[HN Gopher] Plastic recycling remains a 'myth': Greenpeace study
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Plastic recycling remains a 'myth': Greenpeace study
Author : samizdis
Score : 332 points
Date : 2022-10-24 09:17 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| There was a thing on NPR a while ago. It basically claimed that
| plastic recycling was invented as PR strategy by the oil/plastic
| industry. When you look at the facts it makes sense.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| Isn't plastic going to landfills pretty close to carbon capture?
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Switzerland (well, at least Geneva and cantons around it)
| doesn't even separate plastic waste apart from few very
| specific plastic bottles. For the rest, just put it into
| general garbage, no false feeling of helping planet when in
| reality doing the opposite.
|
| One can't really suspect swiss to be lazy or cheap on anything,
| in contrary. I don't know details about general waste lifecycle
| here but it seems other places could take some inspiration and
| focus energy and resources on more sane parts of waste
| processing.
| helen___keller wrote:
| If you assume the that the plastic production happens
| regardless and look at the end outcomes for the already-created
| plastic, i would say yes. But in that context, recycling could
| (in theory) reduce the demand for further plastic production so
| it's still better.
|
| Still, if we're looking at comparative effort for GHG
| reduction, I agree in principle that landfilled plastic might
| as well be considered nearly carbon neutral: extracting oil,
| creating plastic, then landfilling the plastic is a "closed
| loop" in the sense that the carbon starts in the ground and
| ends in the ground (minus waste in the intermediate processes,
| of course). It's not "sustainable" because we don't have
| infinite oil, but it's not going to be the primary cause for
| climate change.
|
| This is in contrast to using fossil fuels for energy and
| transportation, wherein we extract oil/gas from the earth and
| then burn it to transform into heat, electricity, or kinetic
| energy for your car. In all of these, the carbon's end state is
| in the atmosphere, which is worse than a landfill.
|
| To that end, I would much rather spend effort tackling petrol
| cars, oil and gas heated homes, and fossil fuel power plants.
| Plastic is an ugly problem, but not the worst problem.
| mort96 wrote:
| If the plastic is made from CO2 in the air, sure. But plastic
| is generally made from oil that's freshly pumped out of the
| ground.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| Where do I invest in CO2, carbon negative plastics? :)
| johnkpaul wrote:
| If it was coming from the atmosphere and not underground, I
| could see the analogy. Currently it starts from oil that's
| already"captured" in this sense.
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| Plastic recycling was never real, it was just sticking it all
| into a shipping container and sending it to China. All that fell
| apart a few years before covid when China stopped accepting
| America's garbage. After that everything started going into
| incinerators and landfills because paying local people to
| properly sort and clean plastics so they CAN be recycled just
| costs too much.
| moneycantbuy wrote:
| anyone know what percentage of plastic we put in the recycling
| bin actually succeeds in becoming recycled?
| PainfullyNormal wrote:
| These guys are doing a better job of it than most governments[0].
| It's amazing the variety of items these guys are able to create
| out of used plastic bottles.
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrothersMake/videos
| londons_explore wrote:
| The general pattern is that plastic items cannot be made into
| the same kind of items 2nd time around.
|
| Plastic bags require pure refined plastic so they don't have
| random holes and thick spots in.
|
| But then you can melt down 1000 bags into a big lump and use
| that as a chair...
| Ekaros wrote:
| And how would such chair compare to your standard injection
| moulded chair from mostly pristine materials? From whole
| lifecycle perspective.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Typically it is _much_ heavier. Like 5x the weight.
|
| For example it might look like this:
| https://www.recycledfurniture.co.uk/Benches-and-
| Seating/Park...
|
| And obviously a heavier product has itself a larger
| environmental impact when it finally comes to be disposed
| of - weight is a rough proxy for environmental impact.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Plastic bottles are pure PET, the easiest to recycle type of
| plastic along with HDPE. Unfortunately, many if not most
| everyday plastics are much trickier.
| snehk wrote:
| I don't want to be a Debbie Downer but what about this is
| revolutionary here? They're making plastic items on a really
| small scale using plastic. I'd also guess that the energy
| they're using for this is causing more environmental pollution
| than they save through reusing the plastic. This doesn't look
| like a net benefit at all.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| In my country they used to ship everything to China. Now they
| ship it to Turkey for recycling. Out of sight out of mind...
|
| There's always someone desperate enough.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| Genuine question: how much does plastic recycling benefit us? My
| understanding was that producing new plastic is quite energy
| efficient and only contributes to under 5% of global carbon
| emissions, which is pretty impressive for the amount of plastic
| we make.
|
| I'm all for eliminating single use plastics where sensible to do
| so, and arguably the possible biological effects of plastic
| should make us consider reducing overall plastic usage,
| sustainable or otherwise.
| Amezarak wrote:
| We focus way too much on carbon emissions. There are a lot of
| other environmental disasters impacting everyone on earth.
| 9dev wrote:
| People need something easy to grasp, or they will flat-out
| ignore a topic. So news outlets pick out a simple, easily
| digestible factoid that can be measured - like carbon
| emissions. It's great! You can even calculate the "carbon
| footprint" of a single person. No matter that isn't correct
| anyway, as long as it makes you feel good when buying your
| electric SUV.
| Symmetry wrote:
| Relatively little. Glass and aluminium recycling are a huge
| boost in energy efficiency compared to the alternative but
| plastic and paper recycling a pretty marginal. Trying to
| recycle paper doesn't really have any downsides but trying to
| recycle plastic might result in it ending up in the ocean
| rather than a landfill so I think that, unless you've
| researched your local recycling infrastructure and trust it,
| its better to just throw plastic out.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| I'm realizing how messed up it is that we probably polluted the
| earth more by fake recycling schemes that just shipped it
| overseas (fossil fuels moving it, lots of it ending up in the
| ocean), instead of just burying it in a landfill.
| gruez wrote:
| Are there any cases of this actually happening? There was a
| NPR story a few years ago about how counties/cities started
| landfilling recycling because it became too expensive, but I
| haven't heard of the opposite (eg. cities paying recyclers
| money for the sake of recycling).
| jcynix wrote:
| Burying plastic in landfills? That would be a waste of
| resources, as it could at least be burned in power plants as
| a second use, if it cannot be recycled.
| automatic6131 wrote:
| No, it's an excellent use. Burning it produces all kinds of
| toxins from impurities and carbon. Landfill is
| comparatively small, and concentrates plastics for
| potentially later extraction, if plastics ever become
| sufficiently valuable - or recycling sufficiently viable.
| yarky wrote:
| > Burning it produces all kinds of toxins from impurities
| and carbon.
|
| Which can be trapped/filtered to avoid pollution.
|
| > if plastics ever become sufficiently valuable - or
| recycling sufficiently viable.
|
| If that was remotely probable, you'd have banks offering
| plastic-storage related ETFs already.
| yboris wrote:
| My guess about "can be trapped/filtered" is _in theory_
| and possibly, with a lot of effort, in practice. But then
| of course -- how much easier it is (and how much more
| financially-incentivized it is) to let the pollution out
| rather than to filter it.
|
| We need good incentives with a system that self-corrects;
| we need to stop playing whack-a-mole with easily-known-
| ahead-of-time problems and implement good systems.
| smileysteve wrote:
| Modern island nations (Japan being one of the first) have
| been doing clean incineration through Arc Reactors /
| Plasma gasification for energy for decades.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification
| bm-rf wrote:
| I was curious as to how effective scrubbing was, turns
| out Packed Tower Wet Scrubbers can filter out 99%+ of
| VOCs from incinerated plastic. You still get carbon
| emissions however.
| jcynix wrote:
| > You still get carbon emissions however.
|
| Yes and no. If the energy is recycled (for heating
| buildings and/or water) you'll reduce carbon emissions
| from coal/gas/oil. Waste incineration (instead of
| landfills) is a thing in various European countries and
| the heat can (and will) be used to heat buildings or the
| steam drives turbines to generate electricity.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incineration
| mschuster91 wrote:
| At the scale humanity is using plastics, 99% is lacking
| after-comma 9s in orders of magnitude. We're at 400
| million tons of plastic waste a year [1], so even 1%
| inefficiency means that the VOCs of 4 million tons end up
| in the environment.
|
| Yes, it's better than burning it outright in open fire
| pits (as it's done in an awful lot of "third world"
| countries to concentrate metals out of the waste), but
| it's way worse than a dump yard. And most of the places
| that have a lot of plastics waste don't have the
| resources to install decent scrubbers, much less perfect
| scrubbers.
|
| [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/recycling-
| global-stat...
| melling wrote:
| 5%? 100,000 commercial flights a day, every day of the year
| contributes 2%. Actually, maybe that's all of aviation,
| including all those private jets people complain about.
|
| Then we have all this discussion of plastic in our food and
| water.
|
| Genuine question: why are we even having this discussion?
|
| In the third decade of the 21st century, common sense ain't so
| common
| mrpopo wrote:
| Because the issue of plastic waste isn't about the carbon
| emissions? Only you and OP brought that up.
| ubercow13 wrote:
| Yes because they are low. The reason it is relevant is
| because a plastic alternative may create more emissions.
| Carbon isn't the issue with plastic but it is an issue with
| possible solutions.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Kind of the point, though. To the extent those other issues
| are competing for attention and willpower with carbon
| emissions in public and political consciousness, we should
| pretty much ignore them until the climate situation is
| resolved.
|
| A turtle occasionally eating a plastic bag for breakfast is
| a bad thing, but the turtles wouldn't be happy if they knew
| they're about to die off because we're distracting
| ourselves with bans on single-use bags and plastic straws.
| lm28469 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_pollution
| some_random wrote:
| Lets be real here, within a rounding error none of that was
| going to be recycled. Metal recycling is incredibly efficient
| and profitable but there's still metal that's dumped and not
| recycled.
| cjblomqvist wrote:
| It's probably a lot easier to burn than recycling it
| though... If the problem is the waste
| lm28469 wrote:
| I'm under the impression that burning it simply displace
| the problem from land to air, it's still pollution/waste.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Sort of. CO2 wise it's worse burning. But free floating
| plastic creates problems from toxic addivites causing
| hormonal problems, and from the microplastics (which all
| plastic degrades to in the ocean eventually) clogging the
| stomachs of krill etc.
|
| Burning the plastic in a properly fitted plant largely
| "cleans" the toxic additives by burning them too.
|
| Plastic in nature will eventually turn into CO2, just
| slower and with a lot of bad side-effects.
|
| "Recycling" the plastic has been shown to instead be sold
| to whatever-place-du-jour which ignores laws. Often it's
| burned in open pits, creating _both_ immediate CO2
| release, as well as _new_ toxins created in the imperfect
| burning, and leaching of the old toxins, as well as large
| chunks of unburnt plastic floating in the wind.
|
| And burning plastic is a waste, but a lesser waste,
| because it's turned into some electricity.
|
| Upholding recycling structures for plastic also creates a
| false sense of "this is fine". Instead, it should be
| treated as low-level-dangerous refuse which should be
| burnt and only used for applications where this trade-off
| is acceptable.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| The specific question was about recycling.
|
| Whether we recycle, landfill or incinerate, I'm not sure what
| difference that makes to plastic pollution. To deal with
| plastic pollution, we need to reduce overall plastic usage
| and improve collection and waste management.
| [deleted]
| lm28469 wrote:
| Pretty sure the plastic your recycle has less chance to end
| up in the ocean, soil, your body, &c.
| scatters wrote:
| Compared to burning it?
| HPsquared wrote:
| Counterintuitively, recycling plastic tends to involve
| shipping plastic waste long distances and trading in the
| waste. Incinerating or burying it is simpler and more
| reliable.
|
| From the wiki article: "The trade in plastic waste has
| been identified as "a main culprit" of marine litter."
| gruez wrote:
| >Counterintuitively, recycling plastic tends to involve
| shipping plastic waste long distances and trading in the
| waste.
|
| Only 2% of plastic waste is traded between countries.
| Further, most of that is traded within the same region,
| so the amount of waste that's shipped across "long
| distances" is probably under 1%.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-waste-trade
| sokoloff wrote:
| If one of those strategies can be done locally and another
| requires long distance transport and multiple on/off-loads,
| I can see how the local one will have less lost to leakage.
| That might be even more true in communities that assign
| high priority to less leakage and/or where the process
| produces energy or other economic benefit for every ton.
|
| Moving and handling waste plastic less is a form of
| improving waste management.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| The rate of new production is an upper limit on plastic
| pollution. Produce less and there is less to leak out into
| the environment.
|
| If you're still using the plastic, then it's not currently
| degrading in the ocean.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| > If you're still using the plastic, then it's not
| currently degrading in the ocean.
|
| I'm curious why the ocean appears to be the terminal
| destination for plastics. After I throw it in the rubbish
| bin, which mechanism transports it to the pacific?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| NOAA has you covered.
|
| A lot of it starts in the ocean; fishing gear and stuff
| falling off ships are big sources.
| https://marinedebris.noaa.gov/where-does-marine-debris-
| come/...
|
| Of the stuff that starts on land, it's often carried
| there by wind and river:
| https://marinedebris.noaa.gov/where-does-marine-debris-
| come/...
| aetherson wrote:
| It's not! Landfills work fine.
|
| Ocean microplastic is overwhelmingly caused by countries
| that actually just throw their plastic in rivers. The US
| contributes a very small percentage of all environmental
| microplastic (like somewhere under 2%, maybe much under
| that).
| myshpa wrote:
| A lot of microplastics also gets into the water from our
| clothing - one vector is via washing & drying machines.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| Plastic clothing should also be taxed to take into
| account externalities until natural, sustainable fibers
| are price competitive.
|
| Specific to washing machines, I wonder if there is an
| option for a micro plastic filter?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Plastic microbeads in cosmetics, as well.
| aetherson wrote:
| Here's a good article on the subject:
| https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-waste-trade
| bbarnett wrote:
| Because people try to recycle it, it gets shipped to a
| port, put on a barge, and lots falls off? Or it just gets
| dumped, when being sent overseas for "recycling"?
|
| I've said for decades, that each bit of plastic made, is
| less plastic used as fuel. Create the plastic, then
| after, bury it deep in a plastic landfill. It came from
| deep in the Earth, back it can go.
|
| Meanwhile, people have wild schemes to put CO2 deep in
| the Earth, and that's OK? When not used plastic?
| sidibe wrote:
| I'm not against burying plastic but the amount of carbon
| that's going to contain isn't going to make a big impact
| in terms of CO2 vs burying timber or other stuff that's
| much easier to collect in significant mass.
| [deleted]
| Symmetry wrote:
| Honestly I'm happy to have plastic production locking up
| hydrocarbons in a long term stable form to keep it out of the
| atmosphere where it might otherwise end up.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Like climate change, there's no scientific consensus.
|
| The mainstream scientists, European governments, China etc all
| think that recycling plastic is better than burning or landfill
| for reasons they've documented in depth in multiple Lifecycle
| Analysis papers and meta reviews of LCAs.
|
| But, there is a very loud minority, funded by the same network
| of think-tanks representing fossil fuel interests that fund
| climate change deniers who say this is all nonsense and really
| everything you've been told by the "consensus" actually either
| does nothing, or actively makes things worse, so you might as
| well keep using and burning fossil fuels.
| eropple wrote:
| This post reads more in line with what it seems like you're
| actually saying with some sarcastiquotes around "no
| scientific consensus".
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Plastic recycling is (like most environmental "progress"), a case
| of people pretending a lot is being done while actually nothing
| is being done.
|
| Lots of places mark things recyclable when they are not.
| Governments refuse to require proper labelling or better yet tax
| or ban non-recyclable plastics. Companies routinely lie about the
| recycled content of their plastic. Municipalities insist waste is
| sorted, then just throw it all in the same landfill.
|
| You've heard of security theatre? We have recycling theatre and
| emissions agreement theatre and 101 other similar stitch-ups
| helen___keller wrote:
| It can be compelling to think that recycling theatre exists for
| commercial interests: for the environmentally minded, if you
| can fool yourself into thinking that the recycling bin is
| effective, then you feel no guilt about buying multiple drinks
| in plastic cups and bottles every day.
|
| Without the plastic containers, many sources of revenue
| disappear. People are conditioned to pay for plastic water
| bottles, but often expect water fountains to be free.
|
| As a wealthy consumer, it's much more convenient to buy a
| bottle of water when I need it, rather than carry a metal
| bottle with me everywhere for when I need it (and then refill
| at water fountains). The $1 cost of the bottle is negligible to
| me, so the only thing holding me back is the guilt of knowing
| that I am contributing to unsustainable economic practices.
|
| In truth however, the same could be said for the meat I eat,
| the car I drive every day, my luxurious single family home with
| grass lawn, the luxurious levels of heating / AC I use every
| year, and so on. Very little of what I consume is 'sustainable'
| so even if we didn't have recycling theatre it's easy to get
| sustainability fatigue and buy the plastic bottle of water
| anyways.
| cpascal wrote:
| I often wonder if it is currently more environmentally
| responsible to dispose of plastics in the trash rather than the
| recycling. If we can't recycle plastic or it ends up in the
| ocean/waterways, then landfill seems like a better alternative.
| Bellamy wrote:
| > She named Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Unilever and Nestle as prime
| offenders.
|
| People could vote for their money.
| lozenge wrote:
| Which has worked approximately once in all of the history of
| capitalism. (Boycott of apartheid South Africa).
|
| Only the political system can deliver systemic change. It has
| managed to use money to insulate itself from the will of the
| people, though.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Or only buy their products that are plastic-free (like aluminum
| cans). It doesn't feel as just, but the reality is companies
| respond better to underperforming products than to boycotts.
| zumu wrote:
| We need to be careful about this narrative as we risk throwing
| the baby out with the bathwater. Keeping pushing "recycling
| plastic" is useless and people are going to stop recycling all
| around. The real message here should be to focus on PET and HDPE
| and for local recyclers to be more transparent about what
| plastics they can recycle. Reuse is good and all, but it's not
| the whole solution. Single use plastics aren't going anywhere.
|
| Since China banned imports of waste, Japan has been working on
| improving recycling capabilities at home. They collect something
| like 86% of their plastics properly sorted and are developing new
| more readily recyclable plastics. We should follow their lead.
| kinnth wrote:
| Why are plastics 3-7 allowed if they are unable to be recycled?
| Also it seems to me that a tax on plastic might incentivise glass
| and metal usage. Plastic is only used for convenience and
| cheapness, let's make it less convenient and cheap than glass and
| metal.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| > a tax on plastic
|
| How it making it a profit centre for the government gonna fix
| anything?
| diab0lic wrote:
| It makes it more expensive for those using it, thus making
| alternatives more appealing.
| slothtrop wrote:
| What alternatives?
| dboreham wrote:
| Because the entire purpose of the numbered markings is to allow
| more plastic to be sold. It's a psyop designed to prevent
| outrage at the waste and pollution from single-use containers
| from reducing sales. Any actual recycling done is incidental to
| the primary goal.
| robocat wrote:
| Rubbish. You think that having no numbering is better? The
| numbered markings are necessary to enable recycling.
|
| The real problem is that trashing waste is often the least
| worst solution for our environment. Expensive "green"
| packaging and recycling, are too often actually worse for the
| environment. Feel good movements that kill the planet
| quicker.
|
| To fix the actual problem requires giving up our nice things,
| or reducing population. Neither of those are palatable
| solutions, so we all go along with greenwashing denialism.
| e_i_pi_2 wrote:
| I agree with this as a general solution - if it's
| easier/cheaper to do the bad thing, then we use law/taxes to
| change the incentives.
|
| Here's a couple counterarguments I hear a lot:
|
| 1) "Personal responsibility - if people choose to do the wrong
| thing that's on them". I think we've seen that choices are
| influenced by the environment and not largely within the
| control of any random individual. People are rational actors
| relative to their situation but that can often mean choices
| that aren't rational in a larger context.
|
| 2) "Too expensive - some people need the cheaper to produce
| products". I think this is where markets are useful, we should
| be able to switch up the landscape and have the gaps filled. I
| think the big risk here is not having appropriate social safety
| nets in place to cover people while there are still gaps.
|
| 3) "Laws should be about what's 'right', not a way to control
| people". This seems like ultimately the same thing, someone
| decides what's 'right' and then makes it a law so other people
| will do it. We generally agree murder is wrong but it get's a
| lot more hazy with stuff like taxes and clear that it's a way
| to incentivize behavior.
| bandie91 wrote:
| it annoys me a lot: media appeals to personal responsibility
| a lot; people in my area disregards those who ostendebly
| cares for sustainability, saying they're weird as not
| following the herd, and "one single man can not switch the
| tide" attitude. which if you respond to like "why don't you
| do it too?" - they reply "others would reckon me weird"; so
| not "because that certain behaviur does not make sense".
| These people calims a heigher power, ie. government, should
| step in and regulate. The same people who gets utterly
| rebelious if they face a slightest little new regulation in
| any area.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| > _" Personal responsibility - if people choose to do the
| wrong thing that's on them"_
|
| Another counter-argument by example: if people choose to
| smoke and I sit in their second-hand smoke I suffer the
| consequences of their actions. Similarly, plastic waste is
| not a problem that stops at the individual.
|
| The whole "personal responsibily" argument has always been a
| lame excuse by companies to offload responsibility to the
| customer.
| seydor wrote:
| Plastic is a great material superior to glass & metal (for a
| world where every product is shipped to destination). Its mass
| production and lack of reuse is the problem
| [deleted]
| karaterobot wrote:
| > Why are plastics 3-7 allowed if they are unable to be
| recycled?
|
| I know you read the article, but there is a paragraph where
| they note that types 3-7 _can_ be recycled, but that facilities
| to do so are not available to a substantial majority of people.
| That might be why they have the recycling symbol on them.
|
| They also note, somewhat oddly, that the product of this
| recycling is not used for anything. Odd, because it seems like
| being used to create other materials is really the most
| important aspect of being recyclable. Maybe they should have
| lead with that?
| gruez wrote:
| >Why are plastics 3-7 allowed if they are unable to be
| recycled?
|
| Why shouldn't they be allowed? There are many non-plastic
| things that can't be recycled either. Why should plastic be
| singled out? As long as the proper disposal costs are being
| paid (ie. burial at an EPA regulated landfill), I don't see any
| problems.
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| > Plastic is only used for convenience and cheapness, let's
| make it less convenient and cheap than glass and metal.
|
| Plastic is cheap and convenient, but its material properties
| are also advantageous. It's lightweight, allowing more actual
| product to be transported on trucks. If it breaks, it doesn't
| make a dangerous mess the way glass does.
|
| We should absolutely work to reduce, reuse, and recycle, in
| that order of priority, but we need to recognize that other
| costs exist too, such as more product being damaged and more
| higher transportation costs (monetary and pollution wise).
|
| All that said, I agree companies respond to incentives, and
| given sufficient costs, they would lean towards more recyclable
| products.
| wkearney99 wrote:
| It doesn't make as immediately a dangerous mess, that's true.
| Long term though, it's markedly worse.
| tomp wrote:
| > We should absolutely work to reduce, reuse, and recycle,
|
| No, we shouldn't.
|
| We should primarily work on scaling up our energy production.
| I was long in favour of nuclear, although apparently there's
| some exciting development in deep geothermal as well.
| (inspired by https://elidourado.com/blog/geothermal/ )
|
| We shouldn't even try recycling the plastic, but simply burry
| it. Oil from the ground, plastic back into the ground.
|
| With enough energy and a viable waste management process in
| place, we don't need to bother with reducing, reusing or
| recycling, but can simply enjoy our lives to the fullest.
| thecrash wrote:
| The invention of breakthrough energy sources are not being
| blocked by efforts to reduce, reuse, and recycle. They're
| being blocked by difficult thermodynamics, engineering, and
| materials problems.
|
| I'm hopeful, but as far as we know it could take many
| hundreds of years to solve these problems - they might even
| be practically unsolvable. So it makes sense to also hedge
| our bets by making the systems we currently depend on more
| sustainable, rather than just assume we will transcend them
| on-schedule.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| How about we at least "work to reduce, reuse, and recycle"
| _until_ we have energy scaled up sufficiently to do what
| you describe?
| alfor wrote:
| I think that's a counterpoint we need to hear more to the
| current 'reduction' narrative.
|
| Small nudge to push innovation in a positive direction is
| an important tool, but we are getting overboard with
| control and regulation.
|
| Here in Quebec the law forbid plastic bags in stores, but
| plasticulture, packaging is a far worse problem, the law is
| virtue signaling instead of pushing for meaningful changes.
|
| There is strong case to be made for progress, more energy,
| more food, more housing for the whole planet.
|
| In a 100 years we will be so far away in technology that
| our current problem will seem like a joke.
|
| But I think it important to be careful with things that
| could never recover: ocean and land diversity,
| contamination of groundwater/soil.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| > In a 100 years we will be so far away in technology
| that our current problem will seem like a joke.
|
| Why do you believe this? It seems to me that our
| production of waste and environment destruction has been
| basically directly tied to our technological progress.
| Why assume that would change in the next 100 years?
| dalbasal wrote:
| Many "green laws" like plastic bags are signaling>effect.
| This is true. Sometimes this is even recognised.
| Awareness-raising and such.
|
| That said, externalities don't generally get solved
| without laws. I totally agreed that human progress,
| technological and otherwise cannot be ignored.
|
| On plastics... It's undeniably true that a large portion
| of the garbage you might find in the woods, streets,
| fields, lakes or oceans is plastic. Meanwhile, a lot of
| landfills and other waste disposal systems suck. They
| pollute by design, aren't used properly or designed
| correctly.
|
| It's also true that a lot of that plastic is pretty low
| value... It doesn't add much to a consumers' wellbeing.
| If it wasn't available, we'd find alternatives and be
| fine. Not all the plastic. Some is good value and some is
| essential. Most though
|
| So... people look at all this mess. Some say " _we should
| just stop making /using it._" Others want to stop
| littering and improve waste disposal. In our inspired
| age, a common take is " _market correcting_. " Try to
| internalize externality costs and " _let the market
| work._ "
|
| None of these are unreasonable. Lame or failed attempts
| at implementing them are not disproofs of concept.
| They're just failed attempts... and "politics" is often
| to blame, making everyone extra upset about the whole
| thing.
|
| So, yes, I agree. We are progressing technologically, and
| that is very relevant if we're talking about ecological
| issues. OTOH, for all our current might, we're pretty
| impotent when it comes to simple basics like garbage. If
| plastics did not exist, we'd forgo the convenience of
| using plastic. We'd gain an end to our plastic waste
| problems.
|
| So perhaps/probably there are ways of ending our plastic
| waste problem that are more efficient. If they are
| higher, than it makes sense to just ban plastic. Where
| are they? Why haven't they happened? The cost ceiling
| isn't that high. Low performance.
| smileysteve wrote:
| > We shouldn't even try recycling the plastic, but simply
| burry it.
|
| We can burn it in an arc reactor or properly filtered
| incinerator at a lower price than raw oil to produce energy
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| The second law still applies no matter where you get the
| heat. GHG is a problem because it reduces the earth's
| ability to reject waste heat by several tens of joules for
| every joule of work we get.
|
| Simply moving tens of joules of heat to the surface would
| have the same effect even if doing it affordably weren't
| scifi.
|
| There's a limited budget of everything on earth's surface
| from metals to waste heat to space and we're running head
| first into all of them.
|
| We could spend it on allowing a tiny portion of the world
| to be wasteful and craven, or we could use it for everyone
| to thrive.
| tomp wrote:
| LOL no. Humanity's heat sources (burning fossil fuels,
| fission, geothermal) are a drop in the bucket compared to
| solar irradiation and the resulting heat.
| birksherty wrote:
| > other costs exist too
|
| This is the problem that is destroying the planet. It should
| not be about capitalism.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Some of those costs are the pollution and energy used to
| produce and transport plastic alternatives. That is not
| capitalism, it is economics. The secondary affects can
| offset the benefit of the original intent.
| ericmay wrote:
| One issue I see is that even when the advantages of plastic
| are practically non-existent people will still demand its use
| either out convenience or habit. Plastic bags come to mind as
| an obvious culprit. There are others though, too.
|
| My pet theory is that we're basically stripping the planet of
| all of the good, usable materials for "stuff" and plastic is
| a nice stop-gap to keep prices low. We don't do a good job of
| recognizing how inflation is tied to resource depletion.
| bagacrap wrote:
| isn't convenience a practical benefit? Cost as well,
| particularly for lower income individuals.
|
| Plastic bags actually are practically superior to the
| alternatives in many ways. They are stronger, smaller and
| more water resistant than paper. They may use less material
| per trip than reusable bags which take ~50x more resources
| but are still prone to eventual breakage.
|
| Basically everything about one time use plastics is
| amazing, except the potential for environmental harm.
| phil21 wrote:
| I'm not convinced plastic bag bans save the environment
| much in terms of co2 production or oil use or whatnot.
|
| However - since the bag ban has been enacted here in
| Chicago, the amount of plastic bag litter is noticeably
| less.
|
| Worth banning something? Maybe, maybe not. But I'd take
| an educated guess that more plastic is reaching landfills
| vs. waterways due to it - even if the total amount of
| plastic is more overall.
| skipants wrote:
| I'd say the alternative is cloth reusable bags rather
| than paper. It's what I use.
|
| It's stronger and easier to handle than plastic; you just
| need to remember to bring one with you. My partner keeps
| one in her bag permanently in case she shops on a whim.
| smileysteve wrote:
| Cloth (cotton synthetic blends) take more energy and
| water than both plastic and paper.
|
| But if you can reuse for !years! Are worth the price.
|
| Personally, i reuse a backpack from high school (20 years
| ago) with a mended zipper. I can carry about 20lbs in it.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| >even when the advantages of plastic are practically non-
| existent people will still demand its use either out
| convenience or habit.
|
| Or, if manufactures / retailers / etc adopted other options
| would consumers simply adapt? The problem here is supply
| side not demand side - consumers have few choices.
| SamPatt wrote:
| Are you saying the current problems with inflation are
| caused by resource depletion, or that this is possible in
| theory?
|
| I'd be interested in any evidence of the former claim.
| jl6 wrote:
| Inflation is a complex problem that probably has multiple
| contributing factors, but one of those factors is the
| cost of energy, and one of the drivers of energy cost is
| the depletion of easily accessible fossil fuels.
| ericmay wrote:
| I wouldn't say current problems because those are largely
| due to absurdly poor fiscal policy under the Trump
| administration [1], but just in general. I have no
| "evidence", just a pet theory/observation.
|
| The theory (and it may be a shit one, and I have no good
| claims here besides it's fun to discuss) goes like this,
| back in the day you could get real hardwood pretty cheap.
| You could build brick homes. Etc. Now you can't (i.e.
| it's very expensive) and that is reflected in ongoing
| inflation of the money supply and partially why we
| decoupled from gold. New technologies and materials can
| create substitute products, of course, but for many
| natural resources I think we're basically stripping or
| have stripped the planet for the time being. Think
| lobster and salmon, hardwood furniture, pollution, etc.
|
| [1] https://www.propublica.org/article/national-debt-
| trump
| nightski wrote:
| It's interesting if you read that article you posted the
| trend was pretty normal until COVID which speaks volumes.
| They blame it on the tax cut but the data just doesn't
| align with that theory. Specifically the chart at https:/
| /assets-c3.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo80...
|
| In reality the president doesn't control the budget. They
| influence it through an agenda but it's ultimately up to
| congress. Congress passed a lot of stimulus in response
| to the pandemic and much of it was bi-partisan.
| ericmay wrote:
| Well, yes and no. We can see that during his
| administration the deficit was already increasing quite a
| bit in relative terms even before the pandemic.
|
| > When Trump took office in January 2017, the nonpartisan
| Congressional Budget Office was projecting that federal
| budget deficits would be 2% to 3% of our gross domestic
| product during Trump's term. Instead, the deficit reached
| nearly 4% of gross domestic product in 2018 and 4.6% in
| 2019.
|
| > There were multiple culprits. Trump's tax cuts,
| especially the sharp reduction in the corporate tax rate
| to 21% from 35%, took a big bite out of federal revenue.
| The CBO estimated in 2018 that the tax cut would increase
| deficits by about $1.9 trillion over 11 years.
|
| COVID-19 certainly didn't help, and you are correct that
| stimulus was largely bipartisan, but in common discussion
| "blame" for spending is usually assigned to the president
| and their administration. This can be observed by current
| members of Congress (Republicans) who have been quick to
| suggest that Biden has created a huge deficit, inflation,
| etc. while it's not only untrue but was largely due to
| actions from the previous administration or Congress
| before he was president. (In other words for every
| representative complaining about inflation they should be
| posting that they were the ones who actually voted for
| it).
|
| If we were being truthful we wouldn't do this, but if
| we're going to continue to suggest that the deficit is
| (whatever insane things people are making up right now to
| blame Biden on) then it would make no sense to not
| instead blame any financial problems on the previous
| administration and keep assigning blame to the President.
|
| W.r.t COVID-19 you can just say the Trump administration
| did a terrible job and mishandled allocations of money
| and that's why the deficit increased so much. I
| personally don't wholly subscribe to that but if
| Republicans are going to blame inflation on Biden it
| makes sense to turn around and blame it all on
| Trump/Republicans instead.
| nightski wrote:
| It's obvious Biden and congress are not primarily
| responsible for inflation, that's a combination of macro
| economic factors as well as the Federal Reserve's drastic
| actions.
|
| But not only did the COVID stimulus continue once the
| dems took control, they continued to pass multi-trillion
| dollar bills (Infrastructure & Inflation Reduction Act)
| along with a half trillion dollar student loan
| forgiveness. It's this aggressive spending, while
| inflation was already rising, that is giving them that
| reputation.
|
| I'm not taking sides here nor do I want anything to do
| with Trump. Just laying it out how I see it.
| smileysteve wrote:
| Not op, but given the supply side constraints (especially
| international with 0 Covid) recycling could have been a
| major solution.
|
| It could still be a major solution. Novelis, an aluminum
| recycler in Georgia, claims $73m of aluminum are sent to
| landfills every year. If the southeast boosted aluminum
| recycling efforts it would drastically increase domestic
| "raw" materials. (Things like pontoon boats were aluminum
| limited).
|
| Then do the same for cardboard (hello toilet paper
| shortage) where recycling paper products reduces energy
| and water inputs by 50%. Countries like Spain have
| cardboard thieves while in the US, it goes to the dump.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Plastic bags are an interesting example. There was a study
| a little while back that plastic bag bans at stores
| resulted in an overall increase use of plastic.
|
| The thinking was that people reused the thin store bags at
| least once (i.e. as a small trash liner for a work desk).
| Without those as an option, people switched to buying
| plastic bags, which were thicker and used much more
| material.
|
| Personally, we always opt for plastic bags at the store,
| and they always get reused once if not many times. Paper
| bags just don't seem to hold up as well for some reason.
| tedivm wrote:
| The problem there is that the law didn't define
| "reusable" bags well enough, so stores just made slightly
| thicker plastic bags and called them reusable even though
| they really aren't. As a result people ended up using the
| same amount of bags but with far more plastic.
| smileysteve wrote:
| Anecdotally, the thicker ones are very reusable; but
| consumers (the 90 percent) are ignorant about reusing and
| recycling.
| cptskippy wrote:
| > The problem there is that the law didn't define
| "reusable" bags well enough
|
| There is no one law, this has occurred independently in
| municipalities across the globe.
| Tagbert wrote:
| I see the benefit of those heavier "reusable" bags as
| coming from the fact that they are less likely to blow
| away and get into the waterways. If you drop one it is
| more likely to be picked up and put in to the trash
| instead of ending up in a turtle's breakfast.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Here in NJ we have a pretty strict plastic bag ban.
|
| It's all gone pretty smooth except for grocery delivery
| services. Instead of using one time use thin plastic
| bags, they now have to use reusable bags. That they never
| reuse. So places like our company that get office
| foodstuffs delivered weekly, end up throwing away stacks
| of thick plastic bags.
|
| Apparently though the legislature is working on a fix for
| this.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| In Singapore it's delivered in cardboard boxes which they
| request you give them when they next deliver. Used to
| give them back each time if they didn't get damaged or
| daughter didn't use it as a car.
| valarauko wrote:
| Same here, but it depends on the delivery service and the
| store. For example, Aldi puts out used cardboard boxes in
| which they received produce for delivery services like
| Instacart to reuse. With warehouse based delivery
| services like from StopandShop they're using the thick
| reusable plastic totes. Unfortunately they're so small
| that you end up getting a dozen of them in a single
| delivery, and you have no hope of using them all, so they
| end up getting tossed.
| williamscales wrote:
| In the delivery-company-on-a-recurring-basis case, they
| could bring fully re-usable packaging (crates or
| something I guess) and then just recover it when they
| come back next week.
|
| When I've been in Europe I've often seen that there are
| no bags except for fully re-usable tote bags that you
| have to pay 1-2EUR for. It really only takes one instance
| of forgetting your own bags to teach the lesson.
| cptskippy wrote:
| > So places like our company that get office foodstuffs
| delivered weekly, end up throwing away stacks of thick
| plastic bags.
|
| Businesses are far and away the biggest offenders when it
| comes to waste in general and particularly plastic waste.
| Getting individuals using reusable bags is fine but
| really doesn't address the biggest offenders.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I forget the stat but you have to reuse those "reusable"
| bags like a thousand times before it becomes a net
| benefit. Even if you do reuse them, you are almost
| certainly not going to reuse it a thousand times before
| it wears out or whatever and you dispose of it.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Only in terms of energy. Even then 1000 seems like a
| suspiciously large amount.
|
| In terms of plastic use the reusable bags are much
| better. It doesn't take too many reuses before a reusable
| bag is a net benefit. Compared to other energy uses the
| plastic bags are a tiny amount so I don't worry too much
| about that.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-936
| 14-...
|
| According to this Danish study a cotton bag has to be
| reused over 7k times.
|
| Most of the reusable bags in grocery stores are
| polypropylene, and those you only have to reuse 37 times.
| So that is better.
| _glass wrote:
| In Germany we switched to paper bags. And I really use
| tote bags, as most people I see in the shops. But why not
| just use paper bags?
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| jhasse wrote:
| rain
| _glass wrote:
| I am living in rainy Hamburg, and it's okay, right?
| zdragnar wrote:
| Paper bags available around here don't always have
| handles. As a result, you either can't carry as many (one
| hand holds a bag from the bottom) or you crumple or tear
| the bag at the top accidentally. Also, they tend to not
| hold as much weight as plastic bags.
|
| What's worse is that they're harder to reuse. Since they
| aren't resistant to water, there are fewer other uses
| that they are good for.
| thenewthotness wrote:
| Paper manufacturing and recycling isn't carbon neutral
| either
| brewdad wrote:
| My paper bags get reused primarily as a place to keep my
| cans and bottles (we have a refundable deposit where I
| live) until I have time to take them to the redemption
| center or give them to one of the local non-profits that
| collects them. I've found the paper bags allow any
| residue to evaporate rather than leaving the cans a
| sticky and, eventually, moldy mess like plastic bags do.
| cnasc wrote:
| New Jersey actually specifically banned paper bags. The
| only option is reusable plastic bags. I would much prefer
| paper.
| blockwriter wrote:
| Are glass and metal actually superior? Is more carbon produced
| transporting heavier glass and metal? Tax everything that is
| inconvenient, and I'm not sure if anything is affordable.
| gs17 wrote:
| They're much more easily recyclable, at least. The continued
| existence of aluminium cans for drinks makes me feel the
| weight can't be that big a dealbreaker, too. I'd imagine a
| lot of plastic in things like packaging simply wouldn't be
| there anymore at all (e.g. getting rid of clamshells for
| paper-based shells), or would be significantly reduced.
| tuatoru wrote:
| Aluminum is worth recycling, but post-consumer paper and
| card is a nightmare to recycle because of all the
| contaminants. Food scraps. Staples and other bits of metal.
| Plastic tapes. Labels. China clay coatings for the printed
| surfaces. (Looking at you, Apple.) Best to just burn it in
| high-temperature furnaces as bio-energy.
| blockwriter wrote:
| I will say that I would be in favor of a blanket ban on
| clothes made with synthetic fibers. An exception could be
| made for winter jackets, wetsuits, and the like, but I
| welcome sartorial tyranny.
| gruez wrote:
| >They're much more easily recyclable, at least.
|
| Yeah but if they end up using more energy, which one should
| we go with?
| warkdarrior wrote:
| The only environmentally friendly way is for each person
| to travel to the place of manufacture on foot, pick up
| the items they want, without any packaging, and then walk
| back to their homes. Nothing else is acceptable!
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Yeah, it's sad because I now consider my recycling bin to just be
| another trash can honestly.
|
| We can only really do cost effective recycling if we transition
| to aluminum only packaging.
| joemaller1 wrote:
| Here's the actual report:
|
| https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/circular-claims-fall-...
|
| Why can't journalists ever link to their sources?
| TheDesolate0 wrote:
| trap_goes_hot wrote:
| To be fair, the article might have been written before that URL
| was up, and/or the writer received the material in a different
| way.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Thank you, this is enormously helpful for having some context
| to add to discussions.
|
| I've talked to a lot of people in recent years who have seen
| these headlines and concluded that all recycling, including
| aluminum and paper products, is actually a lie. We really need
| more clarity around the recycling situation so people stop
| drawing their only conclusions from random headlines.
| Tagbert wrote:
| My understanding is that aluminum is actually recycled at a
| pretty high rate. Metal stock has more value to begin with
| and the process of remelting do not degrade the metal the way
| that plastics are.
| guywithabike wrote:
| News sites have long pushed for regulations that would require
| companies like Google and Facebook to pay for excerpting and
| linking news articles, so part of me wonders if this is an
| intentional policy to avoid being held liable for paying, in
| turn, their sources of information should those regulations
| ever come to pass. Deeply funny to me, honestly.
| culi wrote:
| Interesting hypothesis but I doubt an org like Greenpeace
| would complain about coverage. Same with a lot of research
| published in open access journals
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| I think Guywithabike is saying that phys.org doesn't want
| to have to pay Greenpeace for citing them, should that
| future come to pass of Google paying news sources for
| snippets.
| bilsbie wrote:
| First world problem but
|
| I always ponder what I'd do if we ever stopped recycling plastic.
|
| It would take up so much space in my trash can I'd be emptying
| three times a day. I'm pretty sure I'd still separate the plastic
| and cardboard into a separate bin just for sanity?
| art0rz wrote:
| A new waste processing plant was recently opened near my
| hometown (Amsterdam) which is able to sort plastic from waste
| automatically, so we're able to mix plastic and waste in one
| bin. It's pretty amazing, but plastic packaging can be so bulky
| that my bin has started filling up much faster than before and
| trips to the bin outside have become much more frequent.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| you could still separate internally for your convenience and
| just combine them at the exterior bin, you know
| raspberry1337 wrote:
| How much plastic do you trash per day !?
| pixl97 wrote:
| In theory it could be very little by mass, but a large space
| by volume. There are are any number of clamshell plastic
| containers and Styrofoam replacements covered under this.
| Very hard to crush unless they remain under pressure. In a
| home they commonly require cutting into smaller pieces.
|
| If someone is running a small business from their house the
| amount of trash produced per day can be staggering.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > There are are any number of clamshell plastic containers
| and Styrofoam replacements covered under this.
|
| Not sure where you live, but everywhere I lived does not
| accept these into recycling - so I assume these don't
| account for what the commenter was saying.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Unpopular opinion. We 'Australia' should try and use some of the
| big holes we've dug in remote places to store landfill enmasss.
| If plastic is burried it's not doing much more than it was when
| it was oil.
|
| In parallel, we should look to invent / promote full cycle
| plastics that can fill the gap and see about the economics of
| trying to replace low value plastics with glass and metals where
| we can. I would be all for a tin metal box revival!
| luke0016 wrote:
| > If plastic is burried it's not doing much more than it was
| when it was oil.
|
| Unless it's sequestering something inside. Like water. It
| terrifies me to think about how much water is locked away for
| centuries in bottles underground.
| smileysteve wrote:
| I think about this and drain any water bottle i pickup before
| either recyling or trashing them.
|
| When you realize that a little bit of water in each bottle
| adds up to significant leakage from trash bags, what doesn't
| leak increases transport weight, and then what isn't lost
| landfill will live for ages (if not ruin the landfill liner
| over time)
| gizmo686 wrote:
| We have plenty of water on the surface. Most of it is in the
| ocean. While that is not fresh water, it is where bassically
| all non sequestered water will end up. The limiting factor of
| fresh water is the how quickly the water cycle can produce
| it, which does not decrease if some water gets sequestered
| somewhere.
|
| To the extent that net water in the water cycle is relevent,
| we would have the opposite problem where we are introducing
| far more water that had been sequestered (mostly in the form
| of glaciers), causing sea levels to rise. It would be great
| if we could find a way to sequester all of that extra water;
| but even putting a dent in that would nake carbon
| sequestration look trivial.
| TOMDM wrote:
| Better start damming rivers too, we don't want all that fresh
| water sequestered in the ocean where it becomes unusable due
| to salt contamination.
| elil17 wrote:
| Even if every bottle used this year was buried full, it would
| only be 0.06 cubic miles of water. Earth's lakes alone have
| about 20,000 cubic miles of fresh water, while there are
| millions of gallons of fresh groundwater.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| I've thought about this too, but tbh the water sequestered in
| bottles should be nothing compared to what gets pushed under
| the mantle during tectonic plate movements, and the amount
| that falls into essentially unreachable and unknown aquifers.
|
| Also in the long run that water will be squeezed out of those
| bottles by pressure and degradation, so I don't think that's
| too much to worry about.
| smallerfish wrote:
| Sounds like you live in a water scarce region (e.g. the
| southwest). If so, think about moving if water scarcity
| disturbs you, because there will be a lot more of that in the
| upcoming decades -- the problem is the number of people
| trying to live with the same finite resource.
|
| Water is plentiful in many areas of the earth. Where I live,
| it was common just 20 years ago for sinks to just have
| continually flowing pipes with no faucets, since the water
| was diverted from streams or springs that just flow into the
| sea anyway. This rainy season we've had well over 200" of
| rain.
| some_random wrote:
| Of all the things to be terrified by, why water being
| sequestered in bottles?
| ajross wrote:
| If underground water of that scale that terrifies you, go
| google "aquifer" some night when you don't want to sleep.
|
| No, this is silly. The amount of water that human beings
| package for drinking is a tiny fraction of the amount we use
| for agriculture, which is itself an absolutely miniscule
| fraction of the amount of fresh water that cycles through the
| environment constantly (itself, of course, a tiny fraction of
| the water available in oceans).
|
| Amounts of water aren't the problem. There will always be
| water. When people complain about water, it's not about how
| much there is in any one place, it's about flows: how much of
| this or that river basin or aquifer is being diverted for
| human use, potentially causing side effects like lake drying
| or desertification downstream. Those are important effects
| that need to be managed.
|
| But Dasani bottles in land fills aren't hurting anyone.
| detritus wrote:
| Why would that 'terrify' you, out of interest?
|
| - ed : are you thinking that microbes and germs and whatnot
| might lie there dormant until they're dug up again,
| unleashing some plague on unsuspecting descendants? If so, I
| imagine the chemicals leeching from the plastic will kill or
| retard their essential survival/replicative mechanisms...
| steeve wrote:
| Given the amount of disinformation Greenpeace puts out about
| nuclear energy, I would be very cautious about whatever else they
| put their eyes on.
| boplicity wrote:
| Why not license plastic distribution -- and have an associated
| fee that gets reduced by actual recycling. This fee could slowly
| be ratcheted up, to allow for a transition, but, in short, it
| would make reusable plastic increasing expensive _unless_ nearly
| all of it was provably recycled.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Thats basically what Europe does and a few pioneer US states
| are doing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_producer_responsibili...
|
| Similar to renewable power, we basically already know the
| answer but we like arguing about problems more than solving
| them so progress is slow.
| ouid wrote:
| The goal is not to be able to recycle plastic. Plastic recycling
| typically turns plastic into microplastic, like polyester fiber.
| If your goal is to reduce the impact of plastic on the
| environment, you should be profoundly _opposed_ to recycling.
| Even the "most suitable" plastics for recycling are recycled,
| they break down in the process, and leak macro plastic into the
| wild through the various additional transport chains that are
| required for consumers to _mail their used plastic_ to a
| recycling facility.
|
| The best place for plastic that has been used is buried in a
| giant pit, and the second best place is burned to CO2 in a high
| oxygen furnace.
| vesinisa wrote:
| For an organization that should supposedly _promote_ recycling, I
| think this takes an regrettably gloomy POV. My local newspaper
| did an article recently on plastic recycling in my home city.
| Most households already recycle their plastics and plastic
| recycling containers will be mandated by law for all multi-family
| dwellings from the start of 2023. The recycling rate for single-
| use plastic packages is at 41%, which means we are well on our
| way to the target of 50% by 2025. The recycling rate for plastic
| beverage bottles is even higher due to a deposit system (0.15EUR
| per bottle redeemable at automatic deposit collection machines at
| any grocery store.)
|
| After recycling, the plastic still needs to be sorted by its
| chemical variety. This is done fully automatically using an
| optical sensor and compressed air. The success rate of the
| sorting phase has been optimized in co-operation with plastic
| packaging manufacturers (plastics that are dyed black are more
| problematic for the sorting process.)
|
| And there is certainly consumer demand for recycled plastics even
| if it's more expensive than pristine plastic. Using recycled
| source material allows companies to brand the end product as more
| ecofriendly. The recycling plant that processes the plastics for
| my city is already operating at fully capacity, able to sell 100%
| of their output and looking to expand.
|
| The end product of the recycling process are small plastic
| granules that can be used just like pristine plastic to make new
| plastic products. Only limitation is the granules are not food-
| grade, but then again there are _tons_ of non-food plastic
| products. Also, if there is ever lack of demand for the recycled
| plastic it is possible to ban the use of pristine plastic for
| certain products to increase demand. But as said, currently the
| organic consumer demand for recycled plastic products already
| surpasses production capacity.
|
| Commercial link: https://www.fortum.com/products-and-
| services/recycling-waste...
| derbOac wrote:
| I had a similar overall reaction, and I'm confused about pieces
| like this, which have really increased in the last few years.
|
| I admit I'm probably not as knowledgeable as I should be, but I
| have read many pieces on this issue and I'm only left more
| confused than I was before. I do think single-use plastic is
| _far_ too common, but there are reasons why is is used, and in
| many cases moving to other materials (glass or metal, for
| example) would create additional problems that are never
| addressed by pieces like this.
|
| Here's my questions; I'm genuinely curious about them and not
| trying to be antagonistic to the idea of reducing traditional
| plastic use, which I am supportive of in general.
|
| 1. If mixed single-stream recycling is a problem, why not
| return to sorted recycling, like we did for years? Yes, getting
| people to recycle correctly is a problem but it seems like part
| of that was an educational/system issue (not educating people
| about what can actually be recycled, making it truly easy for
| them to do so by supplying the right things, etc.), and if it
| solves the problem at least by a substantial percentage points,
| isn't that better?
|
| 2. Why not focus on improvements in recycling engineering and
| plastic production than plastic recycling per se? I can forsee
| some situation where someone makes it very efficient to recycle
| plastic, and then we'll be in a position of "undoing" all the
| "plastic recycling is a myth" pieces like this. Also, what
| happens when we produce plastic in some kind of sustainable way
| and end up with compostable plastic? Won't this be confusing to
| people? Why not focus on specifics?
|
| 3. I get the idea that _new plastic_ is cheaper and more
| efficient to produce than recycling _old plastic_. But then
| there 's often a leap to something like "we should use aluminum
| instead because recycling _old aluminum_ is very efficient and
| cheap compared to producing _new aluminum_ ". _However_ , this
| is not the same as saying "recycling old aluminum is more
| energy efficient than producing new plastic" or even "recycling
| old aluminum is more energy efficient than recycling old
| plastic". When I've read articles about this, it's confusing
| because they generally have said that producing the same item
| in either new or old aluminum is more costly
| environmentally/energy-wise than anything with plastic old or
| new. This seems like a common error in sustainability
| campaigns, not fully accounting for the energy costs involved
| in switching materials due a focus on end-of-life
| considerations alone.
|
| 4. What about all the supply-chain problems introduced by
| eliminating plastics? I'm thinking weight, damage, etc. It
| seems just as arbitrary to say "plastic recycling isn't
| economical" versus "everyone everywhere just get your deodorant
| and yogurt in reusable containers". Sure, it can be done, but
| realistically in the modern age? If it's so appealing why don't
| you see yogurt container deposits taking off?
|
| 5. Along those lines, aren't the economics of this somewhat
| arbitrary and malleable? I don't mean this in a naive way, I
| mean: taxes and government incentives shift this stuff around.
| There are also successful companies who base their _entire
| business model_ on recycled plastic -- aren 't they supplying a
| demand?
|
| 6. Also along those lines, much of this seems kind of
| overgeneralized. I know of locales that, through these sorts of
| government policies and so forth, push the economics of this
| all around to create these kinds of opportunities. Putting
| aside of "scaling this up", it seems a little overstated to say
| "plastic recycling is a myth" when there are places doing it.
| Maybe it doesn't _usually_ work, but fighting against it in
| general seems kind of like the wrong place to put effort.
|
| 7. Let's say you successfully recycle 5% of your plastic.
| "Successfully" in all senses. Isn't that still 5% less plastic,
| which is a lot?
|
| Again, I'm not trying to be hostile to the idea of reusing and
| reducing, as opposed to recycling, and I make an effort to
| avoid plastic when feasible. I'm very much in favor of those
| things, to the point of probably annoying many people around
| me. But this anti-plastic-recycling campaign has left me
| scratching my head when I've looked into it.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| You are right about all of these things.
|
| They're just trying to simplify their message.
|
| They have no hope or even intention of banning all plastics,
| they just want the "reduce" message to be heard clearly,
| because the audience isn't nerds, it's the American public.
|
| And they'd love all the stuff that wasn't reduced or re-used
| to be recycled, but it's hard to convey that to a lay
| audience. "If recycling is so great, why do we need to reduce
| and reuse?"
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I think their actual stance is basically the old "reduce,
| reuse, recycle".
|
| So should you recycle single use plastics? Only if you can't
| avoid needing them in the first place and you can't re-use
| them.
|
| Basically it's a sign of progress that they're putting more
| emphasis on the earlier two steps as public opinion starts to
| shift in their direction.
| ninth_ant wrote:
| Why do you think their organization "should" promote recycling?
| Recycling is not the end goal in itself, it's a process
| designed with the supposed intention of reducing waste.
|
| If the outcome of recycling isn't doing a good job of achieving
| that goal -- which it arguably is not - then we should not be
| overly attached to that. Recycling shouldn't be be a quasi-
| religion, accepted on faith as a solution with no regard to its
| actual outcome.
|
| Right now, putting out recycling to be collected every week
| makes people feel better about themselves and their
| consumption. The numbers indicate it isn't working to reduce
| waste though, despite how happy we are to pat ourselves on the
| back.
|
| Is it gloomy to point out the emperor has no clothes? I'd argue
| someone needs to say it.
| BirAdam wrote:
| Perhaps the best way to prevent pollution of the environment with
| plastics is to ban the export of plastics as garbage. Currently,
| much of the plastic pollution is due to dumping in 2nd world and
| 3rd world countries where rules on disposal are very lax. So,
| while many people are actually quite conscientious and dispose of
| their waste in the appropriate manner, the garbage then just gets
| exported and not disposed of in any way that is responsible.
| Stopping the export also forces the originator of the garbage to
| deal with their waste creation... so dual benefit.
|
| Of course, eWaste is also a sizable contributor to plastic
| pollution and most people don't even think about disposable of
| these items. They either sell them, or they toss them in the
| garbage... sometimes with lithium batteries still in them which
| is extremely hazardous.
| gruez wrote:
| >Perhaps the best way to prevent pollution of the environment
| with plastics is to ban the export of plastics as garbage.
|
| Strong disagree. There was a recent ourworldindata.org article
| that discusses this. It concludes:
|
| >I estimate that a few percent of ocean plastics could result
| from trade from rich countries. A figure as high as 5% would
| not be unreasonable.
|
| While 5% of ocean plastic waste isn't nothing, there are surely
| better ways to reduce overall plastic pollution than trying to
| target 5%. For instance, investing in better waste management
| systems in developing countries.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-waste-trade
| flakeoil wrote:
| You just picked some random sentence from that article.
|
| I can pick some other sentences from that article and give
| another picture: "Most of the plastic that enters the oceans
| from land comes from rivers in Asia.1 More than 80% of it.
|
| Only a small amount comes from rivers across Europe and North
| America. Together, these regions contribute just 5% of the
| global total. This would suggest that the world's richest
| countries don't contribute much to the problem of plastic
| pollution.
|
| But, these numbers only look at the plastic that is emitted
| domestically. They don't consider the fact that many
| countries export plastic waste overseas."
|
| Overall I would say that article contradicts itself and makes
| no sense.
| gruez wrote:
| > You just picked some random sentence from that article.
|
| It's literally the bolded conclusion to the section named
| "How much do rich countries contribute to plastic pollution
| through their exported waste?". Given that the parent
| comment was talking about banning plastic exports, I think
| that's very relevant to this discussion. Saying that it was
| a "random" sentence is an extremely unfair
| characterization.
|
| >I can pick some other sentences from that article and give
| another picture: "Most of the plastic that enters the
| oceans from land comes from rivers in Asia.1 More than 80%
| of it.
|
| >Only a small amount comes from rivers across Europe and
| North America. Together, these regions contribute just 5%
| of the global total. This would suggest that the world's
| richest countries don't contribute much to the problem of
| plastic pollution.
|
| >But, these numbers only look at the plastic that is
| emitted domestically. They don't consider the fact that
| many countries export plastic waste overseas."
|
| >Overall I would say that article contradicts itself and
| makes no sense.
|
| What exactly is contradictory here?
| aetherson wrote:
| Uh, dude.
|
| The article is pointing out that:
|
| 1. Most ocean plastic enters the ocean from East Asia (80%)
|
| 2. Only about 5% of its enters the ocean from North America
| or Europe
|
| 3. But some plastic waste is exported form North America or
| Europe to Asia.
|
| 4. So is it plausible that the true waste share of NA and
| Europe is higher?
|
| 5. It concludes, yes, North America and Europe contribute
| as much as 5% of ocean plastic directly and then up to a
| further 5% via waste export.
|
| It doesn't contradict itself, your parent poster didn't
| "just pick a random sentence from the article," and you
| should maybe read more carefully.
| L0stLink wrote:
| It is not just about ocean plastic. Garbage is burned as fuel
| too in less developed countries. Stopping dumping of garbage
| in 2nd and 3rd world countries by developed/first world
| countries is going to benefit the environment in more ways
| than just reducing ocean plastics. We need to hold waste
| producers accountable. We need a systemic change, more push
| to reuse and recycle, better laws to limit production of
| single use plastics and a push towards repairability to limit
| production of e-waste.
| sigstoat wrote:
| > Garbage is burned as fuel too in less developed
| countries. Stopping dumping of garbage in 2nd and 3rd world
| countries by developed/first world countries is going to
| benefit the environment in more ways than just reducing
| ocean plastics.
|
| what do you expect they'll burn for power if we stop paying
| them to take stuff to burn?
| gruez wrote:
| >It is not just about ocean plastic. Garbage is burned as
| fuel too in less developed countries. Stopping dumping of
| garbage in 2nd and 3rd world countries by developed/first
| world countries is going to benefit the environment in more
| ways than just reducing ocean plastics.
|
| But if only 2% of plastics worldwide is traded (source:
| same article I linked in my previous comment), and most of
| that is traded within the same region, how much waste could
| possibly end up getting shipped to less developed countries
| and burned? You'd still be better off trying to reduce
| domestic garbage production/burning in those countries.
| smileysteve wrote:
| > Garbage is burned as fuel too
|
| This is ideal, at least in arc and high temperature,
| scrubbed plants (because plastic recycling takes more
| energy than burning it cleanly.)
|
| But you likely intended burned less as fuel and more as a
| disposal method.
| rjmunro wrote:
| Garbage is burned as fuel in developed countries too, e.g.
| https://www.viridor.co.uk/energy/energy-recovery-
| facilities/...
|
| I don't know of good figures on how much worse it is to
| burn plastic rather than wash and reuse it.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > For instance, investing in better waste management systems
| in developing countries.
|
| How about we stop wasting tax payers' money to pick up the
| tab of the externalized costs from all these companies
| selling single-use packaging?
|
| At the end of the day these companies will gaslight you
| saying customers love plastic but the reason they do plastic
| packaging is because it reduces packaging and shipping costs
| (at a high cost for the environment, water cycle, and
| humans).
|
| _Ban_single-use_plastic_, except for medical or lab
| applications.
|
| That was the original proposal in the EC before the lobbyists
| watered it down to this farce of the ban on q tips and
| straws.
| jrmg wrote:
| _these companies will gaslight you saying customers love
| plastic but the reason they do plastic packaging is because
| it reduces packaging and shipping costs_
|
| But that's what customers love: undamaged, well packed
| goods at low prices.
|
| I don't think there's anyone claiming that people just
| "love plastic" in the abstract.
|
| I don't disagree with you that regulation is likely the
| only way to enforce more responsible plastic use. The only
| other way is to find more responsible alternatives that do
| the things plastic does at similar or ideally lower cost.
| gruez wrote:
| As other commenters have mentioned, most of the mismanaged
| plastic comes from developing countries, which aren't
| exactly paragons of good governance and civil activism.
| Therefore I'm very skeptical that your policy proposal
| would actually reduce pollution from mismanaged plastic in
| any meaningful way. It might be the righteous choice, but
| if you care about stopping plastic from entering oceans
| it's a horrible proposal.
|
| >_Ban_single-use_plastic_, except for medical or lab
| applications.
|
| >That was the original proposal in the EC before the
| lobbyists watered it down to this farce of the ban on q
| tips and straws.
|
| And how much of EU plastic waste is mismanaged?
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| No this is not feel good policy like 'recycling'. If the
| EU and the US ban single-use plastics, the world
| consumption of plastic would fall an order of magnitude.
|
| It doesn't matter if 'developing' countries mismanage
| waste, their total plastic waste is still fractional in
| comparison to where most of the consumer spending is
| happening in the world.
|
| Also it adds friction to the business model of these
| giants like: Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pepsico, P&G, Unilever,
| etc.
|
| A big part of their savings is in economy of scale. If
| they now have to keep packaging solutions exclusive for a
| market but not another it will likely move the needle to
| single uniform packaging that abides with the strictest
| standard. This is a well studied effect in many
| industries.
| gruez wrote:
| > No this is not feel good policy like 'recycling'. If
| the EU and the US ban single-use plastics, the world
| consumption of plastic would fall an order of magnitude.
|
| >It doesn't matter if 'developing' countries mismanage
| waste, their total plastic waste is still fractional in
| comparison to where most of the consumer spending is
| happening in the world.
|
| Why focus on total plastic waste, rather than mismanaged
| plastic waste? Surely you must agree that a plastic
| bottle that's tossed into the Ganges river is orders of
| magnitude worse for the environment than one that's
| sitting in a properly engineered and monitored landfill?
|
| >Also it adds friction to the business model of theses
| giants like: Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pepsico, P&G, Unilever,
| etc.
|
| >A big part of their savings is in economy of scale. If
| they now have to keep packaging solutions exclusive for a
| market but not another it will likely move the needle to
| single uniform packaging that abides with the strictest
| standard. This is a well studied effect in many
| industries.
|
| I'll need numbers for this. The factors working against
| your argument are:
|
| 1. while economy of scale is a thing, the gains you get
| decrease as you scale up. If you only have bottle factory
| and it only produces glass bottles, it would be
| tremendously expensive for you to start producing plastic
| bottles, because you have to build a whole new factory
| from scratch. However, if you have dozens of bottle
| factories around the world, then having separate
| plastic/glass bottle factories effectively cost you
| nothing. Yes, there is small efficiency gains to be had,
| but I doubt that they're significant enough to drive
| plastic bottles out of business.
|
| 2. as developing countries get richer, their plastic
| consumption will go up as more people can afford consumer
| products. The same isn't true for rich countries. After
| all, you being 10x richer won't cause you to use 10x more
| shampoo.
| soperj wrote:
| Because one country you have a say in and the others you
| don't? Why should any other country mandate a switch if
| even wealthy countries don't bother?
| gruez wrote:
| >Because one country you have a say in and the others you
| don't?
|
| Yeah but what's the point of your activism? Is it to tick
| off a box and say that you did "something"? Or is it to
| improve the world by some metric (ie. microplastic
| pollution)? If it's the latter, then it's pretty obvious
| that you should devote your effort into the highest
| impact projects regardless of whether it's righteous or
| not (ie. even if it means picking up "the tab of the
| externalized costs from all these companies selling
| single-use packaging").
|
| >Why should any other country mandate a switch if even
| wealthy countries don't bother?
|
| They shouldn't because I never made such a proposal. My
| original comment mentioned "investing in better waste
| management systems in developing countries".
| Retric wrote:
| I personally like a lot of single use plastic. What's the
| cheap alternative to keep food in an air tight seal from
| the factory to your home?
|
| There is a lot of greenwashing around packing that's more
| environmentally harmful to create because they decay when
| left outside. Except if both products are sent to the
| landfill then they don't provide any advantages.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| A container with a lid?
| Retric wrote:
| Without an airtight seal you get increased spoilage.
| Something like 3% increased food spoilage might not sound
| like much but it's equivalent to increasing the total
| environmental impact of farming, fishing, and food
| packaging industries by over 3%, which is _massive._
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Ok... but a container with a lid is usually sealed air
| tight, no? A ziploc bag is airtight. A jar is air tight.
| A screw on cap is air tight, etc. etc.
|
| Am I missing something?
| Retric wrote:
| Your ziplock bag is plastic, cheap non plastic containers
| aren't generally airtight. A cereal boxes and similar
| items have a sealed plastic bag inside to prevent the
| food from going stale by the time you open it.
|
| Sure a glass jar with a rubber gasket works as would a
| tin can etc, but they require a lot of energy and
| resources to make which means real environmental costs.
| Aluminum foil is one of the better options cost wise but
| it requiers a lot of energy and it's even less
| biodegradable than plastic.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > What's the cheap alternative to keep food in an air
| tight seal from the factory to your home?
|
| Why do you need a tight seal? You can safely transport
| meat, fish, seafood from source to home with basic
| hygiene measures.
| gruez wrote:
| >You can safely transport meat, fish, seafood from source
| to home with basic hygiene measures.
|
| You can, but it doesn't last nearly as long, which means
| more food waste due to spoilage. At my local supermarket
| meat that has been packaged in airtight bags have best
| before dates of 2-3 weeks. Meanwhile meat that's wrapped
| with non-airtight plastic wrap have best before dates of
| a week at most. The meats I get from the butcher counter
| do even worse.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| If you are consuming meat in 3 weeks either buy it and
| freeze it or buy it in three weeks.
|
| These plastic uses are solutions to problems that don't
| exist.
| gruez wrote:
| > If you are consuming meat in 3 weeks either buy it and
| freeze it or buy it in three weeks.
|
| Freezing ruins the texture of the meat. Buying it in 3
| weeks is more expensive because it's no longer on sale.
| Given the choice between slightly more plastic and saving
| $1+/lb, I'm choosing latter every time. Also, you
| focusing on the consumer side entirely misses the retail
| side. According to the USDA 7% of meat/seafood is lost
| due to spoilage at the retail level alone. This is with
| plastic packaging. Going back to wrapping everything with
| pink butcher paper will certainly be worse.
|
| https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/44306/10895
| _ei...
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| I strongly disagree, plastic wrapping is the same as
| clorinating chicken.
|
| You are introducing an extra industrial step to save the
| additional cost of maintain sanitary conditions
| throughout the supply chain.
|
| > Freezing ruins the texture of the meat.
|
| Unless you are grilling some very premium beef cut and
| eating it without any rub or marination, I strongly doubt
| the majority of people would even know the 'texture'
| difference in a blind test.
| Retric wrote:
| It's not just about the cost at the supply chain. If
| hypothetically 3% more food spoils, that's roughly
| equivalent to 3% of all environmental impact of all
| farming and fishing. All the pesticides, land use, runoff
| fertilizer, fuel, methane production etc adds up to
| vastly more than the costs from plastics.
|
| We think of costs in terms of money but shipping more
| crap means more fuel and thus more global warming etc.
| gruez wrote:
| > I strongly disagree, plastic wrapping is the same as
| clorinating chicken.
|
| >You are introducing an extra industrial step to save the
| additional cost of maintain sanitary conditions
| throughout the supply chain.
|
| Vacuum packing meat increases shelf life because the lack
| of air halts aerobic decomposition. That's not something
| that can be replicated by "sanitary conditions".
| crazygringo wrote:
| Not sure why banning _exporting_ would change anything.
|
| Plastic would just wind up in domestic landfills. It's not like
| countries are running out of landfill space.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| I suspect that is the parent commenter's point: If you can't
| externalize the problem, you are forced to deal with it. If
| you have to deal with it, chances are you won't just dump it
| in a landfill.
| SilasX wrote:
| The parent's point was that, given the non-scarcity
| thereof, they _would_ just dump it in a landfill.
| [deleted]
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Landfills almost do not pollute. Plastic pollution is caused
| by bad management of it (and accidental loss) that spreads it
| into nature.
|
| Placing them in landfills is the right thing to do.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > Plastic pollution is caused by bad management of it (and
| accidental loss) that spreads it into nature.
|
| The idea that nature is over there, not here and that the
| landfill site is somehow ok to ruin has strong vibes of the
| (fantastic) comedy segment where the oil spill happens
| outside the environment.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
| strainer wrote:
| That is a humorous distraction. We need to put waste
| plastic into a billion bins, the billion bins empty into
| fewer larger bins and landfills are the final bins. The
| landfill area required for this eventuality is tiny
| relative to the area of environment which we consume for
| _many_ other things - even car parks alone consume far
| more of Earths environment than landfills. Airports too,
| and Mines, Roads... all themselves dwarfed by
| agriculture. Properly situated 'big bins' have far less
| impact on surrounding places than those things.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| There is quite a bit of difference between an spill and
| some contained contamination of a very small volume.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| My home directly overlooks the River Thames. From my
| perspective, "contained" isn't the right word.
| jtbayly wrote:
| > Plastic would just wind up in domestic landfills.
|
| Precisely. That's where they _should_ end up.
|
| In this case, if you want to do your part, stop recycling
| plastic and start putting it in the trash where it belongs.
| TheDesolate0 wrote:
| mrjin wrote:
| It's simply not economical to recycle most if not all plastics
| a.t.m.. So unless taxes on new plastics get increased
| dramatically, we will never ever seem any substantial recycling
| in play, period.
| bell-cot wrote:
| True. But there a _lot_ of "can't be bothered to" going on
| here. And just burning it for energy (in a ~clean, modern
| facility) seems a lot better than having old plastic crap
| everywhere across the landscape, lakes, rivers, and oceans.
| Manu40 wrote:
| So, upvoted cause ultimately we do need to do something with
| it...
|
| But I used to work in a industry that would bundle its used
| plastic and burn it to get rid of it... (I know, I know...
| terrible)
|
| Let me tell you. That stuff doesn't burn easily unless there
| is already a damn good fire going, or some helper
| combustibles. Sure, it will burn just fine when you put a few
| in a fire, etc. But once you get to the kinds of loads that
| occur with bails of plastic...
|
| It's going to mostly smolder and offgas from my experience.
| It got so bad they stopped burning it, and started selling it
| to some company that found a way to recycle it. Ironically
| enough.
| sgent wrote:
| It should not be "burned" as in a bonfire (like is done in
| many places). It needs to be burned in an electric arc
| furnace or mixed with coke for steel at temperatures in
| excess of 1000k.
| Manu40 wrote:
| OH, for sure. I agree. But that is what most people tend
| to do when they do this sort of thing. Even the 'furnace'
| they had was just a bonfire essentially in a enclosed can
| with vents. And that was specially bought from a company
| that sold it for that purpose. I forget the name though,
| sorry.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| I would interpret it in the sense that there's no such thing as
| cheap plastic. We've been riding on this wave of ubiquitous
| cheap plastic because it's cheap to produce, but getting rid of
| it in an environmentally responsible fashion is where's the
| bulk of the "price" goes.
|
| I'd say, bite the bullet and add the recycling costs to the
| production costs. Pay it upfront. If unsure, make it even more
| expensive.
| Lutger wrote:
| Eventually we need to outlaw 99% of plastic use. We just
| can't keep doing this. The earlier we start with the easy
| stuff, the better, so why not start with it now?
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Outlawing it is asking for a huge backlash. Like, the next
| government may eat babies for all it's worth, once they
| promise to make plastic cheap again, they have won the
| elections.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Outlawing and adding costs to production amounts to the
| same thing for many plastic products. If plastic
| producers were forced to pay the externalities, many
| cheap plastic things would disappear. Those politicians
| would vow to remove "the predatory plastic taxes".
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| The mankind at large won't just give up its toys. You
| have to give it better toys to make large changes like
| that.
| cowtools wrote:
| On an inter-national basis?
| Physkal wrote:
| This should be done in more industries
| [deleted]
| matsemann wrote:
| I'd wish this was done for even more stuff. The externalities
| should be priced in.
|
| Right now it's too cheap to outsource our production to some
| other country to do all the pollution. If that was priced in
| making those things more expensive, local and sustainable
| production might actually have a shot.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Indeed there's no such thing as cheap almost anything.
| _Someone_ is going to have to pay the full price of our
| "cheap" commodities sooner or later.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I'd go as far as to argue that many forms of recycling are
| causing economical damage by contributing to moral fatigue.
| Anecdata; when I am very stressed, or tired, or working on a
| big project, I really can not care less about recycling or
| sorting trash. Yes I understand the moral obligation, but in
| the grand scheme of things, ... it does nothing.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > It's simply not economical to recycle most if not all
| plastics a.t.m..
|
| "It's simply not economical to build a sustainable system right
| now"
|
| Well too bad then, I guess humanity has to commit suicide
| because it's the path that consumes the less amount of paper
| bills with made up numbers on them
| akira2501 wrote:
| > I guess humanity has to commit suicide
|
| The rhetoric on this gets dialed up to 11 immediately, and I
| don't think it benefits anyone but a very small group of
| people to do so. This report suggests that views on plastic
| recycling should be reconsidered, it does not suggest that
| humanity is going to come to an end unless we _immediately_
| solve this problem.
|
| > because it's the path that consumes the less amount of
| paper bills with made up numbers on them
|
| I don't think people who work for an hourly wage are likely
| to agree that the numbers are made up. They may have a
| certain arbitrary quality to them when you consider them at
| scale, but they aren't made up for the majority of people
| alive.. and the difference between them means a lot to many
| people on this planet.
|
| This is what this rhetoric ignores. Single use plastics are
| an issue. We should reduce them; however, acting as if they
| are only in use for profit motivations is insane. The next
| time you go to a hospital, or a dentist, or open up a pack of
| dental floss consider what else you might use to protect that
| equipment, those instruments, or your own hygiene products
| and foods.
|
| We could go back to using waxed paper, but it's inferior for
| shelf stability, it's not compostable or recyclable, and it's
| made from paraffin wax which is a petroleum product.
| HPsquared wrote:
| You are assuming plastic recycling is necessary to have a
| sustainable system.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| It is, by the definition of the word sustainable. Another,
| perhaps valid question, is whether the current method is
| really effective at it.
| lm28469 wrote:
| It sure sounds better than landfill or straight up burning
| it
| e12e wrote:
| > You are assuming plastic recycling is necessary to have a
| sustainable system.
|
| A total ban outside certain medical use-cases would
| probably also work. Do you think that would be cheaper?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| The bills are just measures of relative value compared to
| investing in other things. Don't shoot the messenger.
| DarkWiiPlayer wrote:
| Welcome to capitalism. If profit and self-preservation are at
| odds, profit wins.
| Aunche wrote:
| The surplus wealth created by capitalism is the only reason
| why people have the luxury of giving a damn about the
| environment in the first place. Maoist China destroyed its
| forests to make charcoal for low quality iron and killed
| most of their birds in an attempt to slightly boost grain
| production. The Soviet Union drained the Aral Sea to grow
| cotton. The residents of Easter island completely destroyed
| their environment. They all cared about "short term
| profits" as much as any capitalist. They simply weren't as
| good as executing it.
| DarkWiiPlayer wrote:
| Congratulations. You just convinced me that totalitarian
| dictatorships are not a good alternative to capitalism.
| Oh wait, I already knew that lol.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I don't understand what you mean. Can you give an example
| of where someone has prioritised their own profit over
| their own survival?
| Aunche wrote:
| This is standard anti-capitalist logic. Somebody is doing
| something bad. They're participating in the
| overwhelmingly dominant economic system of our time
| (capitalism). Therefore capitalism must be the root of
| the problem. It doesn't matter that non-capitalists have
| historically done similar things.
|
| Curiously, they never use the same logic when referring
| to positive effects of capitalism like a boom in life
| expectancy and reduction in poverty. That's simply an
| inevitable consequence of technology. It doesn't matter
| that the only reason people have the economic means to
| acquire such technology is due to capitalism.
| DarkWiiPlayer wrote:
| > Curiously, they never use the same logic when referring
| to positive effects of capitalism like a boom in life
| expectancy and reduction in poverty.
|
| Bullshit. I am perfectly happy to give capitalism credit
| where it works well, and so do most people other than
| extreme leftists.
|
| Meanwhile, people defending capitalism seem to do this
| much more often: Capitalism does something good -> all
| hail capitalism, for it can do no wrong; something bad
| happens under capitalism? Literally anything else is to
| blame, specially communists.
| badtension wrote:
| It does not happen often on an individual scale. In
| capitalism the timescales of cause and effect are so
| distant that many people will not even see the
| consequences in the grand scheme of things.
|
| A simple example would be companies maximizing short term
| profits to their own demise. Like the online ad business,
| managers are happily ignoring the fact that bot armies
| are inflating their numbers. I'm really curious how
| Google is going to handle that in the future.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > In capitalism the timescales of cause and effect are so
| distant that many people will not even see the
| consequences in the grand scheme of things.
|
| Can you give a counterexample? Why are you talking about
| capitalism, and not, say, people?
| DarkWiiPlayer wrote:
| I could, but if you don't already see what I'm talking
| about, chances are you'll just tell me climate change
| isn't real anyway.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I think you may need to unlearn this conversation style
| before you can participate meaningfully. Vocalising your
| stereotypes and memorised emotional responses isn't worth
| much.
| DarkWiiPlayer wrote:
| Why would I bother writing an in-depth explanation of a
| simple and observable fact.
|
| Capitalism is a system that optimises for a single
| variable. It is self-evident how this means that any time
| another variable is inversely proportional to profit, it
| will minimise this variable. There is also many trivial
| examples of such cases: Preserving the environment costs
| money. Therefore, capitalism will do its job and optimise
| economies to maximise environment pollution.
|
| If you had any worthwhile counter-argument, you would
| have stated it by now, instead of pretending not to
| understand my point.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| > Capitalism is a system that optimises for a single
| variable. It is self-evident how this means that any time
| another variable is inversely proportional to profit, it
| will minimise this variable.
|
| This isn't what I understand capitalism to be. As I
| understand it, capitalism is the free exchange of goods
| and services centered around personal property. There is
| no single variable. Individuals engage in trade freely,
| and each individual evaluates the value of that trade
| individually. Each individual uses their own set of
| values in evaluating the net value they get out of the
| trade. Under capitalism there is a near infinite set of
| variables as each market participant is carrying their
| own set of values into every trade.
| DarkWiiPlayer wrote:
| > As I understand it, capitalism is the free exchange of
| goods and services centered around personal property.
|
| Not really; that's just a free market, which is linked to
| but not the same as capitalism.
|
| The core principle of capitalism is the private ownership
| of the means of production and their operation for
| profit. It's just that most of the capitalist societies
| we know do free-market capitalism specifically.
|
| And there absolutely is a single variable: Profit. It's
| the one and only variable capitalism optimises for, and
| anything else requires some form of intervention by tying
| profit to some other variable (e.g. a carbon tax to make
| greenhouse emissions more expensive, thereby making it
| more profitable to avoid these emissions); but that's
| always just an external force steering the market
| (thereby making it less of a free market), so it's not
| capitalism itself optimising for environmental
| preservation over profit.
|
| > Each individual uses their own set of values in
| evaluating the net value they get out of the trade
|
| On a small scale, this might be true; but we don't live
| in a world where most capital gets moved around by small
| businesses with owners that act based on their moral
| convictions; we live in a world of massive mega-
| corporations that shouldn't be expected to follow any
| moral principles, and that's exactly what we observe:
| they will do literally whatever they can get away with as
| long as it increases profit.
|
| At the end of the day, CEOs answer to shareholders, and
| the only thing they care about is how much money they're
| making and whether they could be getting into legal
| trouble for it (to some extent, at least).
| anotherman554 wrote:
| From the Investopedia article on Capitalism:
|
| "Another drawback of capitalism is that it often leads to
| a host of negative externalities, such as air and noise
| pollution. Negative externalities are costs paid for by
| society and not the producer of the externality. A
| factory dumping waste into a river or emitting smoke into
| the air is a problem shouldered by the communities that
| the factory is in, and not the business itself."
| [deleted]
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| I'm not sure how to interpret your comment.
|
| I'm not suggesting that negative externalities aren't a
| thing under capitalism. I'm suggesting parent's
| definition of capitalism is incorrect. When you define
| capitalism as a free exchange of goods and services
| centered around private property, you can see how that
| quote is misleading at best.
|
| Current humans, on average, place disproportionate value
| on the things that directly impact them. When they enter
| into trade under capitalism, they carry that bias with
| them. This leads to outcomes where individuals (the
| business in that example) make a decision to improve
| their standing by dumping waste into a river. But this
| isn't a shortcoming in capitalism, it's a shortcoming in
| human nature.
|
| In order for your counter to be complete, you'd need to
| provide an example of another economic/governing system
| that humans organize under successfully avoiding those
| negative externalities. Without that, I don't understand
| how humans would avoid falling into the same traps under
| different structures. For example, your quote tells me
| nothing about how a central planning board under
| communism responsible for agriculture wouldn't decide to
| let pesticide run off into a water source in order to
| deliver the crop yield expected of them. That board is
| still comprised of humans who are carrying their biases
| into their interactions.
|
| Right now, at best, my understanding from this
| conversation is "humans do this under capitalism,
| therefor humans do this because of capitalism" which
| isn't a compelling argument.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Giving an example of what you mean is a very simple thing
| to do. You're saying capitalism will do badly with the
| environment, as it will always pick profit over survival.
|
| I'm asking for a previous example of this principle that
| you're stating will apply to the environment.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| Pretending you don't understand what someone means when
| they talk about profit vs self-preservation in a
| conversation about environmental concerns is also a
| conversational style that is not particularly useful.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| No. It was a generalised statement attempting to predict
| how capitalism would react to this particular situation.
| I wondered what was behind that statement.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| You asked this IMO extremely silly question:
|
| > Can you give an example of where someone has
| prioritised their own profit over their own survival?
|
| Clearly they weren't saying, given the mugger's choice
| between "your money or your life!", capitalism would have
| you choose your money. This is about causing
| environmental destruction for the sake of profit,
| something that businesses have done and continue to do,
| endangering our long-term survival as a species. Saying
| that you don't know what the original poster meant is
| baffling.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I could, as you seem to have done, totally reworded the
| original quote to mean something that makes sense to me,
| but I was curious to hear if the author had anything in
| his/her mind. I'm pretty surprised at the responses.
|
| Here was the original quote, specifically not talking
| about the environmnet, but rather as a principle to apply
| to the environment, for reference:
|
| > If profit and self-preservation are at odds, profit
| wins.
| mrjin wrote:
| Oh well, it's a game with costs not everyone want to pay for
| but eventually as you said, everyone has to pay.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| And yet, if you force those same companies to pay for whatever
| they choose to do, but otherwise give them a free hand, they'll
| choose recycling, because it's the cheapest option.
|
| It's a real mystery.
| mcv wrote:
| Taxing the creation of plastic to pay for the cleanup sounds
| like a great idea to me. Either it discourages the use of
| unnecessary plastic, or it provides funds to clean it
| up/recycle it.
| bagacrap wrote:
| taxing plastic is not something our economy is likely to
| withstand.
|
| Sure, tech workers can afford a few more cents per plastic
| item. But inflation this year has shown just how precarious the
| world's economy really is when it comes to handling even small
| percent increases in cost of living.
|
| I think we just need to do a better job of disposing of
| plastic, but it's not clear how to accomplish that.
|
| Also every solution is destined for failure because it would
| have to be adopted by the entire world, but that will never
| happen.
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