be to actually re-use the packaging like old school beer bottles and milk bottles. Industry has no problem standardizing containers when it suits them like shipping containers, kegs and pallets. Greenwashing is the worst option of all as you waste your time on things that don’t work.
irrational 3y ago
Now I'm wondering about those states that charge a fee when you buy a plastic bottle to encourage you to recycle it to get your nickel or dime back. Should those fees be dropped?
- macNchz 3y ago
  Those deposits are mostly about creating an incentive not to litter, or for someone else to come clean up your litter.
Isamu 3y ago
I guess I assumed that recycling advocacy groups did some due diligence, dug a bit deeper, took the trouble to find out how everything was going. And now we are claiming that nobody checked. The plastics industry was lying, and everybody just believed them and took it at face value. Because we all believe what industries say.
- tpmoney 3y ago
  The thing is, everybody didn't "just believe" them. What I find really weird about this moment in time is how the roles appear to have been flipped. I'm old enough to remember when it was the right wing / business / pro-capitalism side of US politics calling out recycling as big sham (e.g. the Penn and Teller BS episode on recycling was 2004, though how "right wing" you consider that depends on your view of libertarian politics). So it's sort of weird to me to watch the modern story about how recycling was a lie propagated by big business and its supporters on the innocent American people, and the predictable reactionary response from the right wing reflexively defending what they were previously decrying. We finally have something everyone agrees on and yet we're still arguing about it. Probably because like most political topics its a proxy for a different discussion entirely. Just a weird moment in time.
NoblePublius 3y ago
Yes the culprits are industry and not local government who giggled with piggish glee to set up meaningless and costly recycling and compliance regimes which generated them billions
AlienRobot 3y ago
I wish "reuse" had more focus than "recycle" since it's so much more feasible. You don't need science to do reuse. You just need logistics. For example, if more people bought used goods instead of brand new ones, less goods would need be produced in first place, which would be great for humanity in general.
- al_borland 3y ago
  And “reduce” should get even more focus than that. People don’t need most of the garbage they buy. Of course, that would be bad for the economy, so we don’t talk about that anymore. Anything reused or recycled will at some point become waste, but if it isn’t produced in the first place, that’s ideal. It obviously won’t work for everything, but it can work for a significant amount of things. The entirety of Temu and Shein would be a good start.
aaron695 3y ago
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sema4hacker 3y ago
Recycling saves me money because I pay monthly for my garbage service. The 64 gallon recycle can is free, but the 32 gallon garbage can has a fee. Without the free recycle can into which goes all the cans and paper waste I generate, I'd have to get a 64 gallon garbage can and pay more each month.
DarkmSparks 3y ago
"not an economically viable solution" It damn well is if landfill and dumping it in the ocean was suitably charged/fined. charge the sobs $100,000 per kilogram dumped in landfill or the ocean and recycling every gram will be economical.
romusha 3y ago
I wonder how many green initiatives turns out to be a farce, synthetic meat? Fuel cell? We'll probably hear the same thing for lithium-based EV and wind turbines
bondolo 3y ago
Time for an excise tax on packaging material based on how long it takes on average to decay to base elements.
sircastor 3y ago
The same with sugar The same with lead The same with Tobacco They always know, and they will always value their profit over you and your making an informed decision.
bondolo 3y ago
It is pat time to impose an excise tax on all packaging based on how long it takes to decay to base elements. Time until naturally “recycled” shouldn’t be a cost you can externalize. The tax owed can be reduced when recycling actually occurs, essentially passing on the difference to the recycler.
reader_x 3y ago
How much plastic in the ocean gyres might be our supposedly recycled plastic? Has anyone audited this by putting a few GPS-tracked plastic bottles into the recycling stream to see how many went to landfills or incinerators vs. being dumped in the ocean on the way to alleged recycling?

174 points by cromulent 3y ago

Somewhat related article in The Washington Post - "The plastics industry would like a word with your kids" https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/02/13/plastics-schools-plastivan-recycling/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/02/13/plastics-...

noughtme 3y ago

Or, "Public has head in sand about plastic recycling." In my city it's public knowledge (even if not well known) that nearly all plastics that get collected on recycling day end up in the local landfill, yet everyone dutifully washes, separates and collects plastics for recycling. This costs tax payers hundreds of millions of dollars, just so they can feel good about not putting plastic in the trash.

anigbrowl 3y ago
Instead of blaming the public who are doing their best and making an effort, send the bill to the people who are lying and not making the effort. Maybe send some of them to jail too, the US has far too much tolerance for corporate fraud.
- gallego2007 3y ago
  This is really the only way to improve the situation. Hold the companies generating the plastic “trash” responsible via taxes/fines. The regulatory pressure will make a difference.
- plussed_reader 3y ago
  Maybe instead of jail we can get those convicted to have the recycle logo branded on their forehead?
- throw10920 3y ago
  > Instead of blaming the public who are doing their best and making an effort, send the bill to the people who are lying and not making the effort Evidence for this? I can point to dozens of members of the public that I know who aren't making an effort or doing their best, and people in companies who are. It seems like you just have an axe to grind.
  - anigbrowl 3y ago
    The people who are recycling their plastics are doing their best, even though their well-intentioned actions aren't effective. A previous post was suggesting that they are somehow at fault for not paying ore attention and compelling regulators to act.
mikestew 3y ago
In my city it's public knowledge... As in, a URL that you could post or something? Because if Redmond, WA came out and made it "public knowledge" that Waste Management was tossing our plastic straight into the landfill, someone's getting a spanking. Now, that's not to say that it doesn't happen, I'm just questioning that any municipality would be so upfront as to make public want many already suspect. But if that's actually the case, I'd love to read up.
- noughtme 3y ago
  https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-recycling-program-1.6432519 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-recycling-p... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/enquete-recycling-plastics-montreal-1.6345558 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/enquete-recycling-pl... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/recycling-glass-eight-boroughs-landfill-1.6899978 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/recycling-glass-eigh...
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    None of these links back up your initial allegation. They mostly talk about a recycling center that is producing low quality recyclables with other materials mixed in because they've had issues with their sorting machines, currently involving a lawsuit with the manufacturer. The closest parallel is the use of crushed mixed glass as landfill cover, which is down-cycling, since they'd need to buy sand instead, which crushed glass is a substitute for.
  - mikestew 3y ago
    Thank you for going to the effort to post links. However, I wasted my time on the first link only to find that it doesn't support your assertion. I will assume the other two links are equally unsupportive of your point (and sibling comment confirms).

xnx 3y ago

It was easy to deceive the public about recycling because it is what we wanted to hear.

mrguyorama 3y ago
That misses an important point: Recycling as a "solution" was easy to fund for "awareness" programs and other forms of essentially propaganda, because corps could easily see the ROI for reducing a potential cost, so there was ample money (read: force, power, or simply human resources) to tell people that "this is the way". Who could possibly have comparably the same level of funding for a "hey this isn't doing what they say it's doing" awareness campaign? That took like twenty years to organize. That's the central problem of any capitalist system; It by definition produces ready made organization of resources towards whatever a capital class wants, while making it inherently harder for the non-capital class to similarly put their technically significant resources towards their own goals. Capitalism inherently puts more control over large amounts of resources in the hands of those that prioritize individual rewards and have strong individual incentives against collective improvement. It inherently pressures the Capital class to be against collective improvement that has any cost on them, even extremely vague or distant costs, or hell, even just "costs" that are actually just personal subjective preferences, because they can afford that.

techgnosis 3y ago

My trash can is very small and expensive but my recycling can is huge and basically free. So even though plastic recycling is a scam I put my plastic in the recycling container.

bdcravens 3y ago

These days I only recycle numbers 1 and 2, the only ones that have a chance of being turned into something else. Everything else I just put in the trash (with an eye on avoiding plastic in the first place, opting for things in glass containers, cooking from base ingredients, etc)

zumu 3y ago
In my area they recycle 1, 2 and 5, so that's what I do. PET #1 is very recyclable in general. Not so sure about 2 or 5. My biggest frustration is all the recycling labels smeared on things that aren't recyclable leading to everyone calling it a 'scam' when in fact some recycling of plastics (namely PET) is much better than the alternative (burning or landfill).

ZeroGravitas 3y ago

Quoting someone from Exxon saying that you can't recycle plastic, and so need to buy more of their inputs to make more isn't quite as conclusive as an impartial lifecycle analysis. Most of which conclude that recycling is a good economic and environmental option once you have reduced and re-used all that you can. Getting the corps to pay for the externalities, as Extended Producer Responsibility laws do, is a much stronger strike against fossil fuel using/producing corporations than repeating their stale propaganda out of context.

r3trohack3r 3y ago

The arc of recycling bothers me. When I was a kid, you'd be socially shamed for not recycling or questioning it as a solution. Moving into college, people started feeling socially safe to quietly call out that the recycling program might be net-negative for the environment. Slowly the conversation evolved in my circles to rewriting recycling's history as a "raising awareness" program. Where the goal was to bring awareness to this issue or that issue by socially pressuring a bunch of people into sorting and washing their rubbish. Finally we are getting to the point where we can have an honest conversation about recycling. But it's a real bummer because we've spent _decades_ misallocating capital into potentially worthless infrastructure that fails to meaningfully move the needle on the problem. Would have been really cool if, instead of this whole social/political signaling thing we did, we instead spent that time and tax money developing processing facilities for compostable materials that are suitable for shipping/packaging and food storage. Many current social/political ecomovements seem to be going through the same trajectory.

darepublic 3y ago
There was reduce and reuse.. but then those snakes in the garden conspired to add a third R.. an evil R.
johnea 3y ago
social/political signaling? Let's just call it plasti-corps propaganda. This really is the fault of the corps. Recycling _could_ be practical, but corps want to throw it out and make more, because that's cheaper. And if the article wants to talk about lying, it really needs to include the lying that US waste disposal corps are doing about what can go in their recycling bins. 3/4 of what current waste disposal says is recyclable goes straight to the landfill.
- marmaduke 3y ago
  Is it really the fault of corps? I mean, is that a useful explanation? Corps exist to maximize profit don't they? Perhaps we have to consider why single use plastic is appealing in the first place. The culture of use once and throw away might have started with plastic but didn't stop there.

brikym 3y ago

Also contributing to the problem is the marketing departments in every company wanting their package to be a unique color and shape. Before 'recycling' glass milk bottles and beer bottles would be a standard size and be bought back by the shop. This is what we need to return to but the corporations are always peddling greenwash nonsense about how eco-friendly their (PFAS coated) cardboard packaging is or how you don't need to feel bad because 5% of the bottle is from recycled sources.

wkat4242 3y ago
We used to have a pretty great system in the Netherlands with reusable PET bottles for soft drinks. These were much thicker than the current types (so thick you couldn't crush them), and they'd be returned for a fee, washed and refilled. Unfortunately this system was dumped in favour of the usual single use "recyclable" bottles. I still lament their disappearance :( the current bottles (the same as everywhere else) are a huge step back for reuse.
- XorNot 3y ago
  I am somewhat suspicious as to whether this works out as being environmentally friendlier - i.e. the dishwasher paradox (in short: a dishwasher makes things easier, and uses less power and water and detergent to wash dishes then doing it by hand - people mistake struggle for effectiveness). Because at a large scale, you've got a couple of parameters I can think of: 1. the mean lifetime before a bottle fails / is removed from service 2. the failure mode of the bottle (i.e. if it shatters, does it go to landfill or do you end up with pieces in the environment?) 3. the amount of water and detergents needed to wash them properly, given the uncontrolled nature of the environment they come from, and the amount of power. 4. revalidating that the bottle is in fact clean - again - due to the uncontrolled nature of the environment they come from 5. the extra shipping involved in moving the bottles around for reuse. It's easily possible they reusable bottles don't actually work out being lower resource use then single-use disposables with controlled disposal (i.e. stabilized landfill). Cleaning things when you don't know where they've been is fraught and difficult. Basically it can easily be possible that reusing bottles you already have in your possession and wash yourself is better, it's not necessarily true that it works at a larger scale.

Areading314 3y ago

This is specifically about plastic recycling. Metal, glass, organic waste recycling are very much economical and good for the environment.

res0nat0r 3y ago

Frontline did a whole episode about this about four years ago. Sure the plastic container holding your strawberries has a recycling symbol on it with a number 3 in the middle, but there may be only one facility in the entire state or region who can process that type of material. Since most can’t, it goes in the trash. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/plastic-wars/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/plastic-wars/

elzbardico 3y ago

Oh no, the press can't get away that easily with putting all the blame on the industry as if they never jumped on this wagon never caring about doing their due diligence. Neither can the government.

notfed 3y ago

The free market works great most of the time, but is a tragedy when it comes to externalized costs. The earth is screaming at us to begin a steady, regulated phaseout from plastic, at least in disposable consumer products. The government will need to take action here, and it will happen faster if more consumers stop being so complacent about the problem.

justinclift 3y ago

Re-cycling glass work as advertised though yeah? So, it's not "all recycling is useless"?

pasttense01 3y ago
A problem with recycling glass is that it comes it several different colors.So do you want consumers to put clear glass in one container, green glass in a second container, brown glass in a third container...? And note that window glass is different from bottle glass.
- justinclift 3y ago
  Seems like the kind of thing that would be better solved at the recycling place itself? ;)

apapapa 3y ago

Recycling is a joke from mass polluters. Maybe aluminum is worth recycling but not much else.

Guthur 3y ago

Recycle was always suppose to the last resort. It was Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. But it doesn't take much thought to realise which one had the highest economic incentives.

gipp 3y ago

Pretty sure I saw an episode of Penn and Tellers "Bullshit" pointing this out like 20 years ago

RandallBrown 3y ago
Looks like you're right! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0771119/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0771119/

amelius 3y ago

Others long suspected it.

_ink_ 3y ago

I am shocked!

boring-alterego 3y ago
Hi shocked!, I'm boringalterego. Yes I felt bad typing that.

proee 3y ago

Can we switch to aluminum and add in a small recycle "deposit" like they do on soda cans? If there is money to be made on the deposit, this creates a strong incentive to recycle the containers.

gs17 3y ago
>and add in a small recycle "deposit" like they do on soda cans? I would be happy if we started with just a deposit on every aluminum can all over. Pathetically few states in the US have them.
evrimoztamur 3y ago
Recently introduced in the Netherlands, alongside glass and PET bottles. At least in the Amsterdam city centre it's led to a substantial increase in trashcan scavenging. It's sort of a weird tax on beverages for many, but it does keep the stuff out of landfills!
nonethewiser 3y ago
Where it makes sense to switch from plastic to aluminum, id say it makes perfect sense.

andy_ppp 3y ago

I had always suspected this to be true and also wondered how it’s allowed to spray cardboard with plastic making that also impossible to recycle. I’m willing to bet even glass is still difficult to recycle let alone plastic with hundreds of different types and colours. So now that we know this can we start making changes now? I often wonder what happened to feeding seaweed to cows reduces their greenhouse gas impact from methane… I presume we never actually implement these findings and just carry on boiling ourselves alive.

malfist 3y ago
Glass is awful for recycling. It takes nearly as much energy to recycle as it does to make new. And it's raw materials aren't rare
- smegger001 3y ago
  Glass containers are great for reuse though. For years beer, soda, and milk bottles used to be returned washed and reused. You don't need to melt them down and remold them. Reduce Reuse Recycle in that order. Big plastic really wants you to ignore the first two.
  - nerdbert 3y ago
    I love that in Germany it's still fairly normal to get drinks in obviously reused bottles. Very rare most other places these days.
    - nemo44x 3y ago
      It has led to massive uptake of single use containers. I believe as of this year the German regime felt it necessary to levy an additional tax on these because the people are rejecting schlepping their containers back and forth.
  - nemo44x 3y ago
    Probably uses less energy to toss them and manufacture new ones close to the filling source.

JohnMakin 3y ago

Even single-use items like plastic forks/spoons that typically come wrapped in a ton of plastic these days, it's everywhere. In a typical delivery order they'll give you several of these even if you don't ask for them. CA tried to reduce single use plastic bag waste by mandating the 10c surcharge and "sturdy" bags, but now you just added a meaningless cost to the consumer who's going to largely use the bags in the exact same manner as before, but now they're even HEAVIER plastic. It's just a mess.

ComputerGuru 3y ago
The western concept of "dirty" has contributed a lot to waste. In certain other cultures, human hands are considered to be clean (with the onus being on the handler to make sure their hands are, in fact, clean) and it's quite OK to touch something someone else will touch with their bare skin (or even eat from). It's not even a rational obsession with zero human contact. A (true) chef is not expected to cook with gloves on. His hands are going to be all over your food while he's in the back. Chefs probably will taste something out of the pot to see if it's coming along ok. We know this (though perhaps try to avoid thinking about it). We'll eat nasty hotdogs at the ball game that have been handed to you down the bleachers by eight pairs of hands, but insist that our plastic cutlery come wrapped in further plastic.
- mattmaroon 3y ago
  That hot dog is wrapped in foil and probably was prepared by someone wearing gloves though. Health depts around the country are more and more insisting on glove wearing for basically everything, though that has its own problems and is debatably less sanitary in certain ways. Health depts are particularly obsessed with utensils too. The plastic is because of all of the hands that might be reaching into wherever they are if they're self-serve, if they're dropped, etc.
  - m000 3y ago
    I wonder, is this obsession with sanitary utensils founded on some real-life study? Or is it pure paranoia and made-up lab tests ("What would happen if I dip my fork in this anthrax solution?").

deleted 3y ago

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gotoeleven 3y ago

The plastic industry knew, but not the government or environmental activists shaming everyone into sorting their garbage like a hobo for the past decades? This is the one thing they trusted the oil companies on? Give me a break.

goatlover 3y ago
It’s easier to put all the blame on the producer than come up with more effective solutions and messaging. You see this with climate activism all the time.
smegger001 3y ago
the oil gas and coal industries also spread fud about nuclear and funded anti nuclear environmental groups (including but not limited to; Friends of the Earth, Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Greenpeace) starting in the 50s till the present day. So its not the only BS thing environmentalist believed big oil about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement#Fossil_fuels_industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement#Fossil_f...

cellularmitosis 3y ago

The real problem with having a sham mixed in with non-shams is that I've seen folks develop the attitude of "all recycling is a sham!". For those not aware, recycling aluminum is absolutely not a sham. It takes about 2x the energy to make new steel than to melt down old steel. For aluminum, that energy difference is 20x!!! This is why people will actually pay you to recycle aluminum, because running electrolysis through bauxite ore to make new aluminum is incredibly energy expensive.

mattmaroon 3y ago
I think asking whether they pay you or you pay them is probably a great way to guess which is good and which isn't. The cost of recycling something is probably mostly energy (i.e. carbon emissions) as is the cost of manufacturing a replacemement (even the materials cost itself is probably largely a function of energy spent to dig them up and get them to you) so if they pay you, it is saving carbon emissions and if not it isn't. You can get paid for dropping many metals off somewhere, you have to have your city pay to do anything with the plastic. I realize there are other factors but if one needs a quick guess that would be a good way. If people can wrap their head around the idea that landfills are not dumps and are instead very safe and borderline irrelevant, then the carbon emissions should clearly determine what one recycles.
- autoexec 3y ago
  > If people can wrap their head around the idea that landfills are not dumps and are instead very safe and borderline irrelevant Yeah... I'm not having an easy time with that one... https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2020/09/us/september-11-cancer-rates-fresh-kills/ https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2020/09/us/september-11-... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5005946/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5005946/ https://apnews.com/article/health-cancer-st-louis-missouri-1d21a08de21dae4242bd9d42831b871f https://apnews.com/article/health-cancer-st-louis-missouri-1... https://abc7ny.com/brookhaven-landfill-frank-p-long-intermediate-school-belport/3082900/ https://abc7ny.com/brookhaven-landfill-frank-p-long-intermed...
  - 3y ago

mattmaroon 3y ago

It wasn't a secret. Penn and Teller did an episode of Bullshit on it in 2004 which itself was based on an older study showing that recycling almost everthing is bad for the environment. It's been public knowledge for just as long that most of it was going on a boat to China.

ericmcer 3y ago

This gave me a flashback to a public speaking class in college back in... 2006ish. I gave a speech about how recycling was bullshit and a waste of time. It was very poorly received haha.

GolfPopper 3y ago

Plastic recycling was marketed with the goal of getting consumers to keep using plastic. In that respect, it worked perfectly.

Spivak 3y ago
There's got to be more to this theory because it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense on the surface. There aren't that many instances where consumers are given a choice about the plastic content of the products they buy or the packaging they come in. And consumers that can afford to pay more to avoid plastic seem to do so, not for any environmental reason but because wood, metal, glass, cotton are perceived as higher quality. It doesn't really seem that consumers as the end buyers of goods need to be convinced when we're mostly takers of goods.
- garbagewoman 3y ago
  It increases consumer acceptance of plastic goods. If plastic bottles were correctly labeled as garbage, consumers would feel more guilt buying them
- brikym 3y ago
  It makes a lot of sense. Corporations make more money the more junk they produce. If you have 10 minutes I recommend watching this video about how the lobby groups invented the whole idea of recycling plastic with the little numbered resin identification code that looks like a recycling symbol. https://youtu.be/PJnJ8mK3Q3g https://youtu.be/PJnJ8mK3Q3g
- GolfPopper 3y ago
  In the mid-1970s, the growing environmental movement tried hard to tax or ban plastics, especially plastic packaging. The plastics industry responded by promoting recycling purely for its public-relations value. It was never economical, and often isn't even practical, even today. I.e. An Exxon VP in 1994: "We are committed to the activities, but not committed to the results." [1] 1. https://www.opb.org/article/2024/02/16/plastic-recycling-waste/ https://www.opb.org/article/2024/02/16/plastic-recycling-was... Also see: https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...

uSoldering 3y ago

If anyone is feeling doom and gloom, the field of plastic pyrolysis looks promising. It will require processing similar in scale to manufacturing hydrocarbons, but there is still hope.

kazinator 3y ago

> However, it is still better to recycle plastic at home than throw it away. After acknowledging that recycling is a scam, you cannot introduce a statement like this without a lot of careful justification. If everything previously in the article is true (which it is) it is not better to recycle plastic at home than to throw it away: it is approximately equivalent. Your recycle bin ends up shipped somewhere halfway around the world, where most of goes into a landfill.

hbosch 3y ago
It's not that recycling plastic is 100% a "sham". Recycled plastic is real, and products made from recycled plastic are real. The "sham" is that recycling plastic is not efficient. Still marginally better than straight into a landfill.
- kazinator 3y ago
  Yes; recycling is really downcycling. Firstly, there are too many plastics mixed together (and the article touches on that). There is also the issue that even if you have waste that is made exactly of one kind of plastic, and it's the right one for some application, recycling works by chopping plastic into pieces. This chopping shortens the long-chain molecules that give the plastic some of its important qualities like impact strength. The resulting plastic is inferior to the original, even if pure and homogeneous.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  The 100% is doing a lot of work there. If 85% of the plastic I deliver into my county's recycling program ends up in a landfill, I would consider that basically a sham. If 15% of that plastic ends up in a landfill, that's not a sham (though there should be some openness about what is really going on).
- berniedurfee 3y ago
  I was thinking the same thing. The article didn’t go into what percent is actually recycled vs landfilled. I’d hate for this movement to push people to simply skip the recycling step. The narrative that recycling plastics is never effective isn’t accurate and drives demand for more plastic manufacturing as stocks of recyclable plastics diminish. Huh, wonder who started this rumor anyway?

kazinator 3y ago

Here is a thought: you never see PET bottles labeled "I used to be a sweater". :)

dougmwne 3y ago

I think the real scam is the way recycling shifts the blame and responsibility for sustainability from government and corporations where it rightly rests and onto consumers. Shifting that blame does nothing to improve sustainability, but is great at keeping the issue out of politics and boycotts. It’s a classic tragedy of the commons situation and our best tool is government regulation of producers.

fwlr 3y ago

If recycling was profitable in the main, someone would be auctioning off old landfill sites to mining companies. If it was predicted to be profitable with new technology, someone would be operating landfills while developing that technology. And so on. The fact that it needs consumers to sort recycling for them (in aggregate, this is a large amount of unpaid labor) hints to me that the fundamentals of a profitable enterprise simply don’t exist to be found.

jhaenchen 3y ago
That is because this waste is the natural excrement of an exploitative economy that lives in disharmony with its own natural ecosystem.
nonethewiser 3y ago
That’s right. Im not sure how this is controversial. Its a sad reality of plastic.
maxerickson 3y ago
Such facilities do exist, dirty and/or wet material recovery facility is the search term you'd want. Most material recovery facilities want a clean input stream though. It's not particularly lucrative, but it often makes sense for a landfill operator to do material separation, because the combination of selling the separated material and not using the landfill space makes financial sense. Given that my county landfill is the beneficiary and will either need more tax money or close down and increase my disposal costs, separating the saleable stuff into a clean stream doesn't bother me too much.

_heimdall 3y ago

I assume we'll have similar articles a decade or two from now calling out another obvious one, that everyone knew corn ethanol fuel is a farce as well. The problem with so many of these programs is that you may subsidize an industry but that won't make it more efficient than physics allows for. Politicians love putting their names on expensive programs that sound great and won't prove to be a waste for decades. By then we're all left holding the bag after they've retired or died.

zx8080 3y ago

Humans are professionals in misleading other humans for profit.

openrisk 3y ago

The "wishcycling" challenge and response of the city of Amsterdam might be relevant. A couple of years ago the dedicated plastic recycling bins were removed and the separation is done centrally. https://www.uvagreenoffice.nl/post/against-wishcycling-amsterdam-city-recycling-guide https://www.uvagreenoffice.nl/post/against-wishcycling-amste...

knowaveragejoe 3y ago

This thread is so filled with doomerism and it's depressing how common this is in seemingly any thread on this site that isn't explicitly about some specific product(and even then!) So what are we going to do about this? Is recycling as a concept doomed to failure?

deleted 3y ago

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andrewstuart 3y ago

Plastic SHOULD go into landfill. We need to stop demonising landfill. I love landfill - it is a focused area to put toxic waste. There is a massive problem with society's obsession with keeping stuff out of landfill. Tell me would you rather have waste plastic in the contained area of landfill, or would you rather than plastic was put into roads and leeched into land, air, food, water, people, ground, earth and air as cars and trucks grind it out of the roads.

nonethewiser 3y ago
Its a good point tbh. We are continuing to learn about the harms of plastic and dividing and heating them are always central in this equation. Plastic roads just sound like a recipe for microplastic runoff.
brikym 3y ago
That’s a fair point. I cringe when I see some dumb invention like turning plastic junk into toxic bricks. But even better would be to actually re-use the packaging like old school beer bottles and milk bottles. Industry has no problem standardizing containers when it suits them like shipping containers, kegs and pallets. Greenwashing is the worst option of all as you waste your time on things that don’t work.

irrational 3y ago

Now I'm wondering about those states that charge a fee when you buy a plastic bottle to encourage you to recycle it to get your nickel or dime back. Should those fees be dropped?

macNchz 3y ago
Those deposits are mostly about creating an incentive not to litter, or for someone else to come clean up your litter.

Isamu 3y ago

I guess I assumed that recycling advocacy groups did some due diligence, dug a bit deeper, took the trouble to find out how everything was going. And now we are claiming that nobody checked. The plastics industry was lying, and everybody just believed them and took it at face value. Because we all believe what industries say.

tpmoney 3y ago
The thing is, everybody didn't "just believe" them. What I find really weird about this moment in time is how the roles appear to have been flipped. I'm old enough to remember when it was the right wing / business / pro-capitalism side of US politics calling out recycling as big sham (e.g. the Penn and Teller BS episode on recycling was 2004, though how "right wing" you consider that depends on your view of libertarian politics). So it's sort of weird to me to watch the modern story about how recycling was a lie propagated by big business and its supporters on the innocent American people, and the predictable reactionary response from the right wing reflexively defending what they were previously decrying. We finally have something everyone agrees on and yet we're still arguing about it. Probably because like most political topics its a proxy for a different discussion entirely. Just a weird moment in time.

NoblePublius 3y ago

Yes the culprits are industry and not local government who giggled with piggish glee to set up meaningless and costly recycling and compliance regimes which generated them billions

AlienRobot 3y ago

I wish "reuse" had more focus than "recycle" since it's so much more feasible. You don't need science to do reuse. You just need logistics. For example, if more people bought used goods instead of brand new ones, less goods would need be produced in first place, which would be great for humanity in general.

al_borland 3y ago
And “reduce” should get even more focus than that. People don’t need most of the garbage they buy. Of course, that would be bad for the economy, so we don’t talk about that anymore. Anything reused or recycled will at some point become waste, but if it isn’t produced in the first place, that’s ideal. It obviously won’t work for everything, but it can work for a significant amount of things. The entirety of Temu and Shein would be a good start.

aaron695 3y ago

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sema4hacker 3y ago

Recycling saves me money because I pay monthly for my garbage service. The 64 gallon recycle can is free, but the 32 gallon garbage can has a fee. Without the free recycle can into which goes all the cans and paper waste I generate, I'd have to get a 64 gallon garbage can and pay more each month.

DarkmSparks 3y ago

"not an economically viable solution" It damn well is if landfill and dumping it in the ocean was suitably charged/fined. charge the sobs $100,000 per kilogram dumped in landfill or the ocean and recycling every gram will be economical.

romusha 3y ago

I wonder how many green initiatives turns out to be a farce, synthetic meat? Fuel cell? We'll probably hear the same thing for lithium-based EV and wind turbines

bondolo 3y ago

Time for an excise tax on packaging material based on how long it takes on average to decay to base elements.

sircastor 3y ago

The same with sugar The same with lead The same with Tobacco They always know, and they will always value their profit over you and your making an informed decision.

bondolo 3y ago

It is pat time to impose an excise tax on all packaging based on how long it takes to decay to base elements. Time until naturally “recycled” shouldn’t be a cost you can externalize. The tax owed can be reduced when recycling actually occurs, essentially passing on the difference to the recycler.

reader_x 3y ago

How much plastic in the ocean gyres might be our supposedly recycled plastic? Has anyone audited this by putting a few GPS-tracked plastic bottles into the recycling stream to see how many went to landfills or incinerators vs. being dumped in the ocean on the way to alleged recycling?