4 ms·

Recycling is such a sham. I wish we as a nation (US) would come to terms that most products are not economical to recycle. It could actually move the needle on

by infecto 11mo ago

Recycling is such a sham. I wish we as a nation (US) would come to terms that most products are not economical to recycle. It could actually move the needle on consumption when you know that’s it’s going to be thrown away. About the only thing worth recycling in the US is metal. The rest including glass are just junk. Most folks don’t realize that glass they throw in their recycling is often going to the landfill because they live too far away from a glass manufacturer for it to be economical to use. I don’t say this as someone who is suggesting we not think about consumption but rather it’s a fake feeling that it’s going somewhere other than the landfill. I would be curious in other countries how economical it really is to recycle.my favorite is Japan where some areas will incinerate certain qualities of plastic for energy. I think that is a useful way to reuse it.

reactordev 11mo ago
I learned this a decade ago when I learned that a lot of recycling lots were bought by China and other countries who are no longer buying our recyclables. Probably for the reasons you mentioned. Metals are about the only thing worth recycling. Everything else, the transportation costs out weigh the economics. That said, there are smaller plastic filament recyclers that are making their way onto the market that I’m super keen on. Being able to take plastics, shred them up, put them in this extruder and make a new filament spool for printing is awesome.
- InMice 11mo ago
  Is that form of plastic reuse really all that great? Perhaps new plastic doesn't need to get produced. But it's still plastic and it's still going to just shed microplastics everywhere and eventually end up in a landfill.
howmayiannoyyou 11mo ago
No. Its a mixed bag. Metals, eWaste, Batteries ... all profitable to recycle. Paper & cardboard ... depends on market price. Plastics ... depends on oil prices, market price and type of plastic. Tires ... usually profitable, usually involves a hauling fee. AMP's robotic solution is going to face immense competition from general edge models, probably very soon. The mechanical piece is simple engineering. All the magic is (was) recognition.
- infecto 11mo ago
  It is a mixed bag but the way it’s handled and marketed in the US is absolutely a sham. Consumers are led to feel good that they are recycling when often that item is getting tossed in the landfill. But your callouts don’t make sense to me. Paper is rarely economical. We were mostly shipping it to China for the longest time. Only like 8% of plastics in the US are recycled. Most local waste systems don’t bother because the cost to sort far exceeds the value of the plastic. That’s the sham part and it’s prevalent across the country. The only reason tires work is because of government programs. Again I am not saying recycling is bad but I wish in the US it was clearer and more strict. I would rather my local trash pickup tell me exactly what they want instead of following the propaganda that I can throw in paper and plastics when I know they are mostly throwing those in the dump.
- phil21 11mo ago
  Everything here other than Metals and Tires are basically only useful in the extremes where your inputs are exceedingly clean. Sure, if you somehow have 99.9% cleaned and sorted plastic it can be maybe worth recycling at the margins. Same with paper and cardboard. The quality of these input streams needs to be so good it basically is nonexistent. This might work somewhere like Japan, but in a major US city with "single stream" recycling it's a joke. One person tossing a bag of fast food trash into a recycling bin ruins the entire thing. Or a pizza box. You name it. I'd be surprised if even 10% of the stuff put into the "blue bin" recycling bins here in Chicago actually makes it to recycling. The metals are near 100% since scrappers drive the alleys and scavenge anything of value before it even makes it to the recycling truck. The amount of human labor to make recycling "worth it" makes it uneconomical. Either that labor can be done on the consumer side (like Japan seems to do) - or centralized - but most things only pencil out when you assume this cleaning and sorting labor is effectively free.
SilverElfin 11mo ago
Is repair really economical? I would think the time and money it takes makes that impractical too. Not buying as much stuff feels like the only real solution
jader201 11mo ago
So, as a consumer (in the US), should we just dump everything in a landfill? Or is it still worth it for some things? What about: - Clean paper/cardboard - Plastic grocery bags that go to a separate recycling center How much depends on the local facilities and how they handle it? I’ve tried to “do my part”, but the more I hear people talk about it, the more it sounds like we’re better off just landfilling it all.
- galleywest200 11mo ago
  > Clean paper/cardboard This, plus soiled paper, can go in the "yard waste" bin here in western Washington state where it is sent to an industrial composter.
- throwup238 11mo ago
  > How much depends on the local facilities and how they handle it? None of it. With a few exceptions, non-metals take significantly more energy to recycle than to make from scratch and the end result is lower quality than the recycled material. Since that energy usually comes from fossil fuels, it's just pumping more CO2 in the atmosphere to save a tiny bit of landfill space, which isn't even remotely a pressing issue for our civilization (we have lots of space!) Metals like aluminum and steel take more energy to make from scratch (ore) than to recycle, so they're worth recycling and anywhere from 50-80% of the steel and aluminum feedstock in the world is from scrap metal. It also makes sense to recycle stuff like old tires because those turn into massive ecological hazards when they burn.
  - jltsiren 11mo ago
    There is more to recycling than energy consumption. For example, wood is a limited resource. In many parts of the world, almost all growth outside protected areas is harvested and used. By recycling paper and cardboard, you make wood available for higher-value uses. Household waste is often incinerated. Even if you are not going to recycle glass, it can make sense to separate it from general waste.
    - 11mo ago
lesuorac 11mo ago
To me it seems like the simple solution is to just require sellers to accept disposal of items (or parts of items) they sold. If people started bringing back zillions of plastic bags to Krogers for disposal you bet they'd figure out reduce or re-use real fast.
- seanmcdirmid 11mo ago
  Plastic bags separated from other trash/recycables brought to the store wouldn’t be much of a problem for Kroger. I don’t think consumers would bother unless a deposit was involved.
- wredcoll 11mo ago
  In my state, grocery stores literally do take plastic bags back, they have standardized drop off bins and everything.
  - infecto 11mo ago
    And I have read accounts that some of those stores simply toss them into the garbage in the back.
    - pfdietz 11mo ago
      Plastic film used to be recycled specially where I live. They stopped doing that because there was no market.
pfdietz 11mo ago
Glass is not entirely useless to recycle, but it's marginal. If the goal is to keep it out of landfills, then separating it can make sense, even if the recycling is just downcycling to a lower value use (like road aggregate or fiberglass insulation). I've heard Glass Beach in California is nice; maybe we should create some more of those by dumping waste glass on a shore with wave action and waiting a few decades? (not entirely unserious)
- infecto 11mo ago
  You’re not wrong but the whole story is not being told. For most glass to be recycled and used it needs to go to a processing plant to make the cullet. There are geographical constrains on weight so if you don’t happen to live close enough to one, that glass is going in the landfill my gripe is we have created a catch all recycling is good no matter what.
- wredcoll 11mo ago
  What possible reason is there for keeping glass out of a landfill?
  - edmundsauto 11mo ago
    Landfill space is limited, best only to throw out what cannot be repurposed from a physical space perspective.
  - pfdietz 11mo ago
    Landfills are engineered at some cost to retain nasty liquids and gases that are produced. Glass doesn't need any of that. Or, if you're going to put glass in a landfill, it could be cheaper to put it into a glass-only landfill that wouldn't need those protections. If you're going to burn the waste them removing glass first makes that easier.
  - InMice 11mo ago
    It could otherwise be reused? A lot of glass containers come with a deposit and then are reused once returned. This happens with some glass milk containers (exactly why I dont know). If container shape and size became somewhat standardized this could work better. Glass can be reused while not shedding microplastic everywhere in the process.
softwaredoug 11mo ago
Composting might be more meaningful to the environment then recycling as reduces methane from food decomposing in a landfill. (Methane accounts for 1/3 of global warming)
- ZeroGravitas 11mo ago
  Part of this current article/press release's focus is extracting organic waste from the waste stream for this reason. They convert it to biochar.

by infecto 11mo ago

reactordev 11mo ago

I learned this a decade ago when I learned that a lot of recycling lots were bought by China and other countries who are no longer buying our recyclables. Probably for the reasons you mentioned. Metals are about the only thing worth recycling. Everything else, the transportation costs out weigh the economics. That said, there are smaller plastic filament recyclers that are making their way onto the market that I’m super keen on. Being able to take plastics, shred them up, put them in this extruder and make a new filament spool for printing is awesome.

InMice 11mo ago
Is that form of plastic reuse really all that great? Perhaps new plastic doesn't need to get produced. But it's still plastic and it's still going to just shed microplastics everywhere and eventually end up in a landfill.

howmayiannoyyou 11mo ago

No. Its a mixed bag. Metals, eWaste, Batteries ... all profitable to recycle. Paper & cardboard ... depends on market price. Plastics ... depends on oil prices, market price and type of plastic. Tires ... usually profitable, usually involves a hauling fee. AMP's robotic solution is going to face immense competition from general edge models, probably very soon. The mechanical piece is simple engineering. All the magic is (was) recognition.

infecto 11mo ago
It is a mixed bag but the way it’s handled and marketed in the US is absolutely a sham. Consumers are led to feel good that they are recycling when often that item is getting tossed in the landfill. But your callouts don’t make sense to me. Paper is rarely economical. We were mostly shipping it to China for the longest time. Only like 8% of plastics in the US are recycled. Most local waste systems don’t bother because the cost to sort far exceeds the value of the plastic. That’s the sham part and it’s prevalent across the country. The only reason tires work is because of government programs. Again I am not saying recycling is bad but I wish in the US it was clearer and more strict. I would rather my local trash pickup tell me exactly what they want instead of following the propaganda that I can throw in paper and plastics when I know they are mostly throwing those in the dump.
phil21 11mo ago
Everything here other than Metals and Tires are basically only useful in the extremes where your inputs are exceedingly clean. Sure, if you somehow have 99.9% cleaned and sorted plastic it can be maybe worth recycling at the margins. Same with paper and cardboard. The quality of these input streams needs to be so good it basically is nonexistent. This might work somewhere like Japan, but in a major US city with "single stream" recycling it's a joke. One person tossing a bag of fast food trash into a recycling bin ruins the entire thing. Or a pizza box. You name it. I'd be surprised if even 10% of the stuff put into the "blue bin" recycling bins here in Chicago actually makes it to recycling. The metals are near 100% since scrappers drive the alleys and scavenge anything of value before it even makes it to the recycling truck. The amount of human labor to make recycling "worth it" makes it uneconomical. Either that labor can be done on the consumer side (like Japan seems to do) - or centralized - but most things only pencil out when you assume this cleaning and sorting labor is effectively free.

SilverElfin 11mo ago

Is repair really economical? I would think the time and money it takes makes that impractical too. Not buying as much stuff feels like the only real solution

jader201 11mo ago

So, as a consumer (in the US), should we just dump everything in a landfill? Or is it still worth it for some things? What about: - Clean paper/cardboard - Plastic grocery bags that go to a separate recycling center How much depends on the local facilities and how they handle it? I’ve tried to “do my part”, but the more I hear people talk about it, the more it sounds like we’re better off just landfilling it all.

galleywest200 11mo ago
> Clean paper/cardboard This, plus soiled paper, can go in the "yard waste" bin here in western Washington state where it is sent to an industrial composter.
throwup238 11mo ago
> How much depends on the local facilities and how they handle it? None of it. With a few exceptions, non-metals take significantly more energy to recycle than to make from scratch and the end result is lower quality than the recycled material. Since that energy usually comes from fossil fuels, it's just pumping more CO2 in the atmosphere to save a tiny bit of landfill space, which isn't even remotely a pressing issue for our civilization (we have lots of space!) Metals like aluminum and steel take more energy to make from scratch (ore) than to recycle, so they're worth recycling and anywhere from 50-80% of the steel and aluminum feedstock in the world is from scrap metal. It also makes sense to recycle stuff like old tires because those turn into massive ecological hazards when they burn.
- jltsiren 11mo ago
  There is more to recycling than energy consumption. For example, wood is a limited resource. In many parts of the world, almost all growth outside protected areas is harvested and used. By recycling paper and cardboard, you make wood available for higher-value uses. Household waste is often incinerated. Even if you are not going to recycle glass, it can make sense to separate it from general waste.
  - 11mo ago

lesuorac 11mo ago

To me it seems like the simple solution is to just require sellers to accept disposal of items (or parts of items) they sold. If people started bringing back zillions of plastic bags to Krogers for disposal you bet they'd figure out reduce or re-use real fast.

seanmcdirmid 11mo ago
Plastic bags separated from other trash/recycables brought to the store wouldn’t be much of a problem for Kroger. I don’t think consumers would bother unless a deposit was involved.
wredcoll 11mo ago
In my state, grocery stores literally do take plastic bags back, they have standardized drop off bins and everything.
- infecto 11mo ago
  And I have read accounts that some of those stores simply toss them into the garbage in the back.
  - pfdietz 11mo ago
    Plastic film used to be recycled specially where I live. They stopped doing that because there was no market.

pfdietz 11mo ago

Glass is not entirely useless to recycle, but it's marginal. If the goal is to keep it out of landfills, then separating it can make sense, even if the recycling is just downcycling to a lower value use (like road aggregate or fiberglass insulation). I've heard Glass Beach in California is nice; maybe we should create some more of those by dumping waste glass on a shore with wave action and waiting a few decades? (not entirely unserious)

infecto 11mo ago
You’re not wrong but the whole story is not being told. For most glass to be recycled and used it needs to go to a processing plant to make the cullet. There are geographical constrains on weight so if you don’t happen to live close enough to one, that glass is going in the landfill my gripe is we have created a catch all recycling is good no matter what.
wredcoll 11mo ago
What possible reason is there for keeping glass out of a landfill?
- edmundsauto 11mo ago
  Landfill space is limited, best only to throw out what cannot be repurposed from a physical space perspective.
- pfdietz 11mo ago
  Landfills are engineered at some cost to retain nasty liquids and gases that are produced. Glass doesn't need any of that. Or, if you're going to put glass in a landfill, it could be cheaper to put it into a glass-only landfill that wouldn't need those protections. If you're going to burn the waste them removing glass first makes that easier.
- InMice 11mo ago
  It could otherwise be reused? A lot of glass containers come with a deposit and then are reused once returned. This happens with some glass milk containers (exactly why I dont know). If container shape and size became somewhat standardized this could work better. Glass can be reused while not shedding microplastic everywhere in the process.

softwaredoug 11mo ago

Composting might be more meaningful to the environment then recycling as reduces methane from food decomposing in a landfill. (Methane accounts for 1/3 of global warming)

ZeroGravitas 11mo ago
Part of this current article/press release's focus is extracting organic waste from the waste stream for this reason. They convert it to biochar.