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University of Alabama Engineer Pioneers New Process for Recycling Plastics
- behnamoh 2y agoIs it necessary to mention which university the person is from? I have the same reaction when news titles say things like "34 yo woman discovers blah blah blah" or "Spanish scientists found that ...". No one cares about the meta data of these people, let's get to the point and hear what they did.
- add-sub-mul-div 2y agoFor how long did reading those three words delay you from getting to the point? How do you justify the leap from you not caring to "no one cares"?
- caminante 2y agoIn fairness, this is a self-promoting (biased) University blog. Without the parent's critique, I suspect most would gloss over this.
- add-sub-mul-div 2y agoThe party reporting the information calling attention to the fact that it's reporting on its own institution by putting the name of that institution in the headline creates that awareness.
- caminante 2y agoThat doesn't make sense at all. Plenty of examples where that generalization isn't true. OP also edited the title (which is frowned upon at HN). The article abbreviated UA.
- rqtwteye 2y agoAt least it’s a less known school. Usually they mention only the big names like “Stanford scientists…”. When it’s a lesser known school it’s just “Scientists….”
- 14 2y agoWell I think it is important. With the vast amount of knowledge that is being created every day we have to filter much of it out. If that university has made a reputation as a leader of knowledge acquisition and known for well run labs and procedures then they earn that reputation. The author of the story might just get more eyes on the story if people think it will contain good knowledge from a reputable source.
- bickfordb 2y agoThis article is from the school's PR dept
- tw04 2y agoYes, it is necessary. They funded the research and deserve the credit.
- cosmotic 2y ago"Tax payers of the United States..."
- tw04 2y agoLikely tax payers of Alabama, I don’t see federal funding but might be missing it: https://afr.ua.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/UA-AFR-FY23.pdf https://afr.ua.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/UA-AFR-FY23.pd... I’d imagine the taxpayers are happy with the recognition via the university.
- cosmotic 2y agoI was just speaking generally about funding for research. I don't follow the logic that taxpayers would be happy with the university getting credit. I'm a tax payer, and I'd much rather the researcher get credit.
- Jarwain 2y agoI mean it's from the University of Alabama news site, hyping a University of Alabama lab. I'd assume it's serving a marketing/"school spirit" sorta purpose as well as sharing the news.
- caminante 2y agoYes. OP basically linked a PR.
- philipwhiuk 2y agoWould you have a problem if it said "OpenAI develops novel LLM to solve math problems" rather than "Novel LLM solves math problems" too?
- lenkite 2y ago> Is it necessary to mention which university the person is from? This is such a strange statement. He leads a team at The University of Alabama which has been given a grant by the National Science Foundation. He is not a sole inventor working by his own funding in his private time. The University of Alabama has also filed a patent application - so why wouldn't any news article mention the university ?
- khana 2y agoyes
- dinkumthinkum 2y agoThis is a pretty sad and cynical way to live life. Also, your point isn't even very good. It is useful to know where research is coming from; it's hardly the same as the strawman example of "34 yo woman discovers blah blah blah". Also, this ridiculous notion that "No one cares about the 'meta data'" is silly. Actual academics are interested in the names of the venue of publication as well as the institutions of the researchers involved; is it the primary thing that matters? No, but its pretty weird to be upset about such a minor thing. Though, I'm not surprised to see this kind of comment on HN.
- fracus 2y agoAs a 34 yo spanish woman scientist, I take great offense at your dismissal of qualifications.
- amluto 2y agoActual paper (paywalled): https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsapm.4c01525 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsapm.4c01525
- DoctorOetker 2y agoI am unable to read the article due to the paywall, so I am left wondering about additional insights since the following 2009 article: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2009/gc/b906831g https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2009/gc/b9068...
- wanderingmind 2y agoA good approach is to search in scholar to see what other links exist. Here is the link to a preprint https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=8a5609812e97dc7ad60ca918f0d7fdcb66997dd4 https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&d...
- DoctorOetker 2y agoI meant the OP's article is paywalled, not the link I gave as a reference.
- stefantalpalaru 2y ago[dead]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Over2Chars 2y agoThe current recycling paradigm has been an obvious failure of catastrophic proportions. What is needed is not new recycling processes, but a government that is not beholden to plastics industry lobbying. Can we have a new process for good government too, please?
- lefstathiou 2y ago100%. Collect all garbage (and recyclables) in one shot and sort at the destination!!! So many billions of hours and dollars lost to this nonsense.
- Over2Chars 2y agoWhat "destination" is that? It gets shipped to another country where it's dumped. (one article picked at random from a search for "recycling fraud") https://eia-international.org/news/exposed-the-plastics-waste-trade-scams-that-fuel-crime-and-injustice-around-the-world/ https://eia-international.org/news/exposed-the-plastics-wast...
- barbazoo 2y agoDepends. Lots of places recycle significant amounts locally.
- tempestn 2y agoIf you do it that way, the garbage contaminates everything else, making recycling much more difficult or impossible. Especially for paper and cardboard, which is very recyclable.
- whimsicalism 2y agoi’ve basically never seen single stream actually work somewhere… every time i’ve looked into the details it appears they just skim off the metal and landfill/burn the rest
- hooverd 2y agoWhy doesn't everyone already do that if it's so simple?
- TheRealPomax 2y agoJust like last time, and time before that, and the time before that: please stop posting this stuff until there's a solution that actually works at scale. It's like the little brother to cold fusion.
- BirAdam 2y agoExcept worse because plastics are destroying ecosystems and recycling makes people feel better about it despite most recyclable statements being effectively false. Most people have no idea what cold fusion is, and they know even less about why it would be good.
- tonyedgecombe 2y ago>despite most recyclable statements being effectively false I keep seeing these sort of statements but have yet to see one backed up by a link to some reputable evidence. My local supermarket accepts clean soft plastics for recycling and when I investigated I found membership of schemes to ensure full transparency. Looking further I found the companies accepting the waste and financial statements indicating heavy investment in machinery to deal with it.
- TheRealPomax 2y agoOkidokey: https://www.youtube.com/climatetown https://www.youtube.com/climatetown and specifically https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJnJ8mK3Q3g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJnJ8mK3Q3g so there you go. Plastic recycling, because of what plastics are, is basically impossible at cost. PET recycling might make you think "see, we can recycle plastics" but first and foremost, PET recycling isn't recycling, it's reuse (using the PET as a base material to make something else, like fleece, which cannot be recycled), and second: the majority of plastics aren't PET and literally have no recycling path.
- tonyedgecombe 2y agoI'm not sure that video backs up your assertions. The presenter states at the end of the video that "we have to keep recycling". I was hoping for something academic rather than a YouTube video.
- XorNot 2y agoNeat to see this for PET, since my goto filament is PETG at the moment.
- CarVac 2y agoApparently PET is even nicer to print with if your hotend is capable of that temperature.
- insaneisnotfree 2y ago[flagged]
- MattGaiser 2y agoMy understanding is that while glass is reusable/recyclable, nobody is really willing to do it. So is it much better than plastic?
- MobiusHorizons 2y agoThey certainly used to. Why do you say we don’t recycle glass? It’s basically the same process as making new glass, you just add broken up glass in with the silica sand.
- Nevermark 2y agoMy guess: logistics of recycling glass is more expensive than getting sand. And glass in landfills isn’t doing much harm. My town doesn’t recycle glass.
- maxerickson 2y agoYeah this is basically it. And then with the glass you also have to keep it separated by color.
- AngryData 2y agoYou don't HAVE to, but you aren't going to be making clear glass again if you mix it with other colored glasses. Im not an glass expert though and it could be more of a cost consideration in not having to chemically separate out colored elements from glass when you can much more easily just get clean sand again for significantly cheaper.
- maeil 2y ago> My understanding is that while glass is reusable/recyclable, nobody is really willing to do it. Plenty of people have been buying glass over plastic exactly when possible for this reason. Those people show that it's a concious decision and are not to be waved away.
- mkoubaa 2y agoI'd be happy if we just put recyclable materials in their own corner of the landfills marked "TODO"
- userbinator 2y agoEverything is recyclable. What do you think oil and coal come from...?
- metalman 2y agonot bad, not bad at all, except for the whoh!man! that a bit too real, but it is actualy implimentable on a very short time frame and exceptionaly low budget, so I will be including that (your?) idea, into my own ,not infrequent rants
- bastawhiz 2y agoUnfortunately it seems that in many places, that's pretty much what they're doing instead of doing any actual recycling. If you collect more than you're capable of processing, you inevitably just end up with an ever growing TO-DO pile. The sad thing is, if you pretend to recycle instead of actually recycling, you're just a landfill operator. And landfills can be run profitably.
- AtlasBarfed 2y agoIsn't the entire landfill really a huge TODO anyway? "We'll let some magic future AI figure this out. Meanwhile, we'll put dirt on it"
- mkoubaa 2y agoNot all TODOs are created equal. Example: //TODO: Collisions are too common here. Implement a custom hashing function to improve the performance of this algorithm //TODO: This class is 60k lines and has no tests. Replace it
- giarc 2y agoIn my city, there is a GIANT pile of glass sitting on a slab near a landfill. The commodity price of glass is so low it's not worth selling, so they just store it in hopes of maybe one day selling it. I doubt that will happen and I suspect it's just been put into the landfill by now.
- bandrami 2y agoIt would be cool if we could actually start recycling plastics rather than shipping them to China where they are shredded and put in landfills
- pasttense01 2y agoChina is no longer accepting plastics where they are shredded and put into a landfill.
- whimsicalism 2y agowe have just outsourced to neighboring countries in SE asia
- Hilift 2y agoChina stopped accepting trash long ago. 90% of plastics are trash. Many municipalities adopted thermal trash burners that generate electricity. Expect to see a lot more of these in the next four years. https://energyjustice.net/usplants/ https://energyjustice.net/usplants/ https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/florida-population-growth-waste-energy-incinerators-rcna120599 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/florida-popul...
- 0x00cl 2y agoNew recycling discoveries for plastics is good news, but at the same time I feel that people and specially governments should be promoting the old 3R or the 9R framework (Refuse, Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Refurbish, Remanufacture, Repurpose, Recycle and Recover) It seems people forget that _recycling is and should be the last thing_ we do with objects/materials that we don't use anymore, it requires energy to create a new object and at the same time recycling materials doesn't always recover 100% of the original materials.
- bennythomsson 2y ago100% this. Also, keep in mind that the article is from his university's PR dept. It's not independent work by a journalist.
- chrisbrandow 2y agoIt is just the press release. There’s a submission to ACS that looks completely valid.
- bluedino 2y agoMy apartment complex doesn't have a recycling program, just garbage, and the amount of Amazon packaging alone that piles up in a week makes me sick
- musicale 2y agoCardboard recycling seems fairly successful (and perhaps Amazon boxes are already returned directly to Amazon?), but it does seem like there has to be a better way. Amazon eventually realized that boxed returns were inefficient and implemented unboxed returns via UPS stores. It seems like unboxed delivery to a store or locker would also be more efficient, but for customers it's less convenient than front-door delivery. Perhaps delivery workers could also collect reusable Amazon boxes while making deliveries.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
- elif 2y agoI think the fundamentals of material capitalism taken to its current extent do not leave room for ecology. This article about PET recycling probably won't do much to improve the 6-8% recycling rate for plastic waste primarily because there is no economic incentive to do so. In fact, market economies are actively avoiding PET plastics for health reasons, so this effort is double dubious IMO. I don't mean to inject cynicism to downplay their achievements, but I think it's as crucial for ecology that we be honest about the limitations of our existing efforts within the market capitalist/individual materialist paradigm.