[HN Gopher] The Delusion of Advanced Plastic Recycling
___________________________________________________________________
The Delusion of Advanced Plastic Recycling
Author : tysone
Score : 183 points
Date : 2024-06-20 11:12 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.propublica.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.propublica.org)
| hatmatrix wrote:
| I've heard it summed up this way: "They lied to us 30 years ago.
| How can we trust they're not lying this time?"
|
| Recycling technology has not advanced enough that what is
| promised is credible. If they were honest about the difficulties
| in recycling, it may be that we still might have carried forward
| with the plastic revolution - but we probably would have been
| less cowboy-ish in adopting it for everything.
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| From an economic perspective, the problem with pyrolysis waste-
| to-energy is that it takes more energy to use the process than it
| produces [1].
|
| This is a process that is harmful to communities around the
| plants, harmful to the environment, and does not benefit users of
| the process. I do not understand why organizations like Exxon-
| Mobil and the American Chemistry Council are promoting it.
|
| [1] https://www.lboro.ac.uk/media-centre/press-
| releases/2019/may...
| lenerdenator wrote:
| > I do not understand why organizations like Exxon-Mobil and
| the American Chemistry Council are promoting it.
|
| Because if you start to look at plastics by what has to be done
| with them after they're consumed, they don't make sense as a
| common consumer product* anymore. And if they don't make sense
| as a common consumer product, then there's fewer people lining
| up to buy Exxon Mobil's plastic stocks, which are made of oil.
| Since Exxon Mobil is a company that exists to transfer value to
| shareholders via the extraction and processing of hydrocarbons,
| this is a problem. The ACC is made up of scientists and
| engineers that work for companies like Exxon Mobil.
|
| * common consumer product meaning that it's used in places for
| broad public use where alternatives such as aluminum or wood
| are viable, like beverage cans.
| gs17 wrote:
| > use where alternatives such as aluminum or wood are viable,
| like beverage cans.
|
| I'm not sure if you meant it this way, but does wood actually
| get used in that niche? I'm imagining tiny barrels.
|
| I guess paper cups (or those big coffee things) are sort of
| that idea.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| I think GP was just taking aluminum cans as a single
| example. Another one would be wooden single-use cutlery is
| an alternative to plastic one.
| hwillis wrote:
| plastic packing peanuts vs paper stuffing, paper/plastic
| bags, blister packs vs cardboard boxes, paper-backed tape,
| paper/plastic plates, straws, etc
| frdsfctt wrote:
| Thermodynamically combustion of pyrolysis products does not,
| cannot, use more energy than it produces. If it did, plastic
| would not burn. Plastic burns, hence pyrolysis is a net energy
| source. [1]
|
| That's not to say it makes sense. Myself, I'm in favor of a
| high temperature burn of plastic + scrubbers + insane taxes on
| halogenated polymers + insane deposits on fluorinated polymers
| -> to keep the flu stream clean.
|
| [1] pyrolysis itself is endothermic, clearly, since
| polymerization is extothermic. But the article you linked
| explicitly says burning pyrolysis by products which must, net,
| be exothernic
|
| An other way of looking at it is pyrolysis is a necessary first
| step for plastic combustion hence the cycle is net exo
| samatman wrote:
| You don't really need the insane taxes part, just an
| insistence that the plants are not allowed to emit halogens
| in the flue gas.
|
| The halogens are completely recoverable by bubbling them
| through an alkali mixture, doesn't matter what earth metals
| are used (some combination of sodium and calcium is
| cheapest), this will result in salts.
|
| You want to be a bit more careful about some metals, so that
| you don't have to precipitate them out of the salts to render
| them nontoxic. There are ways to preferentially bind the
| metals even in the gas phase, but it's best not to burn them
| to begin with, which isn't that hard because metals aren't
| found in high quantities in plastics to begin with,
| especially not the bad ones like cadmium and lead.
|
| Other than that, plastics are economically useful, but
| burying them is just delaying their release into the
| environment, which is not great. So burn them, and stop
| pretending they're useful for anything but fuel at the end of
| their service life. Pretty simple.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >bubbling them through an alkali mixture
|
| Which turns the liberated halogens back to salt
| automatically, in a very favorable reaction which is so
| strongly favored it is almost irreversible.
|
| Almost.
|
| But not if you carefully apply energy to the brine using an
| electrochemical process, especially one which has been
| improved for over a century after the patent expired, and
| you can't get much more efficient than that. Especially at
| the scale these operate at. These are not petrochemical
| plants since they were doing this before petrochemicals
| actually had plants. Crude oil wasn't even that popular
| yet.
|
| But who's going to need to do that, the spent alkali after
| scrubbing the halogens has no need for additional energy to
| be added.
|
| Unless you wanted to turn it back into full-strength
| alkali. Which wouldn't be cost-efective anyway, and nobody
| should be paying more than it's worth.
|
| Because there's planty of fresh material coming out of the
| caustic plants already.
|
| But you know how much energy it takes to produce that
| alkali originally from the virgin brine feedstock those
| plants use?
|
| More than it's worth. It a plain electrochemical reaction.
| No other raw materials needed.
|
| It's that "irreversable" reaction that's just a little too
| strong. So it takes a _lot_ of energy to reverse. Kind of
| like trying to turn CO2 back into hydrocarbons.
|
| And if you want to try and capture CO2 from the atmosphere
| using alkali, fuggedaboutit. You're going to need a bigger
| caustic plant, and a _lot_ more of them.
|
| There's a thing called material balance too, not just
| electrochemistry and thermodynamics at work.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >hence the cycle is net exo
|
| You mean to say net Exxon?
|
| Thermodynamics is a bitch.
|
| Combustion of the pyrolysis oil, which is the oil the plastic
| is turned into by the pyrolysis process, is not much
| different than burning any other oil to release the stored
| energy.
|
| The problem is that _making_ the pyoil from the plastic as a
| "recycling" method takes more energy than it is worth.
|
| That's whether money is involved or not, even though the oil
| itself is worth way more money than the raw waste plastic
| (whch is about zero to negative as solid waste).
|
| Burning pyoil on its own is a gross positive energy source,
| but when you figure all the energy wasted actually pyrolyzing
| the plastic to begin with before it turns into oil, you'd be
| better off burning the plastic directly.
|
| Since the pyrolysis process on its own is very gross
| negative, consumes energy not releases it.
|
| It's just thermodynamics, you can't fool Mother Nature.
|
| And I'm talking really gross, more toxic than crude oil too
| and you really don't want to smell it. A spill has a
| lingering odor far worse than most crude oils, even though
| some crudes can be deadly at first if it has high H2S. Since
| H2S is a gas and dissipates relatively quickly once spilled.
|
| However the final pyoil product comes in the same kind of
| tank barges and tankcars as crude oil, and some traders can
| now handle it like this which is not possible for solid
| waste.
|
| Turns out combustion and pyrolysis are two different animals.
|
| Who knew?
|
| Too bad Google may not help with things like this any more.
|
| >pyrolysis itself is endothermic, clearly, since
| polymerization is extothermic.
|
| There are also classes in logic for anyone who is seriously
| interested.
|
| Also, most places already have plenty of taxes that are very
| insane already, you want to tax people's mental health even
| more? ;)
|
| The more you understand about thermodynmics, the more of a
| bitch you realize it is.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| > I do not understand why organizations like Exxon-Mobil and
| the American Chemistry Council are promoting it.
|
| If they don't pretend there's a responsible way to dispose of
| plastic, someone might hold them responsible for the plastic
| waste they produce.
| dzdt wrote:
| Organizations like Exxon-Mobil promote these fairy-tale schemes
| as a talking point to counter legislation that would restrict
| their unlimited production of fossil-fuel based plastics. Its
| the same scheme with carbon capture for coal-burning power
| plants. The technology doesn't and will never work as
| described, but talking up its potential gives an excuse not to
| regulate the polluting industry now.
| jurassicfoxy wrote:
| Recyling plastic has died for me. I read an article (probably
| posted on HN) that convinced me the act of "recyling" dumps
| enough microplastics into the water stream that it's all better
| off in a landfill. Finally that was it for me. Maybe on the odd
| day I'll throw # 1 PETE into the recyling bin, else it's into the
| garbage bag for me. Now we must simply focus on buying less.
| wazoox wrote:
| You may be talking about this one?
|
| https://quillette.com/2024/06/17/recycling-plastic-is-a-dang...
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Landfills are awesome. Properly managed, they're pretty much
| the best way to deal with trash. But they're also not
| completely out of sight, so people desperately look for
| inferior alternatives.
| titzer wrote:
| You know what's awesome? The _biosphere_ , which recycles
| 99.9999% of its own matter in a vast, global cooperative,
| driven by unending clean source of energy that is literally
| beamed in from space with no waste products.
|
| Chucking it all in a hole? Not even close.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I agree. But the thing about trash is, biosphere can't
| handle much of it. Chucking it into a high-tech hole lets
| you manage the decomposition, releasing contents over time
| in form and quantity that the biosphere can safely handle.
|
| Also in general, unsafe things are usually best kept
| concentrated and supervised. Spreading them all around the
| environment isn't solving the problem - it's just another
| way to put the issue out of mind, while future generations
| suffer from a slow-brew, large-scale disaster.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Until the thing you're still using as a product gets ate by
| this vast global cooperative.
| lazide wrote:
| Uh, someone has clearly not spent much time in a swamp. Or
| around caliche/dry lake beds (especially when on that last
| stage of drying when everything starts to rot).
|
| Just because it's biological and natural doesn't mean it's
| necessarily pleasant, nice smelling, or healthy to be
| around.
|
| If your only exposure to nature is national parks and the
| like, it's easy to over glorify nature.
|
| Not saying landfills are nice or anything, or healthy
| either. But nature has its equivalents.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Plasma gasification. It is fine we have decided we can only
| do so much to reduce the waste stream, that which remains can
| be fed into a system to render it inert and the syngas
| produced burned for energy in a responsible manner.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38994374
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38722984
|
| ("This is NOT the same as incineration. Plasma gasification
| does not produce toxic gases vented to atmo, etc. The main
| byproducts are "syngas", which is mainly H2 and CO and can be
| reused to power the facility, and slag.")
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| I recall seeing a small documentary about some people
| living in a small island community who were using
| destructive distillation to convert the absolute fuckload
| of plastic waste washing up on their beaches into fuel for
| generators and such.
|
| I'll have to go find it again, it seemed like an
| interesting "local" solution to a genuinely hard problem
| (plastic waste).
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Burning plastics is the simplest useful way to recycle
| them (plastics being mostly hydrocarbons in solid form),
| though it's also the least interesting. It's a kind of
| minimum - if you don't know how to better reuse the
| material, then treating it as fuel provides some amount
| of value. Now, when proposed recycling schemes start to
| look economically or energetically _worse_ than burning
| it or just leaving it in landfills for future use - that
| 's a really bad mark.
| mathgradthrow wrote:
| slag here referring to vitrified whatever?
| zacmps wrote:
| Syngas can also be converted to other products through gas
| fermentation.
| timcobb wrote:
| Yeah, a really popularly underappreciated thing, quite
| unfortunate.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| How much plastic ever got recycled in the first place? My
| understanding is it was always largely a charade where we mixed
| plastic in with stuff that made sense to recycle like aluminum
| cans and then sent it all to China where they would recycle the
| aluminum and burn/bury the plastic and we all just pretended
| everything got recycled. Eventually the recyclable:garbage
| ratio got so low that China said enough and refused to take it
| any more.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| 5-10%, from googling it.
|
| Most recycling is bullshit. "Electronics recycling" ships it
| off to third world countries where people pull apart PCBs
| over diesel fires and whatnot, dumping stuff all over the
| ground.
|
| Each country gets tired of their land being used as a toxic
| waste dump and their people being poisoned, so the recyclers
| work to find another country desperate for some sort of
| industry.
|
| The only solution is to tax the electronics at sale to cover
| the cost of recycling it in the least hazardous way possible,
| with extra penalties for devices with a fixed lifetime (ie,
| non-replaceable batteries.)
| meristohm wrote:
| Same here. We focus on reducing our consumption of plastic,
| reusing some (rectangular tofu bins are useful holders for
| screws, for one), and trashing the rest.
| r00fus wrote:
| What we started doing is a) ordering out from restaurants less
| b) saving those plastic takeout boxes and reusing them for
| leftovers when we do go visit (we keep them in our car trunk)
| c) bringing our own reusable utensils for those restaurants
| that still serve plastic utensils (fast food usually) - easy to
| wipe down & wash.
|
| Not an exhaustive list but a good start for ideas on how to
| reduce without hampering your lifestyle too much.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| We've also switched back to only ordering takeout from places
| that use more sustainable takeout containers. Those plastic
| dishes are reusable, but our need for them is not great
| enough to justify accumulating more than a few. And as soon
| as you surpass your need, they instantly flip from being
| reusable containers to being just about the most wasteful
| form of disposable food packaging imaginable.
|
| Compare with what takeout was like in the 1990s and early
| 2000s, when it was accepted that only some restaurants and
| cuisines were appropriate for delivery and takeout. Pizza
| boxes, deli paper and cardboard clamshell boxes are
| biodegradeable and industrially compostable. Foiled paper
| like McDonald's would use has to go to the landfill, but at
| least there's arguably nothing horrible in it. Oyster pails
| like Chinese takeout restaurants used to use is probably
| plastic lined, but plastic lined paper is at least a lot less
| plastic than the plastic dishes.
| infecto wrote:
| The issue today with most of those sustainable takeout
| containers is they are lined with PFAS.
|
| Not true for everything but the vast majority are.
| everdrive wrote:
| This is true, and because of this we eat out as little as
| possible. People just won't given up convenience, no
| matter the cost to health.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| True.
|
| Consumer Reports did some testing on this, writeup here:
| https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-
| contaminants/dan...
|
| It's from a couple years ago now, so individual results
| might be out of date.
| r00fus wrote:
| Looks like this will be changing for the better soon:
| https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-
| indu...
|
| Even plastic-backed paper (ie, not PFAS) is much better
| than a fully plastic container, so I support his.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| Sorry but individual action by the most conscientious people is
| not going to make a dent. We need collective action and that
| means laws and treaties.
| frdsfctt wrote:
| Plastic recycling is a scam - see DeGennes or Florry-Huggins.
|
| But there is no need to give up. As long as we can keep
| brominated, chlorinated and fluorinated plastics out of the input
| stream (by taxes and deposits) burning plastic for energy is not
| that bad.
|
| Fundamentally, as I see it, consumers and regulators love their
| Gore-Tex jackets and their teflon tape too much to have viable
| plastic burning.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Honestly the best thing is to just bury the plastic in a modern
| landfill just like other garbage.
|
| Modern landfills are very good and containing all the bad stuff.
| There is actually plenty of room for them. And you sequester the
| carbon in the plastics.
|
| Win win all around.
| orwin wrote:
| The issue with landfill is the same as burning plastics. Heavy
| metal and elements that bioaccumulate in animals and plants
| being dispersed in a small-ish zone. If you can remove bromine
| and all that shit before putting plastics in landfills, that
| would be great.
| mariusor wrote:
| And from here to sorting the trash before it reaches the
| landfill is just a small step in logic.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I just throw plastic in the garbage. This after a life of bending
| over backwards to recycle.
|
| The primary concern for everyone should be carbon in the
| atmosphere. Landfills full of plastic might be bad for the
| environment over time, but they are not going to cause a global
| mass extinction.
|
| Probably the dumbest thing humanity can do is burn plastic for
| energy (i.e. convert sequestered carbon to CO2). Followed second
| by recycling it.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| In a lot of places, it ends up there anyway.
|
| The market for plastic recycling is such that it's often less
| expensive to just truck it to a landfill. That's what happens
| in many places, all your efforts to have separate bins for
| plastic and sorting your trash every week might well be a
| complete waste of time.
| c-linkage wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the point of recycling to make people _feel_
| like they are doing something about plastic pollution, and
| this feeling distracts people from the fact that nothing you
| do with plastic actually makes a difference.
|
| Perception is 9/10s of the law.
| mariusor wrote:
| > nothing you do with plastic actually makes a difference
|
| ... yet.
|
| Do you think that in a wonderful future where we get some
| technical advancement to be able to deal with plastics
| effectively, will it be easier to deal with it when it's
| uniformly spread through the world's landfills, or when
| it's sorted and dumped in bulk?
| samatman wrote:
| This is why I continue to dutifully rinse out plastics
| and throw them into the landfill via the separate
| 'recycling' process. I'd rather it go to the special
| plastic landfill, where, like cryogenically-frozen
| Effective Altruists, future generations can give it a new
| life with yet-undiscovered technology.
| mariusor wrote:
| I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but yes, that's
| exactly what I'm doing too.
| c-linkage wrote:
| I, too, will keep using the separate stream, more out of
| habit than anything else. But the plastic doesn't
| currently go into a special landfill, it goes into the
| same ones as all of the other trash.
|
| <https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/17/climate/ask-nyt-
| climate-r...>
|
| _[I]f the [recycling] plant can find a buyer at a price
| that makes sense, the bundles will be shipped off to a
| recycling plant. Sometimes a local one, and sometimes one
| as far away as Africa or Southeast Asia. If they can't,
| everything goes into a landfill or gets incinerated._
|
| And even though my original comment is at zero, the
| industry specifically pushed recycling because by making
| people feel like they were helping, they would ignore the
| real problem.
|
| <https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-
| misled-...>
|
| _Yet the industry spent millions telling people to
| recycle, because, as one former top industry insider told
| NPR, selling recycling sold plastic, even if it wasn 't
| true.
|
| "If the public thinks that recycling is working, then
| they are not going to be as concerned about the
| environment," Larry Thomas, former president of the
| Society of the Plastics Industry, known today as the
| Plastics Industry Association and one of the industry's
| most powerful trade groups in Washington, D.C., told
| NPR."_
|
| Burying the plastic is probably the better option.
|
| <https://www.ft.com/content/901c78e6-b4d0-467c-ab87-6fc44
| c8a0...>
|
| _"The energy required to do reprocessing is higher than
| the energy required to make the [plastic] in the first
| place," he said. To limit carbon emissions in line with
| the global warming goals of the Paris climate accord, it
| would be better to "bury the stuff", according to
| Hallett._
| mariusor wrote:
| Sure, but if a truck that picked up sorted plastic
| arrives at the landfill, it's going to be dumped all in
| one place. If at any time in the future we devise a way
| to efficiently get rid of it, it's easier to remove it
| from one single place, than having to sift through tonnes
| of unsorted trash.
|
| I frankly think that an enterprise that can build robots
| able to sort landfills would make mint.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| If and when that future arrives, we will have plenty of
| plastic waste to deal with, without digging up that which
| is buried.
|
| Buried plastic is largely inert. It is one of the least
| nasty things that is in a landfill.
| mariusor wrote:
| > might well be a complete waste of time
|
| Do you think that having all plastics spread through a
| landfill is better than having them grouped even if residing
| the in the same landfill? I think sorting your trash is never
| lost time on a global scale. Anything done to make it easier
| for future generations to handle garbage should be done, even
| if it has no immediate benefit.
| N0b8ez wrote:
| I actually don't understand why it's significantly better
| for the landfill to be arranged in one way rather than
| another. Can you explain why it helps future generations?
| gknoy wrote:
| If at some future time, we actually find a way to recover
| plastic / oils / utility from plastic that's sitting in a
| landfill, someone will then go back and dig up landfills
| to find it. If every trash bag has 10-15% plastic in it,
| because we don't bother to sort our stuff now, that's
| much less efficient than finding the part of the landfill
| that is 80% plastic.
| maxerickson wrote:
| My landfill has mixed stream recycling that they sort and
| sell, because it's cheaper to sort it than it is to put it
| into the on site landfill.
|
| Is the theory that someone is paying them for the sorted,
| baled plastic, trucking it elsewhere and then putting it into
| a landfill?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Depending on the markets, you sometimes have to pay to get
| a recycler to take your plastic. At that point it's a
| choice based on whether the landfill fees are cheaper
| (sometimes they are).
| titzer wrote:
| Just throwing it in a hole perpetuates the unsustainable fossil
| fuel addiction. Does burning it perpetuate that addiction worse
| (and as a side-effect produce even more CO2)? Yes, so on one
| level I agree with you, but on another level, we need to get
| the hell off this ride.
| kkfx wrote:
| Let's start to talk instead how to need less plastic. The most
| commonly discharged plastic is for packaging. Let's start
| observing the activity, usage who consume the most quantity of
| plastic: ready made food, small pack of anything.
|
| It's then about time to stop vending machines of micro-dose
| ultra-transformed "food", individually package fruits and vegges
| not to preserve them but to sell them at a higher price, the
| proliferation of sugar+gas added water to sell more since many in
| the western world have access to public clean water at home and
| so on. Let's star selling the as prepared leaves in a significant
| quantity instead of pre-dosed individually envelop mini-bags,
| mini-bags of sugar and so on.
|
| This will IMMENSELY reduce the quantity of disposable plastic we
| drop every day. We can't get rid of anything of course, but we
| can get rid of many. Even for milk we can start to redistribute
| it in the classic way instead of in the modern long-range
| shipping who need plastic to preserve it.
|
| If you follow this idea you'll realize a thing: we need to delete
| modern dense cities. They are the biggest consumer of such
| packaging because the fast life in tight space demand them. I'm
| really serious. Try imaging you as a remote worker or an in
| person worker in a remote spread are how and what kind of food
| you buy there. You are at home, no need for packed single-dose
| bags of sugar, you have you own favorite tea in pots, you have
| plenty of space to stockpile food and buying in big quantity
| allow to save some time and money, also you might have time to
| cook at home and so on.
|
| Oh, yes, it's just a slice of the total plastic we use, but it's
| a very big one, used for things we can avoid. Surely we have also
| much plastic for dress, and that's again can be reduced if we
| live spread because there is far less "need" to dress ourselves
| in gazillion of different outfit to go downtown, but we can't
| avoid that completely, let's start what we can start.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| So to save a little bit of plastic you'd spend much more energy
| on everything else? Why not just use glass for milk and paper
| for tea?
| kkfx wrote:
| Energy I can make (and I make) locally, for instance from
| p.v. instead of spending in plastic that demand energy
| anyway.
|
| There is a common misconception about _modern_ cities than
| "far past one". Nowadays we do not simply live in dense area
| walking around with stairs having next to no equipment at
| home like in the aforementioned past where people live tight
| but also simply, working in most cases "from home" meaning
| they just go downstairs and they are in their shops. Modern
| cities demand a gazillion of things, just a building for:
|
| - clean water
|
| - hot water
|
| - sewers
|
| - fire safety
|
| - elevators
|
| - seismic safety
|
| - HVAC
|
| - ....
|
| Demand MUCH more energy than modern wood based single-family
| homes (if well built ad without exaggeration of course) both
| to be build, operated, maintained and evolved. We are not
| anymore in the era of rock+wood homes passing from a
| generation to another for centuries with little to no
| changes. With "new deal" tech we simply can't live in cities.
| Just take a look at a mean apartment in your country, in
| Italy a mean apartment need 20-30kW thermal power to heat in
| the winter simply because even if it's less and less cold
| most of them was built in an era where no one care about
| insulation. Modern homes with 1kW electrical can heat and
| cool themselves in the mean for the same country. In single
| family homes there is typically room to recharge from p.v.
| cars if you WFH or working in a spread area to recharge them
| from p.v. at work, the same model. In cities it's simply not
| possible. How much energy this alone means?
|
| Now try seeing "future personal air mobility" sold as urban
| https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-
| full-... but definitively NOT urban, cities can't simply
| adapt, you need to rebuild them to adapt more than few
| evolutionary steps. In a spread (not too much of course) area
| you have plenty of space to adapt and buildings are small,
| they can be made in recyclable materials for most of their
| structure and the same is valid for local infra. Cities
| demand big harbors, airports, highways who consume enormous
| resources and can't change much, a spread are use maybe even
| LESS resources and being spread can slowly adapt. Try just
| seen the nightmare of Jakarta and their "solution" https://ww
| w.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-01/indonesia... can you
| measure how big waste of resources such move represent?
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| >Modern homes with 1kW electrical can heat and cool
| themselves in the mean for the same country. In single
| family homes there is typically room to recharge from p.v.
| cars if you WFH or working in a spread area to recharge
| them from p.v. at work, the same model.
|
| In a dense city most people don't even have a car.
|
| I live in an apartment building from the 50's. With just 2
| walls of our building retrofitted with insulation I now
| barely need any heating in winter, try that with a single
| family home.
|
| >Cities demand big harbors, airports, highways
|
| You still need them with spread, only more roads to spread
| everything around.
| kkfx wrote:
| > In a dense city most people don't even have a car.
|
| Yes, but the city need a far more expensive metro
| network, surface buses and so on, witch in term of raw
| materials demand much more than cars and in term of
| energy demand the same or even more because metros have
| also stations and even with metros and buses we still
| need cars and van for a variety of activities, vehicles
| used for work (like a small Transit for a plumber or an
| electrician) but also usable for private stuff. The TCO
| is still not in favor of such model, despite many (from
| the interested ruling class) claim the inverse...
|
| > I live in an apartment building from the 50's. With
| just 2 walls of our building retrofitted with insulation
| I now barely need any heating in winter, try that with a
| single family home.
|
| This means that you live in a nice climate, where summers
| are not too hot and winters are mild. Such areas exists
| and are typically densely populated also because of the
| climate but they are a very little part of the inhabited
| earth, or you are in a less nice climate but being "in
| the middle" you get "free heat" from some apartments
| underneath and "insulation" from apartments over yours.
| Again that's true for some, but in TCO terms it's still
| not favorable for the humanity at a whole, only for some
| humans.
|
| If you are in mild climate a single family home would
| barely need heat as well, not if you get free heat from
| neighbors of course BUT a _new_ single family home in the
| same climate can thanks to insulation and mere design
| (compact form, large windows on the southern side, roof
| /other element shielding the Sun in summer while allowing
| it pass in the winter etc) and while you might profit
| from your neighbors they still have to heat/cool anyway,
| it's good for you but it does not reduce the overall
| consumption.
|
| Just for a personal counter argument: I was living in an
| apartment from the '60s in a mild climate, it's heated
| with 24kW methane. I live now in a home twice the size/a
| bit more than twice the heated volume, in a much colder
| place and I heat with 1KW most of the time, climbing to
| 3-4kW few late night and early morning between January
| and February, the maximum absorption recorded for heating
| was at the end of January 2017 a single night with a
| minima of -24.8 (-12.64) with 6.3kW. In raw material
| terms electricity here means nuclear (I have p.v. with
| small storage, but not to heat the home at night) and the
| grid, gas means a much more raw material and energy
| hungry distribution network. So again building new home
| demand energy, but in their useful life we amortize it
| and we evolve. Remain in old buildings demand still more,
| many times more in many cases, just to keep them
| operational and we do not evolve. Can we change them now?
| A 40 apartment building build today respect of one 40
| apartments from the '50s cost at least twice... You need
| to relocate 40 families for an year instead of putting a
| small container-home in the garden for two-thee month...
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| >Yes, but the city need a far more expensive metro
| network, surface buses and so on, witch in term of raw
| materials demand much more than cars and in term of
| energy demand the same or even more because metros have
| also stations and even with metros and buses we still
| need cars and van for a variety of activities, vehicles
| used for work (like a small Transit for a plumber or an
| electrician) but also usable for private stuff. The TCO
| is still not in favor of such model, despite many (from
| the interested ruling class) claim the inverse...
|
| Source? This says otherwise, especially if you take into
| account you'll have to do less km in a dense city. If you
| go by bike it's even less.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint
|
| >in the middle" you get "free heat" from some apartments
| underneath and "insulation" from apartments over yours.
| Again that's true for some, but in TCO terms it's still
| not favorable for the humanity at a whole, only for some
| humans.
|
| In an apartment everyone has at least 1, most people 2-3
| neighbors and many even 4.
|
| >Just for a personal counter argument: I was living in an
| apartment from the '60s in a mild climate
|
| You're comparing with a new build house, compare with a
| new/renovated apartment.
|
| >You need to relocate 40 families for an year instead of
| putting a small container-home in the garden for two-thee
| month...
|
| For the most renovations you don't need to move,
| insulation is added on the outside.
| kkfx wrote:
| I reply here since I see no reply under the right
| message, sorry
|
| > Source? This says otherwise, especially if you take
| into account you'll have to do less km in a dense city.
| If you go by bike it's even less.
|
| Personal considerations and experience, I think no such
| real study exists mostly because it should be really
| large. Taking into account all the variable in a real
| life case ALONE demand much effort. For first you should
| find data for a significant timeframe, let's say 10
| years, measuring the raw materials needed to build a
| metro in some city, and I think no such data exists, you
| can get some projects but not a trustable bill of
| material. Secondly you have to track all buses and trains
| and their average consumption. Done this you have a
| generic measure of "how much it cost in capex and opex
| the public transport system of YouNameIt city", what you
| miss is a "YouNameIt city" spread equivalent with only
| private vehicles. In this case you can only measure a
| large number of people consumption in a spread area,
| count the cost of the original road network witch likely
| exists since so much time no one can count and their
| operational costs. Even if you reach such goal you have
| just a "first degree measure", you need to take into
| account resources needed to produce the resources you
| used to build the city and the spread area transport
| network, some are easy, let's say cement and sand, some
| others are far harder, like steel. And so on. You
| probably need an decade to craft a working model for a
| state like North Korea (a good one because due to it's
| politics (Juche) anything there is mostly "domestic",
| they do commerce of course but much less than other
| countries and they still have cities and spread are,
| though get real data on NK might be a bit hard).
|
| To cut it short the "carbon footprint" is a nonsense,
| sometimes useful but not an answer: a train travel it's
| far less energy intensive on a modern rail than a truck
| travel, the material travel, but thing change if you have
| to count resources needed to build and keep rails vs
| roads, including exchange nodes, because we do not have
| rails on the home front door or aside of a cultivated
| field. If you just count how many tons of steel you can
| start imaging what cost more and what less. At this scale
| we have no simulation, non real scientific study, only "I
| like it let's try" without possible comparisons.
|
| > You're comparing with a new build house, compare with a
| new/renovated apartment.
|
| I do on purpose because my new home was built in around
| two months, rebuild the building of my ancient apartment
| is practically impossible because not only you have to
| relocate ~53 families for an year or more but also
| because it's in the middle of a dense EU city where such
| large demolition than construction size would destroy the
| traffic of a significant part of the city for an year or
| more, such EU buildings was simply built considering an
| eternal useful life, and that's a bubble waiting to
| explode with damage not much different than those of a
| nuclear war. In USA something similar have happened with
| certain big condos collapsed or at least damaged enough
| to be beyond repair but USA cities tend to be far less
| dense and younger than EU one so MAYBE some might be
| rebuilt.
|
| The point is essentially that small buildings with enough
| ground around can be practically rebuilt, dense area can
| only be rebuilt in batch like relocating all the people
| from NY to another place and rebuilt the whole NY, witch
| I bet no one think it's doable or at least reasonable to
| do...
|
| > You still need them with spread, only more roads to
| spread everything around.
|
| Not exactly the same thing, yes, maritime commerce need
| harbors and having many little harbors and many little
| ships it's not much sustainable, so you need some "hubs"
| in the logistic network but having much more room for
| local production you can do them, and the rest of the
| logistic network is spread anyway so MUCH simpler and
| cheaper to be build and evolve. A simple example around
| me there are enough potential farm to have cows for meat,
| milk and cheese for the nearby residents, it's
| definitively not enough for modern living but in a
| hypothetical spread society it would be normal and
| actually it was normal in a not so far past where at
| least milk was generally local instead of import in from
| 1000-2000km away simply because there it's cheaper than
| here even with the needed logistic. Do so on scale and
| it's easy to view you need much less resources. We would
| anyway import shrimps from South America and India, but
| the volumes changes much.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| > we need to delete modern dense cities...
|
| This is more of an argument for remote work than an argument
| against dense cities. Living in a "remote spread" is not great
| otherwise: long distance travel, limited public transport
| because it is not worth it due to the low population, cars are
| pretty much the only option. You don't have more time, again
| because of long travel time because of long distances. You can
| stockpile, but you have to take conservation into account, and
| plastic packaging is, maybe unfortunately, a great solution for
| conservation.
|
| Dense cities are quite efficient, and not particularly reliant
| on small plastic packaging. Many cities have markets at
| walkable distances that sell products in bulk. And from my
| experience in living in tight spaces, I think it is actually a
| good thing against plastic use. For the simple reason that you
| have less space for plastic. You have to think twice before
| buying something, because where you are going to put it is
| always something to consider, and packaging takes space too. A
| tea ball and tea in bulk takes less space than individual tea
| bags for the same amount of tea for instance.
| kkfx wrote:
| These are common points used by those who profit from dense
| cities, and are mostly false while sound logic.
|
| > long distance travel
|
| Travel for what? Take a look at some EU Rivieras, there is
| little "commuting" since a slice of people work (or could
| work) from remote, others work locally/nearby, people
| normally do not travel back and forth countless of time like
| in a dense city. I state that for personal experience having
| left a dense EU city for the Alps, yes, I do travel, but not
| more than the number of km/miles I've traveling in the city.
| Simply because many "regular trip" are far less needed here.
| For instance I do not buy grocery every days but every 15
| days or so. Also I have room for p.v. to recharge my car, so
| I consume even less from the grid, travels are cheaper both
| in pure monetary terms than in pollution terms.
|
| > limited public transport
|
| Witch again it's a GOOD thing despite common (interested)
| narrative. Collective transport was effective back then when
| it was just to bring workers back and forth to the factory
| from their homes, so every working day only with nearly
| always at nearly complete capacity. It was then extended in
| an era where cars was very expensive and only very few can
| own one NOT BECAUSE it was efficient for that but to allow
| people who can't afford a car to travel anyway at a price
| they can pay, and it was heavily subsidized because of that.
| Then it became a business munging money both from their
| customer and the public, wasting enormous resources to allow
| the city to exists but being horribly inefficient. We need to
| move 24h a day, anyone with their own schedules, as a result
| collective transports can't completely satisfy the demand, so
| we have a mix of personal and collective transport means both
| typically under-utilized wasting even more resources.
|
| Try to really think as an alien observing curious aliens from
| the orbit, you'll see how many resources a modern city eat
| just to exists, how many to get regularly updated and
| regularly at certain point in time get rebuild because at a
| certain point in time you can't evolve without big rebuilds.
| You need ENTIRE COUNTRIES just to build few cities. Modi in
| India think they can build 100 smart cities on the entire
| country resources. In central Asia most State can only have
| ONE city and so on, we do not see that because cities for us
| was ancient ad slowly changed, but an external observer see
| it very well, cities are a sink hole of resources for giving
| an utter life to most people. Their purpose in the modern era
| with modern logistic and IT? Just the service economy or
| keeping people owning less and less till nothing, salves of
| the services operated by few, modern Fordlandia equally
| distopic and equally untenable, a more broad description:
| https://kfx.fr/articles/2024-04-26-onnewdealexp-contrapolis/
|
| > You don't have more time, again because of long travel time
| because of long distances.
|
| Oh I have it. Because in a reasonably spread (meaning not too
| little dense nor too much) living the 15' city is already
| there, but not on feet, instead by cars. Most people living
| spread can do nearly anything in 15' car trips. And they are
| in nature, so they can have plenty of natural activities
| instead of consuming paid services for anything because in a
| modern city anything is a service on sail...
|
| > You can stockpile, but you have to take conservation into
| account, and plastic packaging is, maybe unfortunately, a
| great solution for conservation.
|
| That's right, but at what rates? For instance I buy some
| times per year significant batch of pig meat, I grind and
| salt and flavor it at home making my own sausages and freeze
| them in dedicate plastic, but not single-use, containers. I
| buy olive and sunflower oil but not in small bottles, instead
| in metallic containers around 10l some, 5l others. They got
| recycled as well. I tend to buy wine in demijohns from
| "nearby" producer one or two time per year, and bottle it at
| home, again it's glass and cork recyclable and normally
| reused. So yes, there is still plastic, but far less and
| generally not single use.
|
| > Dense cities are quite efficient
|
| Is efficient for you living in tall buildings than moving to
| others tall buildings typically with immense machines named
| metros, using such buildings for less than 12h/24? I call it
| ALL but inefficient...
|
| > and not particularly reliant on small plastic packaging
|
| So you do not eat ready made food, typically sold in some
| single use packaging while working downtown? Just for
| instance. You do not frequently buy grocery with plenty of
| plastic bags, mostly too thin to reuse?
|
| > Many cities have markets at walkable distances that sell
| products in bulk.
|
| You can also buy in bulk from a supermarket, but you need
| space to stockpile and in apartments, specially in modern
| ones, there is not much space. Not talking about the fact
| that's impossible have p.v. and heat pumps for anyone
| anyway... So essentially the full-electric new deal is nearly
| impossible in cities.
|
| > You have to think twice before buying something
|
| If I see my grocery records I've bought MUCH more back then
| in a dense city than now on mountains, really. Simply because
| I buy frequently ready made stuff than dropping their
| relative packages to the bin. Try a simple experiment: hold
| somewhere your packaging for a month (if you have enough
| space), you'll might be shocked by their volume.
|
| Just for tea bags: I like green or white tea and I tend to
| buy metallic 1kg pot, they last for long. Yes, I need a bit
| more to clean anything but WFH it's not much an issue, in the
| end my waste is ZERO. Simply because having nature around I
| made compost, so the used tea leaves got dropped in nature,
| where they do not pollute. While with bags they need to be
| dropped to the bin, creating a certain amount of waste per
| day. Really, try experimenting collecting the waste you can
| without odors etc for a month or at least a week, then try
| measure it and project the same for 1000 of you per year try
| playing about changing habit in this model.
|
| Cities of the past, where people just live in "wall homes,
| little equipment" and tend to work "just downstairs" do not
| exists anymore, there are the theoretical "strong towns" who
| are not there and they are not compatible with today economy
| anyway. Modern buildings just for piped water, electricity,
| sewers, elevators, fire safety, seismic safety, HVAC consume
| MUCH MORE raw resources than small homes and makes people
| consume more. They are really only needed for financial
| capitalism, against nature and humanity.
| LikeBeans wrote:
| I think you are arguing about centralized vs distributed
| models. They both have pros and cons. I think it depends
| what you are optimizing for. And likely you need both
| especially with 8+ billion people.
|
| For example in a centralized model the initial investment
| in resources is pretty high (like building a large
| apartment building) but the idea that over time you can
| manage and operate that building with common resources
| among the inhabitants. Hopefully over time it uses less
| resources than a distributed model.
| kkfx wrote:
| Yes, but there is an important point: in the past
| centralized means much, just to have services we need to
| have them nearby, there was no phones, people have only
| their feet and so on. Being in a city was not nice due to
| pollution, from heating (burned wood and coal), sewers,
| ... but still means having anything around. This is not
| true anymore. In the past being centralized for a company
| means having workers and customers nearby, more companies
| in a tight space means competition that lowered prices
| and pushed up innovation and so on, it was problematic
| but needed.
|
| Since the '80s thanks to modern logistic assembly a chair
| in India, with Russian wood, Brazilian caning, Chinese
| felt and Indonesian nails to sell it in Amsterdam became
| cheaper than built it nearby. Cities was still needed,
| most things happen on paper and we can't duplicate
| archives around employee homes, receiving customer there,
| conferences was only in person, trade fairs/expo was
| needed and so on, so again there was no distributed
| modern model possible. After internet start to spread,
| TLCs evolve, we do not need the office, we do not need in
| person conferences or trade fairs and so on. So now we
| can choose between centralized and distributed models.
|
| Stated that: the centralized model is not anymore the one
| from the past, a big residential building in the past,
| let's say just from the '80s was typically a big concrete
| structure, with a concrete or metallic roof, some windows
| and doors, a simple clean water distribution, hot
| sanitary and heating water and a common sewers, very
| simple electricity (since there is not much power needs),
| phones and TV. That was already significantly more than
| the '50s where phones was not really a thing and TV was a
| new thing only few have, no central system. Now? Well,
| roof need to be an insulated and ventilated one, nothing
| exceptional, but complex on a large structure. For
| seismic safety we might need or much more steel or a
| seismic insulation, witch again it's nothing so
| exceptional but still means 15-20% more raw materials, of
| course we need general insulation, ventilated facades,
| stuff to allow winter Sun penetrate the building for free
| heating, but not the high summer Sun, VMCs, HAVAC, f.o.
| maybe security cameras, elevators, .... a modern building
| of comparable size/number of apartments than the '80s one
| is more the double it's cost AND you can't count for
| generations in the future to amortize it, tech change. We
| have had classic copper phone, than FTTH, and in many
| cases we was not able to reuse copper ducts, TV now in
| large part of the western world is distributed on IP, so
| we need at least home networks because relaying on wifi
| is horrific and you are not allowed anyway in new
| buildings, a new cat6a/cat8 LAN per apartment instead of
| some chained coax, electricity is used for cars and much
| more powerful appliances so again we need much more stuff
| for it and I do not take into account how many things are
| now mandatory for cars, including mere garage space, not
| demanded in the '50s
|
| Long story short in the past, a near past, the cost of
| building a 40 apartment building was LOWER than building
| 40 single family homes and the useful life of such
| building was estimated certainly for 50 years but
| probably for 100 years. Now the useful life is perhaps 30
| years and potentially 50 years and the cost of 40
| apartment is greater than 40 single family homes, beside
| that a 40s apartments building can't evolve much. A
| single family home can do only a bit better but being a
| single family home with a bit of ground around in 50
| years when the elderly parents having build if for them
| die their children sell/rebuild it, it's doable at a
| reasonable price (let's say the price of 4-6 mid-range
| cars, in a hypothetical spread society) so single family
| homes remain "up to date" to current tech, needs, human
| desires and climate change. Large buildings and cities
| can't.
|
| Long story short in the past there was no other options
| than cities, now cities are too costly and we evolve at a
| speed we can't amortize such cost, we do not need them
| also, so it's not much reasonable keeping them and
| pushing for smart cities which are even more costly and
| hard to evolve.
| vwcx wrote:
| Perhaps. But go work at a grocery store or warehouse and you
| will observe the vast amount of plastic film used (and
| discarded). "Shrink wrap" covers palletized boxes and is used
| as a method to group cargo. Once you realize how much a single
| grocery store throws away in the course of unloading a truck
| and stocking the shelves overnight, you won't be pointing at a
| vending machine with a wrapped fruit as the most effective
| mitigation. Not to say personal consumer habit shifts won't be
| important, of course.
| kkfx wrote:
| No doubt. But can we remove such packaging? I'm not in that
| business so I do not really know, but I suppose not. While we
| can remove the ready made food.
|
| It's not differently than cars: can we have BEVs? Yes. Can we
| have BEV-trucks, well, there are some, but honestly they are
| not realistic, so what? It's better taking the cars, since so
| far we can for them, trying something else for the trucks or
| simply giving up?
|
| For something we can change, and it's a good thing to do, for
| something else there is no option.
|
| Even BEVs are sold as "green", well, they pollute much
| anyway, but instead of polluting the atmosphere we all
| breathe in, they pollute around mining sites, witch tend to
| exists where little to no humans live a life. It's not good
| anyway the pollution, but it's a choice: damaging certain
| area or the whole planet. For nuclear it's the same, a
| nuclear accident it's a disaster but normal operations are
| "clean", yes we have waste witch are an issue but in the end
| we put them in deserts and they can pollute at maximum there
| except in case of extreme climate disasters where we have
| anyway little chance to survive.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| There's companies that will pay you for that kind of palette
| wrap and recycle it.
|
| Apparently 21% is already recycled in the US, 30% in the EU.
|
| It can also be made from recycled plastic.
| amusingimpala75 wrote:
| I may be missing it, but this article mainly talks about the
| issues of pyrolysis and advanced plastics recycling. But it
| provides data supporting traditional recycling, citing a 55-85%
| success rate. Are there any other issues with traditional
| recycling, or do we just need to make sure that the plastic being
| recycled is using the better/older method?
| kragen wrote:
| pyrolysis makes yogurt tubs from yogurt tubs. traditional
| 'mechanical' recycling makes park benches from yogurt tubs and
| throws up its hands at the park benches
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| They're kind of complementary.
|
| The expanded version of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle has Waste-to-
| energy and landfill as next steps.
|
| Chemical recycling could fit in between mechanical recycling
| and Waste-to-energy.
|
| Though if you just let corporations lie about stuff then it's
| hard for any kind of logical actions to be taken.
|
| Personally I don't mind the mass balance stuff they mention as
| long as there is a mandated minimum.
|
| Similar to 'green electricity' that all come through the same
| wires as the coal generation it's fine if consumer brands want
| to pay a little extra to market themselves as 100% green energy
| but if you spread any extra cost across every faceless user by
| forcing them to buy a minimum 1% green energy and ramp it up
| over a few years then that's a good way to fund the initial
| rollout of new cleaner options.
| tmaly wrote:
| I think a better approach to this would be to improve packaging
| technology.
|
| Are there ways to use less plastic or none at all in packaging?
| mannycalavera42 wrote:
| "packaging" is just a synonym of "ad space" that's the real
| challenge (not saying it's impossible, need just _some_
| revolutionary approach I think)
| sumtechguy wrote:
| > need just _some_ revolutionary approach
|
| That 'revolutionary approach' is making one of the other
| things that we can recycle very easily cheaper. Plastics are
| wildly cheap and durable enough for their use. But paper
| (kinda recyclable), glass (very recyclable), metal (very
| recyclable) are kind of expensive vs plastic. Taxing it would
| create a weird perverse thing. The real thing that needs to
| happen is the remaining 3 things we can recycle easily need
| to be cheaper. When nat gas became cheaper vs coal (which is
| really cheap) the energy companies very quickly started
| switching over to NG.
| staunton wrote:
| _How_ do you imagine those things "become" cheaper without
| things like taxing? Just suggesting that the only way
| forward is to "make them cheaper" seems to amount to "do
| nothing to fix the problem, just wait until someone invents
| some magic solution". What if a magic solution is not
| possible, or at least noone finds it?
| jeffwask wrote:
| Plus, a placebo for dumb consumers who thing a bigger package
| means better or more. It reminds me of a story from when I
| worked in manufacturing process 20 years ago. A major vendor
| of sensors and control hardware was demoing a new line of
| sensors. The plant manager in talking with the vendor said,
| "These are great but I think they are too lite, people will
| pick them up and assume they are junk." When the vendor
| released the product line, they had added a weight to each by
| sticking a small piece of heavy metal in each one with the
| sole purpose of conveying weight to the customer.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| Is your take that when I purchase mayonnaise, the reason my
| hands don't get dirty is because of advertising? That doesn't
| seem correct.
| jkestner wrote:
| Cardboard is great for packaging. Molded paper pulp is also
| good with a nice experience if you need one. The problem is, as
| sibling comment says, that packaging is advertising. So we wrap
| avocados to make them feel more valuable.
| epolanski wrote:
| One thing that I would really really like to emphasize: the
| biggest source of micro polymers, those that you can find in
| antartica, oceans or the everest comes from car tires.
|
| If we want less plastics pollution, this has to be handled first.
|
| The world desperately needs a tax tied to how polluting things
| are.
|
| If money's on the line industries and people will quickly adapt.
| Without it? There's way too much convenience to prompt looking
| for serious alternatives.
| jl6 wrote:
| Is there a viable alternative to current car tires?
| epolanski wrote:
| Using cars less (investing in public transport) and reducing
| the average weight of cars sensibly would make already an
| extremely huge difference.
|
| The difference in tire wear between a Corolla and a EV SUV is
| quite huge, e.g., you're gonna change tires way more often on
| the second one.
| leto_ii wrote:
| > There are many flavors of this kind of accounting. Another
| version of free attribution would allow the company to take that
| entire 30-pound batch of "33% recycled" pouches and split them
| even further:
|
| > A third of them, 10 pounds, could be labeled 100% recycled --
| shifting the value of the full batch onto them -- so long as the
| remaining 20 pounds aren't labeled as recycled at all.
|
| Amusingly reminiscent of CDO tranches.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| ANTONIO Is your recycled plastic ewes and rams?
| SHYLOCK I cannot tell; I make it breed as fast
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| Maybe more like CDO^2...
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> If you turned all of what's been made into cling wrap, it
| would cover every inch of the globe.
|
| An interesting analogy but cling wrap is famously thin. Here is
| another perspective:
|
| Worldwide plastic production is estimated at just over
| 400,000,000 tons, or 400,000,000,000kg. Not all plastic is the
| same but its density is roughly equivalent to that of water (once
| all the air-filled plastics like Styrofoam are crushed down). A
| cubic kilometer of water weighs in at 1,000,000,000,000kg,
| roughly double the world plastic problem. (someone please check
| my math ;)
|
| So yes, you could wrap the entire planet in a layer of cling
| film. But you also could dispose of all the world's plastic in a
| single 1km x 1km landfill piled 400m deep, which would be barely
| a dot on the map and certainly a far better solution than dumping
| it in the oceans.
| TheDudeMan wrote:
| The delusion of thinking you can change consumer behavior via
| blog post...
|
| It seems like the solution is to tax the producer.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| I no longer care about plastics recycling. I only care that they
| get to the dump.
| kogus wrote:
| Has recycling done any net good at all? The old mantra of
| "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" is in that order for a reason -
| Recycling was theoretically acknowledged as the "least bad"
| option. But in practice, I think many people viewed it as a get
| out of jail free card - consume whatever you want as long as you
| recycle the packaging.
|
| Now it turns out that it was (mostly) a farce all along. Most
| recycling ends up in landfills, and the recycling process has
| terrible pollution side effects of its own. The shocking part of
| it to me is that it has taken us forty plus years for this to
| even approach mainstream conversation. The idea that "recycling
| is a sham" sounded like a conspiracy theory up until recently.
|
| The level of effort that has been put into marketing recycling,
| just to enable ever-increasing consumerism is staggering.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| As far as I understand it, recycling metals has a very large
| net positive for energy spent (vs. mining and refining new
| ores). Plastic and paper pulp recycling has always been
| dubiously valuable.
| kogus wrote:
| Thank you for that clarification. You are absolutely right- I
| was referring primarily to plastic recycling.
| doe_eyes wrote:
| The second point of that article - that with creative accounting,
| 10%-recycled material turns into a small batch of "100%-recycled"
| material and a large pile of "0%-recycled" material - is kind of
| funny. Although it's interesting that we take this fungibility
| for granted when talking about money, but not plastic pellets.
|
| By the way, the "carbon offsets" industry does this and more.
| It's a general problem with industries that sell warm-and-fuzzy-
| feelings with no one particularly interested in looking under the
| hood. Also extends to some charities, etc.
|
| Anyway, the first claim of the article - that in the pyrolysis
| process, not all plastic is turned into plastic - seems... kind
| of nitpicky? So some of it is turned into fuel or paints - so
| what? A lot of consumer recycling is actually "downcycling". The
| glossy newspapers you put in the recycling bin probably don't end
| up as glossy newspapers - more likely, they end up as cardboard.
| bandrami wrote:
| Unfortunately the only answer is that we need to use less
| "disposable" plastic in the first place.
| paul7986 wrote:
| Recently my township in southern york county pa made recycling a
| lot more costly and thus MANY are no longer are recycling.
| Society embraced the plastics industries (like the tobacco
| industry of the past.. smoking is healthy) drum banging that
| recycling is good, yet and of course years later we hear their
| drum banging was driven by money and greed ... such changed
| society into you must recycle to past few years we are hearing
| nothing is recycled. Thus I do not recycle (MANY others here no
| longer do too) because its costly now and as well was anything
| really being recycled (what to believe?).
|
| What i do rather is buy a few Fuji waters and reuse them
| throughout a month. OVerall when i was recycling or whatever i
| was doing i would drink 6 small bottles of water a day and put
| them in the recycle bin. Im definitely now using a ton less
| plastic.
| xlinux wrote:
| Minimalisim is what the world needs.
| welder wrote:
| Just do like Vienna... they incinerate their plastic with almost
| no emissions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml0gXre_V-U&t=91s
| mjevans wrote:
| Let us have the damned plastic straws. If the (industrial?)
| compostable / degrades better plastic isn't a myth go ahead and
| require that as the material, but otherwise straws are too
| useful.
|
| As for the rest? Regulations. Regulate the use of easy to clean
| and reuse durable containers. Make their sizes standard,
| interchangeable. Alternately, allow containers that are fully
| disposable. However the customer fee for a fully disposable
| container should be zero overhead. Yes this includes paper bags
| at the grocery store. That tech is super useful and should be
| encouraged over... heavy plastic BS bags.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| "straws are too useful"?
|
| I haven't used one since I was a teen - or on the rare occasion
| I've had a smoothie. I'm pretty sure I would cope without a
| straw if need be.
|
| The environmental cost is outweighed by the necessity, and we
| really need to start thinking about the _necessity_ of items,
| not how convenient they make things.
| jkestner wrote:
| I see a lot of people despairing from the consumer side. Let me
| mention the producer side.
|
| Making an outdoor-rated device with a radio, plastic is a hard
| material to ignore. Given that there's little else that has the
| right characteristics at anywhere near the right price, I've done
| a lot of searching for easily recyclable plastics (ABS ain't one
| of them). Most of those are not right for the product and would
| only doom it to the landfill quicker when they failed. So I
| focused on plastics that would keep the product in use as long as
| possible. For recycling, we're going to experiment with doing it
| ourselves--take used product back, and have our injection molder
| regrind it for a future batch (this is why I picked a local
| partner, they're down for it).
|
| Given that all the real waste is produced by single-use plastics,
| I think this exercise has been the commercial equivalent of
| washing and sorting all my food packaging.
| Always42 wrote:
| Where I live, it's required that I have both recycling and trash
| picked up every week.
|
| How much more pullotion is added by that second truck driving
| around?
|
| Also instead of forcing me to get trash picked up every week why
| can't it be bi weekly?
|
| I know I know, money. But guh.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > How much more pullotion is added by that second truck driving
| around?
|
| Probably not much, or negligible. If everything was going into
| a single trash truck, it would fill faster. The fact is, trash
| / recyclable trucks do fill up and need to dump their load.
| (I'll let you figure out how to run those numbers.)
|
| In my case, my company sends a single truck with one side that
| handles recycling and the other that handles trash. I prefer it
| because I only have a single trash day, and everything gets
| picked up at the same time.
|
| What I don't like is that all trash pickup (in my town) is
| private. There are 2-4 different trash trucks that visit my
| street a week, depending on if a company is doing well or
| mismanaged and going out of business.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Does anyone familiar with molecular recycling know current state
| of the art, tradeoffs, etc.? Curious to see how that's coming
| along, especially given the seeming failure of mechanical
| recycling.
| tim333 wrote:
| It seems to me that sticking it in a landfill is a kind of
| recycling. We take hydrocarbons out of the ground, polymerize
| them, use them a bit and then put them back in the ground where
| they came from.
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