9 ms·
The truth about soft plastic recycling points at supermarkets
- sroussey 1y agoPersonally, I wish they would get rid of these recycle centers in grocery centers. They take up space, stink, and replicate recycle bins at every home.
- wffurr 1y agoThis is about plastic bags, which no municipal curbside recycling takes.
- biofox 1y agoHow is turning it into fuel pellets not recycling? It's giving it a second life, rather than going into a landfill.
- XorNot 1y agoSending it to landfill would produce a lot less CO2.
- actionfromafar 1y agoIf we are going to phase out fossils, we might just as well as phase out plastics last. (By burning it.) It the meantime, figure out how to make plastic less toxic and also how to use less of it.
- scotty79 1y agoMaybe in a few generations there'll be a ban on burning any fossil fuels other than plastic.
- mike-the-mikado 1y agoThat assumes that it does not decay in the landfill. Even if that is true today, I don't think we can rule out the evolution of bacteria etc. (possibly bio-engineered) to feed on plastics.
- sparsely 1y agoThe energy produced from burning it would come from somewhere else, which on average won't be 0 CO2 either.
- arresin 1y agoIt may be
- aloha2436 1y agoIt's barely one step removed from just being burned in an incinerator, it's maybe recycling in a very strict sense but it's definitely misleading to say that.
- throw310822 1y agoWell, plastic came from the underground (as oil) and to the underground should return, as much as possible. You could argue that when plastic waste is not burned, a corresponding amount of fossil fuels are extracted from the underground to make up the difference, but I think the existence of renewable energy sources makes the replacement ratio (waste plastic to new fossil fuels) much less than 1 to 1.
- meindnoch 1y agoI'm OK with burning it in power plants. Polyethylene has 4-5x higher energy content than lignite. Instead of digging up lignite to burn, and putting plastic in the ground as landfill, just burn the plastic and leave the lignite in the ground. Easy peasy.
- voidUpdate 1y agoSure, you just need to make sure that wherever it's being burned isn't just sending the byproducts into the air, because when you burn plastic, you get a lot of crap coming off it from incomplete combustion which isn't particularly healthy
- meindnoch 1y agoThat's not true when burning in a power plant. Incomplete combustion is caused by insufficient airflow.
- esseph 1y agoI hope you have excellent regulations and unyielding oversight with strict fines from the government level to maintain accountability and keep it that way, otherwise... optimizing for cost.
- meindnoch 1y agoA powerplant is optimizing for producing the most energy from their feedstock. Incomplete combustion means they would be throwing out usable energy, that they could earn money from.
- seanalltogether 1y agoDidn't Penn and Teller do a video about this 20 years ago showing that glass and metal cans are the only real recyclable products? I'm guessing not much has changed since then.
- ekianjo 1y agoMetal cans also contain a plastic layer inside.
- sevensor 1y agoI imagine they burn it off along with the food residues when they go to melt the can.
- cassianoleal 1y agoThere's no escape, is there? I'm not even talking about recycling at this point. If metal cans are plastic-lined inside, is there any way to avoid microplastics in drinks? I guess glass, but that's exceedingly rare and some drinks don't have a glass option where I live. Mostly it's sugary soda that does, or alcoholic beverages.
- hiAndrewQuinn 1y agoYou can just drink water?
- loloquwowndueo 1y agoWater destroys bridges and roads, imagine what it would do to your intestines :) (old drunkards joke)
- PinkSheep 1y agodrum roll...... bottled water! > In fact, 34 percent of the growth in bottled water sales during the past 11 years (from 2012 to 2023) has come from people switching from soft drinks and fruit drinks to bottled water. U.S. consumers now drink an average of 46.4 gallons (176 liters) of bottled water per person, compared to 34.4 gallons (129 liters) of carbonated soft drinks. -- https://wcponline.com/2024/10/01/2024-state-of-the-bottled-water-industry/ https://wcponline.com/2024/10/01/2024-state-of-the-bottled-w... PS: To be fair, I switched from the (acidic!) soft drinks to tap water. Almost always boiled water. Despite being comparatively confident in the quality of our tap water, the pipes mustn't be great. According to our city's water supplier, the tests come out classifying the water at their end as "soft" (bordering very soft). Yet on our end, there's a lot of chalk build up in the water kettle. I am entertaining the idea to send a sample of the tap water to a lab.
- comrade1234 1y agoOnly PET can be recycled. Here in Zurich all other plastic is incinerated to produce power and the CO2 captured and sent to greenhouses and also sold to soda bottlers.
- tonyedgecombe 1y agoThey do say that 30% of it is "downcycled" into lower grade products. That sounds like a win to me (although obviously not completely circular).
- scotty79 1y agoIf you don't to cram it back underground and it has no other use then burning it (cleanly I hope) is the next best thing.
- worldsayshi 1y agoI can only assume that burning fossil fuel represent an order of magnitude bigger problem than burning soft plastic. So until we have phased out fossil fuels it seems relatively unproblematic to burn plastic?
- preinheimer 1y agoI think it’s a problem to lie to people about what’s happening with their “recycled” goods.
- worldsayshi 1y agoSure it's a lie which is bad, but collecting soft plastic separately may still be a net win for society so how do we give a simple enough explanation for the nuance?
- sparsely 1y agoYeah, this seems fine to me. I believe my general waste is also incinerated though so I wish they'd encourage adding the soft plastics to that to simplify recycling - it might lead to more hard plastics being recycled!
- PlunderBunny 1y agoI think the results of soft plastic recycling are highly dependant on the country doing it. In New Zealand, soft plastics are mostly recycled into fence posts, which last 50+ years and are every bit as good (or better) than treated timber [0]. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t reduce our soft plastic use, but - like all recycling - you need to do a bit of research and think about it, instead of adopting a “recycling is good”/“recycling is a myth” mentality. 0. https://www.futurepost.co.nz/ https://www.futurepost.co.nz/
- jemmyw 1y agoJust a clarification: in NZ most soft plastics are sent to landfill, regardless of what happens to most of the plastic that is actually recycled. We're pretty bad for general recycling and really bad for plastic recycling. Most soft plastics here are from agriculture so it's probably a more solvable problem than if it was weighted towards domestic waste, but farming often manages to lobby their way out of regulation.
- PlunderBunny 1y agoSorry - yes. What I meant to say was "most soft plastics that are recycled, are recycled into fence posts".
- meindnoch 1y ago>which last 50+ years So it takes 50+ years for UV, rain and wind to turn it into microplastic mush? Sounds like a great product!
- PlunderBunny 1y agoNo one (including the manufacturer) knows how long it will last - 50 years is as far as accelerated aging can test to. You're assuming they split or break apart. The posts themselves are recyclable, so maybe in 50 years someone can pull them out of the ground and recycle them?
- 1y ago
- fadsiooie3 1y ago[dead]
- kristjank 1y agoIf it's burnt properly, it provides useful energy and is removed from the environment to a degree that's better than the landfill. The rest is NGO bikeshedding drivel I don't really care about.
- barbazoo 1y agoIf you capture the emissions sure. I doubt that’s done though.
- chimprich 1y agoFrom the article: "70% of the soft plastic that reached a known destination was burnt, not recycled". That doesn't seem too bad. That means 30% got recycled, which is more than I expected given the general cynicism around plastic recycling. 30% definitely seems worthwhile. For the plastic that got incinerated, it is presumably more efficient to burn products for energy reclamation that are already separated by type. Having these recycling pathways set up is a necessary step towards improving recycling rates. We should be able to improve on that 30% over time.
- BlackFly 1y agoWhat fraction of all total soft plastic is collected by supermarket take back schemes compared to road side curb collection (where only 10% of municipalities "support" its recycling)? I have a strong prior that they can achieve such high numbers only because they only capture a small amount of the total amount of soft plastic waste. If they had to deal with it all there wouldn't be enough demand to burn or recycle and it would end up buried. This is somewhat supported by the fact that by official definitions supermarket take back schemes are not counted in official recyclability numbers: > Soft plastic collected via supermarket collection points does not satisfy this definition [of working at scale] and therefore was not counted towards WRAP’s UK Plastics Pact recyclability target.
- masfuerte 1y agoSupermarkets collect carrier bags and bread bags. Road side collection doesn't, at least not anywhere I've lived. I'd guess that close to 100% of the soft plastic collected is collected by supermarkets.
- ars 1y agoThat's even better than you describe, it means that 70% is burned which is even better than recycled, and more than I expected.
- IAmBroom 1y agoHow better? It contributes to global warming and air pollution directly.
- James_K 1y agoI was expecting it to end up in landfill, so it getting burned was a pleasant surprise.
- lotophage 1y agoIn Australia a company called REDcycle supposedly recycled soft plastics from all the major supermarkets. After a decade or so operating the business collapsed and it was discovered that they had about 11,000 tonnes of the stuff stockpiled in 40+ warehouses across the country because they hadn't figured out how to recycle it.
- mariusor 1y agoAnd how is that a bad thing? Instead of being in a landfill and leaching microplastics it's all bundled up and contained. I don't really understand this defeatist attitude where if something is not perfect we should drop it all together. From my point of view any effort at sorting trash is beneficial to the ecosystem because even if we don't have a method to deal with the problem now, we can wait a generation or two for technology to improve.
- BobaFloutist 1y agoIt's bad because they were committing fraud.
- mariusor 1y agoIn what way? Do you know if they were contractually obligated to the municipalities to "recycle" the plastic?
- redczar 1y agoThey tried to keep it secret that they were storing the garbage instead of recycling it. The trash still needs to be disposed. Your response is to question whether this was fraud and a bad thing. That’s a weird response.
- Maxious 1y agoThey were stockpiling the plastics without the required permits and then once one warehouse was discovered, not disclosing the others https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/dec/23/environmental-watchdog-charges-redcycle-operators-over-secret-soft-plastics-stockpiles https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/dec/23/envir...
- ninalanyon 1y agoI think that the focus on technological solutions is beside the point. What would accelerate reduction in use and an increase in recycling would be a total ban on exports of used plastic and a ban on packaging plastic from non-renewable sources. This should also cover clothing. The technology required can be left to the industry once it becomes impossible for them to hand off the responsibility to foreign and unregulated third parties.
- barbazoo 1y agoBut won’t that make all the things more expensive that our lifestyle depends on? /s
- Molitor5901 1y agoAround 2015 China stopped buying much of the worlds' plastic refuse which caused most municipal waste recycling programs in America to shut down. Since then it's sort of just been thrown away because plastic is really hard to recycle into something equally useful, in a way that does not just add more pollution. Even LEGO won't use recycled plastic. The solution is to move away as much as possible from disposable, and most forms of consumer and retail plastic. It has invaluable uses, but there is simply too much and it's polluting faster than we can clean it.
- c22 1y agoLEGO is well known for using high quality extremely durable and long lasting plastic in their products so saying even LEGO doesn't use recycled plastics seems painfully apparent. There are other children's toy brands that do use recycled plastics.
- thefz 1y agoJust stop producing it.
- cynicalsecurity 1y agoHow. People oppose even paper straws. Most of the food can be and should be stripped of usage of plastic, but then there also is medical usage.
- tehjoker 1y agoMedical usage is often necessary. Why not just start with things that are completely extraneous, like packaging, bottles, etc.
- i80and 1y agoWe should. But even small baby step measures with no downsides like plastic bag bans are wildly contentious. I live in a county that's enacted one, and it's been unambiguously an improvement for the area on top of the core goal of "reduce plastic waste". But visiters look at me like I live in East Germany when I mention that. I don't say this to discredit the idea, but it's politically treacherous, and not a lot of people are willing to stick their necks out for the right thing.
- const_cast 1y agoAfter a certain point we have to force consumer's hands and tell them to get the fuck over it. The level of inconvenience added to my life by not using plastic bags is so unbelievably small it's not even worth the oxygen I would need to spend to express my discomfort. It's really, really not a big deal. The fact that some people are extraordinarily high-stress and enjoy making problems out of nothing should not be our concern. Let's not optimize for those people, they'll never be happy anyway.
- wkat4242 1y agoHere they tax the bags. I don't use them so much, only if I really need them. The problem is, sometimes you do need them because you had to change plans and didn't bring any bags. I don't own a car or anything where I can leave them. Often leave the house without even a backpack. And paper bags don't work when it rains or when you need to bring heavy stuff like drinks.
- Caelus9 1y agoAs an ordinary person, what we can do is try to reduce our use of single use plastics as much as possible, but single use plastics are everywhere in daily life, which can indeed be frustrating.
- pfdietz 1y agoAn intermediate step between recycling and combustion would be disassembling the plastics back to useful feedstocks, potentially including monomers of the plastics involved. This (and combustion) would be easier if the plastics were not chlorinated, I think. So maybe focus on elimination of PVC and the like from the waste stream?
- ninalanyon 1y agoThis article is mostly about soft plastics used for food packaging, surely little to none of that is PVC. It least here in Norway most such plastic is low density polythene and PET, neither of which are chlorinated. Most PET bottles are separated from general waste because bottles have a deposit on them here.
- pfdietz 1y agoI was going to point to Saran Wrap, but it was changed from polyvinylidene chloride to polyethylene in 2004.
- olejorgenb 1y agoThis is pyrolysis based recycling (also called chemical recycling I think). My impression is that it's fairly energy intensive and can still be hard to purify. Some companies claim to be able to to it relatively effective. https://www.quantafuel.com/ https://www.quantafuel.com/ claims to have a catalyst which improves the efficiency for instance. They are now privately owned and the amount of news they publish has become limited. This makes me believe they still struggle to make optimize the process.
- Scramblejams 1y agoThere’s too much toxic flame retardant in recycled plastic, apparently.[0] So until we can guarantee that recycled plastics don’t end up in contact with food, or the plastic that does doesn’t contain nasty chemicals, it’s probably safer to bury the stuff. [0] https://share.upmc.com/2025/03/black-plastic-cookware/ https://share.upmc.com/2025/03/black-plastic-cookware/
- ars 1y agoThat research was partly debunked. The authors made several errors. Some of the work is still true, but the final conclusion about black plastic is not.
- Scramblejams 1y agoThe link I provided mentions a correction they made (where they undercalculated the EPA's reference dose of decaBDE by a factor of ten), but the study authors maintain the overall conclusion is sound. And I'd rather have zero decaBDE in my breakfast than what the EPA says is okay, whatever my cookware's color might be. I've searched around for other corrections or challenges but haven't found any. Got a link?
- ars 1y agoFrom what I remember after the correction there was no longer a correlation with color. Obviously no one want flame retardant, but staying away from specifically black plastic doesn't do anything. I can't find a link right now, but for what I remember other authors agreed with the data after correction, but disagreed with the conclusion.
- Scramblejams 1y agoGot it. I didn't intend my original post to be color-specific. But if that's the case, then all the more reason to just bury plastics. (Or burn 'em, I guess, but when you have potentially a whole host of mystery toxic chemicals hiding in them, is your typical scrubber going to catch all of 'em? I don't know the answer, but I'd be surprised if specialization wasn't required. Probably safer to bury.)
- stevep98 1y agoTrex makes composite decking planks from recycled shopping bags. Seems like a perfect use for the material. Its durable. It doesn’t have to be sterile or pure. Apparently 100,000 bags will go into a typical deck. https://nextrex.com/ https://nextrex.com/ Having said that I don’t see what’s wrong with incineration if it’s done correctly. It’s not open pit burning, with waste gases going into the environment. It’s high temperature, with additional gas and oxygen to promote more complete burning. And waste gases are filtered.
- vosper 1y ago> Seems like a perfect use for the material. Provided they don’t get too much sun, because those dense plastic planks get much hotter than wood (I’ve measured 65C on mine). A deck is not much good if you can’t stand on it. Also they’re expensive and don’t look very good.
- teeray 1y agoWhich is also why it’s critical that they be installed with a gap between the boards (Kreg makes a useful set of spacers and drill jig to hide the screws). Otherwise expansion will destroy the deck.
- vosper 1y agoOh, mine have spaces and all (the very-expensive, not-optional mounting clips create the requisite spacing). They're just hot. Google "composite deck heat" etc will find lots of people complaining about it.
- HelloMcFly 1y agoI think some of the Trex looks pretty good, they're definitely not all the same. If you do go this route then you will need an outdoor rug on the planks if it gets direct sun though. They're just way too hot otherwise, as you've stated. But throw a nice outdoor rug down and it's problems solved.
- foxglacier 1y ago
- HenryBemis 1y agoA long time ago (2? years back) I remember a guy on Joe Rogan speaking how 'the best case scenario' is to burn that plastic. I did some reading about the fact, spoke with a guy that I knew that owns a "recycling factory" and I was 'convinced' that realistically this is (and should be) happening. We know that now 'they' lied to us and most plastic is NOT recyclable, and they did so only to continue the oil business. Seeing the map (Finland, Turkey, France), and in the past having garbage shipped all over the planet, do people calculate the "carbon tax" to move X tonnes to another country? The total cost of extract the energy from (the) earth (petrol for ships, fuel for planes, etc.)? Would it be better to use modern filters (as others wrote in comments) and burn them at the place of production?
- altusbrown 1y agoLandfilling is even better.
- barbazoo 1y agoWell if a guy on Joe Rogan says it it must be true.
- jon_adler 1y agoI think the problem with exporting plastic waste is the poor environmental standards at the destination rather than the shipping. The containers usually come laden with goods from Asia and might otherwise be returned empty (aka repositioning or repatriation).
- hyperman1 1y agoAfaik the idea of giving plastic back to supermarkets, is to make them give less plastic to us in the first place. In this case, the point is not what percentage is recycled. The point is shrinking the total amount of plastic, i.e. the number to which the percentage is applied. Do they burn 70% of 10 tons or 70% of 1 ton. So is this happening?
- Kaibeezy 1y agoThe main point of the linked website seems to be that providing “recycling” collection in supermarkets is basically a fraud to make consumers more comfortable using soft plastics — if it can be recycled, then using more isn’t so worrisome.
- hyperman1 1y agoI've wondered about that after reading the article. In my country, we collect plastics at home (PMD) and it gets picked up bi-weekly in a bag. The PMD system has similar recycling stats as in the article. It is seen as an excuse for shops to declare the plastic waste problem as 'solved' without doing anything, and making consumers responsible. The shops are fighting tooth and nail against collecting plastics themselves or introducing reusable drink bottles. What's the UK alternative for collecting at the shop? Collecting at home? Doing nothing?
- andrewstuart 1y agoThe safest place for waste plastic is in a landfill. Landfill is not a demon. Landfill contains the toxicity. The obsession with recycling plastic leads to unintended consequences. For example some countries put waste plastic in roads, where cars and trucks grind it out into microplastic that go into air water food animals dust adults and children. Parts of India require this by law. The entire concept of recycling plastic is ridiculously false and is perpetuated by the plastic packaging companies so you won’t question the infinite firehose of plastic packaging they are blasting into every part of the earth. What exactly is all this plastic being recycled into? I certainly hope not food containers. The real answer is “not much”, because there’s zero match between the output of the plastics packaging industry and the “recycling”. Go ahead try to make a list of what could possibly be made from the gagillion tons of new plastic packaging. It’s fiction. Why are we so desperate to “keep things out of landfill”? Landfill is where plastic should go. I personally throw all my plastic waste not in the recycle bin, but in the waste bin, to ensure it goes to landfill, and because I don’t want to be part of the lie that is plastic recycling.
- barbazoo 1y agoYou conveniently leave out the negative effect of landfills on people and the environment. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill
- teeray 1y agoI don’t understand why we can’t do the propane tank model at grocery stores. Reusable bags that I drop off on the way in, I get some token for N bags so I don’t have to carry them around the store, then I get cleaned bags on the way out (deducted from my credit). If I need more, I buy more immediately and more bags are on my account. Stores could even partner to share bag programs (again, like Blue Rhino).
- jjtheblunt 1y agomaybe "cleaned" is too expensive to implement
- sokoloff 1y agoWe bring our reusable bags in and reuse them ourself. They sit flat in the cart and don’t bother us while shopping. I wouldn’t want to take a bag that someone else had used and was poorly cleaned, especially given how little trouble it is to just manage and reuse my own (including cleaning them ourself if we spill meat juice or something on them). A Blue Rhino propane tank just has to hold propane; there’s no need for it to be particularly clean; as a result, I don’t care what tank I get in exchange.
- wkat4242 1y agoWe actually had this for soda bottles in Holland in the 80s. The bottles were not recycled, they were cleaned and refilled. They were much thicker than current PET bottles to be more durable. The system worked great, I never understood why they dropped it.
- barbazoo 1y agoThat’s a nice idea. Unfortunately this would negatively affect shareholder value so it’s not allowed to be done (fiduciary duty) /s
- owenversteeg 1y agoI didn’t see anyone else bring this up here, but the real issue with plastic recycling is twofold: it is a dead end and recycled plastics shed microplastics like crazy. Other materials, like aluminum, can effectively be infinitely recycled, but plastic cannot; recycled plastic is worse than virgin plastic in every way. It also destroys the environment around us, because recycled plastics are effectively really shitty plastics that shed everywhere. In short, plastic recycling is a fraud perpetuated by greenwashing initiatives. The only proper thing to do with old plastic is to incinerate it at high temperatures that achieve complete combustion. This is rare though; most plastic is burned at low enough temperatures that it causes pollution. Great stuff, plastic, huh?
- uxjw 1y agoEven if you buy aluminium cans, there's a thin layer of plastic lining to prevent reactions with the metal. I've also noticed lots of paper/cardboard packaging have a plastic coating.
- wkat4242 1y agoYes and in many cases that coating is even PFAS.
- owenversteeg 1y agoOh yes, don’t get me wrong, I am strongly opposed to plastic or PFAS lined anything for food storage, such as cans, coated cardboard, bag in box etc. I was just bringing up aluminum as another material generally considered as recyclable.
- andyjohnson0 1y agoI thought it was common knowledge that plastic recycling (including soft plastics) was only ever a way for the plastics industries (and downstream businesses lile food packaging) to keep on pumping out the plastic. And I say this as someone who keeps putting plastics into my domestic recycling here in the UK, and taking soft plastics to the supermarket collection points. Question: would it be better if I just put it all in the non-recyclables bin?
- barbazoo 1y agoNot common knowledge because it’s not right. Totally depends on the jurisdiction. Where I live the recycling industry is doing a lot better.