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Recycling plastic and much else besides is a well-known environmental fraud. The good news is that we have basically unlimited landfill space, so we don't have

Recycling plastic and much else besides is a well-known environmental fraud. The good news is that we have basically unlimited landfill space, so we don't have to worry about it.

diggan 1y ago
> we don't have to worry about it I guess for a certain subset of "we", probably pretty true. They're aren't exactly a silver bullet that magically solve the problem without any drawbacks for lots of other people though.
kleiba 1y ago
"It is cheaper to just make a new plastic product than to collect it and recycle it or reuse it," says Kristian Syberg, who studies plastic pollution at Roskilde University in Denmark. "That’s a systemic problem." Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-its-so-hard-to-recycle-plastic/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-its-so-hard-t...
- Suppafly 1y ago
  >"It is cheaper to just make a new plastic product than to collect it and recycle it or reuse it," says Kristian Syberg, who studies plastic pollution at Roskilde University in Denmark. "That’s a systemic problem." That seems like it might be implying there is a pricing disconnect. It shouldn't cost more to recycle, especially since people provide the used plastic for basically free.
  - baggy_trough 1y ago
    That would depend on how much it costs to convert used plastic into a useful form, compared to the raw materials. There's no reason to expect it to be cheaper.
    - Suppafly 1y ago
      >There's no reason to expect it to be cheaper. Sure there is, the raw materials have to be mined and transported across the country and such, it's ridiculous that it's cheaper to do that than to shred existing material and melt it back down. Even if you're downcycling from something like soda bottles to something like fence posts or plastic bricks or whatever, it should definitely be cheaper to recycle.
      - baggy_trough 1y ago
        That depends on the properties of the material and how much it costs to mine and transport it. Plastic is lightweight and ludicrously cheap to produce (hence why there are so many cost effective uses for it). Just the fact that it is dyed different colors may present an insurmountable cost problem for recyclers.
    - const_cast 1y ago
      > There's no reason to expect it to be cheaper. There is IMO, because we don't factor the cost of disposal and it's management into just about any product. Except maybe nuclear reactors. The reason plastic is so cheap is that you're free to make it and let it go where ever the fuck it does. The taypayer pays for cleanup in the long run, not you. You're externalizing a lot of costs.
      - baggy_trough 1y ago
        It can simply be placed in the landfill. I already pay garbage costs.
        const_cast 1y ago
        Which isn't a one and done transaction, landfills require maintenance on the scale of decades. And, problem do occur, like leakage, which you need to manage. We're still paying for landfill management that are many, many decades old.
  - antisthenes 1y ago
    > especially since people provide the used plastic for basically free. It is definitely not free. It requires another completely separate set of trucks to go around in addition to all the regular trash-collecting trucks. Which means vehicle maintenance, crew salaries and general administration. The reason it's not cost effective is because the negative externalities aren't built into the price of making the new items.
    - baggy_trough 1y ago
      > The reason it's not cost effective is because the negative externalities aren't built into the price of making the new items. That could be true, or not. It might be the case that recycling isn't cost effective even assuming negative externalities are properly costed.
- baggy_trough 1y ago
  Why is that a problem? It sounds like a solution.
  - kleiba 1y ago
    The problem is that if you're always producing new plastics rather than recycle existing ones, you're using up more and more resources (e.g. oil) and at the same time creating ever growing landfills. But there is a financial incentive to do so, so that's what's happening.
    - baggy_trough 1y ago
      The landfills are not a problem; we have effectively unbounded space for them. Plastics generally use less resources than any other equivalent; that is why they win the cost-effectiveness battle with other materials. The financial incentive is because plastics are cheaper and more efficient than anything else.
imbusy111 1y ago
We have landfills that eventually catch fire from all the compostable organic material, and then poison our air. Don't forget the potential leakage into groundwater. I don't understand, why trash incineration is not a thing in the US. How many years has the landfill fire next to Los Angeles been burning now?
- garciasn 1y ago
  The US has vast expanses of empty land, making landfilling a relatively inexpensive and straightforward option for waste disposal when compared to the high up-front costs associated with building a trash incineration system, especially one that effectively mitigates the two major waste byproducts of the effort: (1) air pollution and (2) ash. Now, the air pollution thing is easier to deal with than the ash as the resulting ash is roughly 20% of the original trash volume; however it is LOADED with heavy metals and other toxins which are not removed during the burn. This ash then ends up in not only landfills, but SPECIALIZED landfills which are equipped to handle the environmental issues associated. This obviously lowers the volume in traditional landfills, but at much higher concentration of toxic materials that raise permanent storage costs, (simplistically) doubling+ the costs (incineration cost + toxic storage cost). --- That said, of those trash incinerators active in the US today, many (most?) are heading for the end of their operational lifespan and the high costs associated with meeting modern environmental standards to bring new ones online are generally seen as a serious negative, especially with NIMBYs driving their eradication. This leaves the only other option: trucking the trash somewhere that is just 'hidden' or 'not here'.

Recycling plastic and much else besides is a well-known environmental fraud. The good news is that we have basically unlimited landfill space, so we don't have to worry about it.

diggan 1y ago

> we don't have to worry about it I guess for a certain subset of "we", probably pretty true. They're aren't exactly a silver bullet that magically solve the problem without any drawbacks for lots of other people though.

kleiba 1y ago

"It is cheaper to just make a new plastic product than to collect it and recycle it or reuse it," says Kristian Syberg, who studies plastic pollution at Roskilde University in Denmark. "That’s a systemic problem." Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-its-so-hard-to-recycle-plastic/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-its-so-hard-t...

Suppafly 1y ago
>"It is cheaper to just make a new plastic product than to collect it and recycle it or reuse it," says Kristian Syberg, who studies plastic pollution at Roskilde University in Denmark. "That’s a systemic problem." That seems like it might be implying there is a pricing disconnect. It shouldn't cost more to recycle, especially since people provide the used plastic for basically free.
- baggy_trough 1y ago
  That would depend on how much it costs to convert used plastic into a useful form, compared to the raw materials. There's no reason to expect it to be cheaper.
  - Suppafly 1y ago
    >There's no reason to expect it to be cheaper. Sure there is, the raw materials have to be mined and transported across the country and such, it's ridiculous that it's cheaper to do that than to shred existing material and melt it back down. Even if you're downcycling from something like soda bottles to something like fence posts or plastic bricks or whatever, it should definitely be cheaper to recycle.
    - baggy_trough 1y ago
      That depends on the properties of the material and how much it costs to mine and transport it. Plastic is lightweight and ludicrously cheap to produce (hence why there are so many cost effective uses for it). Just the fact that it is dyed different colors may present an insurmountable cost problem for recyclers.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    > There's no reason to expect it to be cheaper. There is IMO, because we don't factor the cost of disposal and it's management into just about any product. Except maybe nuclear reactors. The reason plastic is so cheap is that you're free to make it and let it go where ever the fuck it does. The taypayer pays for cleanup in the long run, not you. You're externalizing a lot of costs.
    - baggy_trough 1y ago
      It can simply be placed in the landfill. I already pay garbage costs.
      - const_cast 1y ago
        Which isn't a one and done transaction, landfills require maintenance on the scale of decades. And, problem do occur, like leakage, which you need to manage. We're still paying for landfill management that are many, many decades old.
- antisthenes 1y ago
  > especially since people provide the used plastic for basically free. It is definitely not free. It requires another completely separate set of trucks to go around in addition to all the regular trash-collecting trucks. Which means vehicle maintenance, crew salaries and general administration. The reason it's not cost effective is because the negative externalities aren't built into the price of making the new items.
  - baggy_trough 1y ago
    > The reason it's not cost effective is because the negative externalities aren't built into the price of making the new items. That could be true, or not. It might be the case that recycling isn't cost effective even assuming negative externalities are properly costed.
baggy_trough 1y ago
Why is that a problem? It sounds like a solution.
- kleiba 1y ago
  The problem is that if you're always producing new plastics rather than recycle existing ones, you're using up more and more resources (e.g. oil) and at the same time creating ever growing landfills. But there is a financial incentive to do so, so that's what's happening.
  - baggy_trough 1y ago
    The landfills are not a problem; we have effectively unbounded space for them. Plastics generally use less resources than any other equivalent; that is why they win the cost-effectiveness battle with other materials. The financial incentive is because plastics are cheaper and more efficient than anything else.

imbusy111 1y ago

We have landfills that eventually catch fire from all the compostable organic material, and then poison our air. Don't forget the potential leakage into groundwater. I don't understand, why trash incineration is not a thing in the US. How many years has the landfill fire next to Los Angeles been burning now?

garciasn 1y ago
The US has vast expanses of empty land, making landfilling a relatively inexpensive and straightforward option for waste disposal when compared to the high up-front costs associated with building a trash incineration system, especially one that effectively mitigates the two major waste byproducts of the effort: (1) air pollution and (2) ash. Now, the air pollution thing is easier to deal with than the ash as the resulting ash is roughly 20% of the original trash volume; however it is LOADED with heavy metals and other toxins which are not removed during the burn. This ash then ends up in not only landfills, but SPECIALIZED landfills which are equipped to handle the environmental issues associated. This obviously lowers the volume in traditional landfills, but at much higher concentration of toxic materials that raise permanent storage costs, (simplistically) doubling+ the costs (incineration cost + toxic storage cost). --- That said, of those trash incinerators active in the US today, many (most?) are heading for the end of their operational lifespan and the high costs associated with meeting modern environmental standards to bring new ones online are generally seen as a serious negative, especially with NIMBYs driving their eradication. This leaves the only other option: trucking the trash somewhere that is just 'hidden' or 'not here'.