[HN Gopher] University of Alabama Engineer Pioneers New Process ...
___________________________________________________________________
University of Alabama Engineer Pioneers New Process for Recycling
Plastics
Author : thunderbong
Score : 154 points
Date : 2025-01-04 23:30 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.ua.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.ua.edu)
| behnamoh wrote:
| Is it necessary to mention which university the person is from? I
| have the same reaction when news titles say things like "34 yo
| woman discovers blah blah blah" or "Spanish scientists found that
| ...". No one cares about the _meta data_ of these people, let 's
| get to the point and hear what they did.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| For how long did reading those three words delay you from
| getting to the point?
|
| How do you justify the leap from you not caring to "no one
| cares"?
| caminante wrote:
| In fairness, this is a self-promoting (biased) University
| blog. Without the parent's critique, I suspect most would
| gloss over this.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| The party reporting the information calling attention to
| the fact that it's reporting on its own institution by
| putting the name of that institution in the headline
| creates that awareness.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| At least it's a less known school. Usually they mention only
| the big names like "Stanford scientists...". When it's a lesser
| known school it's just "Scientists...."
| tomrod wrote:
| UA is not really lesser known.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| UA is elite
| 14 wrote:
| Well I think it is important. With the vast amount of knowledge
| that is being created every day we have to filter much of it
| out. If that university has made a reputation as a leader of
| knowledge acquisition and known for well run labs and
| procedures then they earn that reputation. The author of the
| story might just get more eyes on the story if people think it
| will contain good knowledge from a reputable source.
| bickfordb wrote:
| This article is from the school's PR dept
| Jarwain wrote:
| I mean it's from the University of Alabama news site, hyping a
| University of Alabama lab. I'd assume it's serving a
| marketing/"school spirit" sorta purpose as well as sharing the
| news.
| caminante wrote:
| Yes. OP basically linked a PR.
| tw04 wrote:
| Yes, it is necessary. They funded the research and deserve the
| credit.
| cosmotic wrote:
| "Tax payers of the United States..."
| tw04 wrote:
| Likely tax payers of Alabama, I don't see federal funding
| but might be missing it:
|
| https://afr.ua.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/UA-AFR-
| FY23.pd...
|
| I'd imagine the taxpayers are happy with the recognition
| via the university.
| cosmotic wrote:
| I was just speaking generally about funding for research.
|
| I don't follow the logic that taxpayers would be happy
| with the university getting credit. I'm a tax payer, and
| I'd much rather the researcher get credit.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Would you have a problem if it said "OpenAI develops novel LLM
| to solve math problems" rather than "Novel LLM solves math
| problems" too?
| 1zael wrote:
| Exactly. +100
| behnamoh wrote:
| Yes, it's the same to me. Let's talk about ideas instead of
| people/companies.
| lenkite wrote:
| > Is it necessary to mention which university the person is
| from?
|
| This is such a strange statement. He leads a team at The
| University of Alabama which has been given a grant by the
| National Science Foundation. He is not a sole inventor working
| by his own funding in his private time. The University of
| Alabama has also filed a patent application - so why wouldn't
| any news article mention the university ?
| khana wrote:
| yes
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| This is a pretty sad and cynical way to live life. Also, your
| point isn't even very good. It is useful to know where research
| is coming from; it's hardly the same as the strawman example of
| "34 yo woman discovers blah blah blah". Also, this ridiculous
| notion that "No one cares about the 'meta data'" is silly.
| Actual academics are interested in the names of the venue of
| publication as well as the institutions of the researchers
| involved; is it the primary thing that matters? No, but its
| pretty weird to be upset about such a minor thing. Though, I'm
| not surprised to see this kind of comment on HN.
| fracus wrote:
| As a 34 yo spanish woman scientist, I take great offense at
| your dismissal of qualifications.
| amluto wrote:
| Actual paper (paywalled):
| https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsapm.4c01525
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| I am unable to read the article due to the paywall, so I am left
| wondering about additional insights since the following 2009
| article:
|
| https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2009/gc/b9068...
| wanderingmind wrote:
| A good approach is to search in scholar to see what other links
| exist. Here is the link to a preprint
| https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&d...
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| I meant the OP's article is paywalled, not the link I gave as
| a reference.
| Over2Chars wrote:
| The current recycling paradigm has been an obvious failure of
| catastrophic proportions.
|
| What is needed is not new recycling processes, but a government
| that is not beholden to plastics industry lobbying. Can we have a
| new process for good government too, please?
| nickff wrote:
| The problem isn't that governments are beholden to the plastics
| lobby; this is more of a 'bootleggers and baptists' situation
| where most people like plastics because they're cost-effective,
| and 'recycling' lowers their perceived environmental costs
| lurking_swe wrote:
| the price of plastics that we pay is not the TRUE cost in my
| opinion. The solution would be to address this. Then i bet
| you plastic won't look as competitive anymore...
|
| For example, are plastic producers mandated to pay for
| plastic cleanup efforts? No. Well...why not? All the garbage
| ends up in the ocean and then destroys the food chain slowly.
| And then new companies like the "ocean cleanup project" have
| to scrape by and beg for donations to fund their ocean and
| river cleanup efforts.
|
| Increased plastic prices would also encourage research into
| alternatives.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Just burn it in a gasifier, use the gas to generate
| electricity (combined cycle gas turbine).
| r-bryan wrote:
| Yeah, basically the oil companies pumping up fossil fuel
| to burn, but we get a single use of it as plastic before
| it goes to the incinerator.
| nostromo wrote:
| North America consumer plastics do not end up in the ocean
| in large numbers.
|
| Plastics in the ocean generally come from waste from the
| fishing industry and from South East Asia.
| metalman wrote:
| I live on an ocean front property in Nova Scotia, and
| spend an inordinate amount of time at the waters edge.
| And there is massive amounts of plastic washing up, and a
| lot of it is not from here, its mericun plastic. The
| major current (gulf stream) brings it from the US,
| everything, and I mean everything that will float, and
| some that doesn't. I have a growing collection, of, hats,
| just the nice ones mind, and as anything that has spent
| days, weeks ,or years in the ocean, is more ir less
| sterilised, I am happy to keep, pass on, or use.My
| favorite pillow case, which started of as a lucky find,
| used to bring MORE, treasures home is just one thing
| amongst many. That does not mean that I dont find eagle
| feathers, agates, fossils, perfect walking sticks
| stripped, sharpened, and lost by beavers, but there is a
| lot of plastic and sundry junk. Some of the plastic is
| admitedly beautiful, fragments of lost toys, polished and
| worn smooth by the wind, waves, and sand. And historical
| plastic, mint shape, that must have been dumped, burried
| somewhere and then floated anew, and washing up now.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| If I read "America" as the western hemisphere, then this
| comment makes sense. If I read it as "USA" I doubt your
| attribution a little.
|
| Undoubtedly you get a lot of it.
| squigz wrote:
| Do you have any data on this?
| dahart wrote:
| I went deep sea fishing in Mexico a few years back, and
| the number of water bottles floating out in the ocean was
| very alarming. That's not fishing industry waste, it's
| definitely consumer plastics, and it was the only visible
| waste.
| asdff wrote:
| Water bottles floating in the ocean definitely sounds
| like fishing industry waste. Or whoever is boating and
| just chucking bottles off the side. I mean think of
| consumer recycling; only a little fraction of it is
| probably plastic bottles yet thats all you see in the
| ocean? Seems hard to believe. There are people who go out
| and collect seaglass, an industry that exist because
| boaters throw just that many green brown or blue bottles
| of beer off the side of the boat to lead to appreciable
| yields on shore.
| dahart wrote:
| No, you're misunderstanding the scale and making
| assumptions. It's widely reported and well known that
| water bottles polluting the ocean is coming from consumer
| goods - the volume of plastic trash in the ocean is far
| far bigger than the entire fishing and all boating
| industries combined globally.
| https://plasticoceans.org/the-facts/
|
| Maybe you never heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch
|
| It's a bit shocking to see first hand. Get out there and
| look around, and you'll realize this isn't a tiny problem
| caused by boaters.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| You're both making scale errors.
|
| The amount of plastic produced, shipped, and dumped is
| simply staggering. You can ship 99.9 pct of it to SE Asia
| and still have enough to pollute all the beaches and
| snorkelling areas at alarming levels.
| lurking_swe wrote:
| that's true. But IMO it doesn't really matter where it
| comes from. once it's in the ocean it travels and affects
| everyone eventually.
|
| Having people in north america pay less for plastic just
| because we do a better job not throwing it out isn't fair
| either. That would basically be north america
| "outsourcing" our problems to the poorer countries that
| don't yet have the infrastructure in place to properly
| deal with garbage.
| sudahtigabulan wrote:
| > North America consumer plastics do not end up in the
| ocean in large numbers.
|
| Yes, they end up in South East Asia.
|
| https://eastasiaforum.org/2019/06/26/southeast-asias-
| plastic...
| nostromo wrote:
| That's no longer the case as the US no longer sends
| plastics to Asia under the guise of recycling.
|
| None of this would be an issue if we put our no-longer-
| usable plastics in landfills where they should be.
| anon7000 wrote:
| Which is what cities tell you to do (Seattle is
| relatively specific about what kinds of plastic to put in
| the landfill vs to recycle), but that makes it
| complicated for consumers.
| vkou wrote:
| > Then i bet you plastic won't look as competitive
| anymore...
|
| They still will. For most things that we use plastics for,
| they have incredible material properties.
|
| Adding a small cost of disposal to them won't change the
| equation.
| klipt wrote:
| Do we have any idea of the true cost of cleaning up
| microplastics / forever chemicals (PFAS) pollution?
| Thorrez wrote:
| We should be taxing PFAS.
|
| Are there significant health downsides of microplastics?
| staplers wrote:
| Takes a quick google search for "microplastics health
| effects" to find a well researched laundry list of health
| downsides.
| asdff wrote:
| Theres evidence that some species of bacteria have
| mutated to break down plastic for an energy source. So
| maybe in time that cost is zero.
| jon_richards wrote:
| Much of Europe seems to do fine orienting their
| consumption and recycling around glass (including
| wash+reuse). I was surprised I didn't even see aluminum
| recycling because it was so rare to see a can.
| lurking_swe wrote:
| most plastic i see daily is completely unnecessary. it's
| simply cost savings for the manufacturer.
|
| I'm all for using plastic where it actually makes the
| product better. Like a silicone spatula for example, or
| in medical industry where plastics are used to keep
| needles, etc sterile.
|
| Is society vastly better compared to 50 years ago? No not
| really, aside from improved vehicle safety and a few
| other tech improvements. Yet plastics were used SO much
| less back then. Maybe i'm missing something.
| asdff wrote:
| I think what is missing is the assumption that the
| replacement product would be better for the environment.
| Like before we had plastic crap we had steel products.
| And we know very well the damage that industry causes
| back when we had a local steel industry polluting the
| rust bet cities for decades. Maybe you use wood well a
| lot of the wood they used back then wasn't really
| sustainably harvested either.
|
| What we are left with is plastic. Cheap yes but also
| perhaps the least bad of the other things.
|
| As long as we engage in rampant consumerism we will run
| into similar rampant consumerism issues no matter the
| materials used.
| vharuck wrote:
| Banning plastic for unnecessary goods may rein in
| consumerism a bit. Consider cheap plastic toys. Without
| plastic, those toys would cost more, and people would buy
| fewer of them. I doubt the priciness would cause real
| harm poorer families, considering how manufacturing has
| lowered the price of even wooden toys so much. Plus so
| many stores sell used toys.
|
| I'd only worry about the affect of a plastic restriction
| on food prices. But, again, it might be a blessing in
| disguise by steering people towards fresh produce and
| meat.
| asdff wrote:
| I feel like size of the home is the limiting factor more
| than anything. Before plastic funkos it was little
| ceramic cherubs grandma was filling all the available
| shelving with.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Why should someone in Oklahoma pay more for the actions of
| a litterbug in the Philippines?
| metalman wrote:
| because much of the worlds plastic will be produced
| useing pattented processes and specialty machinery and
| components, invented and owned by americans.Plus american
| natural gas as the major feed stock is sold to make that
| plastic. America proffits at every step, so bears a
| responsibility. Or, we can get into the idea of
| "exporting contradictions", and the eventual reconing
| that will happen, later..... I should add, that I know a
| good many rural people who have no issue with taking
| responsibility for problems that others created, so
| unless you are an actual born bred okey, then perhaps you
| need to get out there and ask some dirt farmer what they
| think.
| lurking_swe wrote:
| This is a bit racist imo, or at the least lacking
| empathy.
|
| It's a systems problem. Sounds like you (like me) grew up
| in the 1st world where your country has the proper trash
| infrastructure. Additionally, the government and schools
| provided the basic education about why littering is
| harmful, and society at large understands it in your
| country. That's great.
|
| Just because we grew up with this knowledge ingrained
| into us doesn't make us "better" people, or better than a
| filipino person.
|
| Some poor countries have poor trash infrastructure, and
| they do a poor job teaching the ills of littering to
| their people. That's unfortunate, but doesn't make us
| "better" than them imo. It just means they are poor and
| uneducated on certain topics.
|
| Now to answer your actual question, why should someone in
| oklahoma pay more. I don't think it's ethical or even
| fair for someone in oklahoma to pay LESS for plastic
| simply because they do a better job throwing out their
| trash. Cheap prices for plastic encourage additional
| plastic use. And additional plastic use means more and
| more plastic will be entering rivers and oceans around
| the world, which affects ALL of us, including the person
| in oklahoma. Plastics enter the food chain, via fish
| eating them, and even through rainfall once they become
| microplastic in size. Basically, i'm arguing that
| "outsourcing" the issue to poor countries won't solve the
| problem and is just pushing a cost burden onto already
| poor countries.
|
| A proper solution IMO would discourage plastic production
| globally, or at least enforce cleanup by the producers of
| plastic (make them pay for efforts similar to the Ocean
| Cleanup Project).
| potato3732842 wrote:
| How is it racist? He just picked a random landlocked
| first place area and a oceanfront 3rd world place? He
| could have just as easily chosen South Korea and Brazil
| or whatever other comparison.
|
| I will agree that littering is very much cultural.
| eikenberry wrote:
| If an educated populace isn't better than an uneducated
| populace why bother with education? It costs a lot and
| ties up a portion of your potential work force with what
| would be a useless waste of time. I think you are
| conflating the inherent value of a human life vs. the
| relative value of different things we can do as people to
| improve ourselves. Education "improves" people, it makes
| them better. Having proper garbage disposal improves
| countries (groups of people). This is why we value and
| promote these things.
|
| And following you to circle back to the original point...
| Raising the price of plastics for everyone does place the
| majority of the burden on poor people/countries. If
| everything costs $0.05 more due to more expensive
| packaging, that is statistical noise for most people in a
| 1st world country but would make things unaffordable in
| poorer countries. But I agree that the only way to do it
| successfully would be to force a higher cost on the
| manufacturers no matter where they are located, otherwise
| they'd just shift manufacturing to the lower cost areas.
| Pretty much anything that raises the cost of goods will
| disproportionately impact the poor.
| dqv wrote:
| I think if that were really true, so many companies wouldn't
| go out of their way to create an image of something _not_
| being made of plastic when it is. It 's resin. It's polymer.
| It's PU. It's felt. It's acrylic. It's wool (aka 30% wool,
| 70% polyester like don't piss me off). Or my favorite: they
| just don't tell you what it's made of at all. A recent
| example of this is when I was looking for key racks. The
| hooks on the key racks were painted a metallic silver...
| obviously to look like metal. They weren't metal though, they
| were plastic. There was no way to find this information
| easily without first buying the product and investigating it
| myself. Why not just say they're plastic hooks?
|
| If plastic were truly a selling point, it would be prominent
| in all the advertising: "$5 value plastics!" or "Plastic/Wool
| jacket!" It's not. Because they know that, in reality, people
| don't actually like plastic. It's just that in an environment
| where you have a selection of items varying in price where
| the highest-price item is _just as likely_ to predominantly
| contain plastic, consumers will choose the least expensive
| option. It is exploitation of information asymmetry, not a
| true preference for cost-effective plastics.
|
| The other thing is that there are a lot of products that are
| _very expensive_ that are still made with plastic. When
| looking for products online, I always try sorting by most
| expensive to least expensive to get the higher quality
| products. Still there is plastic, but it 's Gucci plastic!
| See, this plastic junk is better because it has a household
| brand name on it.
|
| The capitalism apologia for this behavior is insulting too:
| No, you _need_ that plastic, it 's better than using the non-
| plastic materials! You wouldn't like it without the plastic!
| We're protecting you! (Again, if it really is better, then
| _make its betterness prominent_. Be proud of the fact that
| you chose plastic for its cost-effectiveness or its physical
| properties!)
|
| The solution I'd like to try is requiring that this sort of
| information be provided directly under the price at the
| consumer's request. In brick and mortar stores, they can have
| pull outs under the price label or just have a bigger label
| (yes this is feasible - retail stores already redo their
| labels regularly for price changes and new/seasonal
| merchandise). Online, there would have to be a prominent
| flippy switch to toggle on that additional information.
|
| In all, I find the claim that people prefer plastic to be
| dubious and think that, if given the information, a lot of
| consumers would buy less plastic. I think people prefer their
| time, not wanting to go down a deep research rabbit hole
| (where one must dodge the companies who infiltrate
| information sharing spaces like the Buy It For Life subreddit
| with false sentiment about their products), and are, at best,
| indifferent to plastic.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| They don't market cow's milk as "gland secretions" either.
|
| And while many products are optimized for cost, they don't
| market them as "cheaply sourced ingredients."
|
| Plastics have a bad rap. They don't cause big societal
| problems, relative to the societal attention (Eg plastic
| straws).
|
| People want simple, binary stories about a fight against
| evil -- but the world is complex and actually pretty good.
| Over2Chars wrote:
| The fraud that occurs with recycling is hardly a
| simpleton's morality tale for the masses. AFAICT it's not
| even discussed.
|
| People are "against recycling" becuase it's stupid or
| inconvenient, or others are "pro recycling" for "the
| earth". But recycling is a fraud, largely, as I mentioned
| - it's not supposed to supplant the reduction and re-use
| of materials, yet is has. This is because of plastics
| industry lobbying and marketing.
|
| No one talks about Reduction or Reuse. Now it's
| "recyclable". you throw it in a green bin and no one asks
| about it after that. Plastic bags were made a little
| thicker and euphemistically labelled "reusable". Study
| disposable single use trash marketed as reusable.
| photonthug wrote:
| > in an environment where you have a selection of items
| varying in price where the highest-price item is just as
| likely to predominantly contain plastic
|
| This thread is so much like the "people don't want quality"
| post from a day or two ago, with many of the same
| observations about information asymmetry, people making
| weirdly contrived excuses for corporate interests, etc.
| That thread has one guy ranting about ladles and
| kitchenware too, like just stamp it once out of steel for
| the love of god so we can stop rebuying the same junk every
| year!
|
| Plastic is great where we absolutely need it or ask for it,
| and the rest of the time it's just part of the deceptive
| cost and corner-cutting corporate culture that tends to
| wreck human health and happiness as well as the rest of the
| world.
|
| I'm really pissed about this subject lately because I'm
| breaking a major or minor household appliance like every
| other day just by trying to gently use it for the intended
| purpose. I didn't choose these objects since I'm visiting
| family, but how much can be blamed on a consumer really
| before we just call the sale of junk itself shitty and
| fraudulent? Some people will say "caveat emptor", but that
| really only works when choice and information is something
| that consumers have access to.
| dmurray wrote:
| Often plastic really is the optimum material for an
| application.
|
| There's plenty of plastic on the ISS, where money is no
| object. If you buy something manufactured with Kevlar or
| Teflon or Gore-Tex, that will be prominent in the
| marketing, and it really is better than steel for ballistic
| protection or oilskins for keeping you dry. If you buy
| plumbing supplies, the vendor will advertise whether they
| are plastic, and if so, whether they are PVC or LDPE -
| neither better nor worse than copper pipes, but with
| different performance characteristics.
|
| For clothing, polyester is a less premium material than
| wool - largely because it's cheaper; if wool was free we'd
| still make plastic clothes - so the seller advertises the
| wool component.
| Over2Chars wrote:
| plastic is a miracle material, that has no match in many
| applications.
|
| It's totally unnecessary to have it deliver 12 ounce
| bottles of coca cola by the metric ton.
| hunter-gatherer wrote:
| Yes. When discussing plastics we really should be
| discussing _single use_ plastics. Plastic food packaging
| needs to go by the wayside and something better needs to
| be made.
| spacemanspiff01 wrote:
| Northern Europe seems to do recycling well, there is a 25 cent
| bounty on each bottle, and grocery stores have automatic
| sorter/collectors.
| mqus wrote:
| As a german, we do "collection" well. Recycling(of
| plastics)... not that much.
| Over2Chars wrote:
| Well said.
| vinay427 wrote:
| This has been a thing in Michigan and likely a few other
| states for decades, although with a 10 cent bounty at least
| 10-20 years ago. There was apparently a 90-95% recovery rate
| last I checked, but I'm not sure how reliable those
| statistics are.
|
| That still doesn't solve the problem of recycling plastics or
| bottles in general, which this research may advance.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| The ten cent deposit has been in place in Michigan since
| the 1970s. Back then ten cents was a big deal but over 500%
| inflation since then has eaten away at the incentive. What
| has changed is attitudes regarding recycling and waste
| disposal in general. Back when Michigan put the deposit in
| place, it made a very noticeable difference in the
| reduction of litter in Michigan and also in how litter
| compared to states without a deposit. From my purely
| personal experience, that difference is mostly gone now.
|
| People hauling empties all over the place doesn't seem as
| eco friendly as it once did, especially when so many people
| have recycling pickup curbside with their trash pickup. In
| deposit states, you can't crush your cans before returning
| them but in non-deposit states you can, saving space.
| Eliminating the deposit probably would result in some
| amount of plastic going into trash cans instead of
| recycling bins, but it would be very far from being 100%.
| The math gets fuzzy when you start deciding on if people
| make special trips to return empties or are they usually
| returning them when they already were going to the store to
| shop. Same the more upstream you go. But that recycling bin
| at the curb is still there, waiting to be used more.
| Over2Chars wrote:
| Getting the recycling into the recycling location is just one
| of the problems.
|
| recycling plastics is not cost effective (another random
| article) https://greentumble.com/is-recycling-worth-it
|
| the real "solution" is reducing use, not recycling, and re-
| use, not recycling. Recycling is what should happen with
| what's left over after the other two "Rs" (remember the 3
| R's?).
|
| Instead the plastics industry says "use as much plastic as
| you want, we'll pretend to recycle it" and everyone pretends
| that it's actually happening, and it's not. I think that's
| called "green washing"
| devonkim wrote:
| The three Rs were in order of priority but because reduced
| consumption didn't exactly translate into what works for a
| sustainable economy under current incentive paradigms
| almost anywhere in an economy with lots of consumption we
| kind of wound up with the least important of the guidelines
| being what we could more reliably practice (the reasons are
| another discussion entirely).
|
| Almost all the most pressing problems for the human species
| seem to be Wicked Problem classes and it's part of why I
| don't have a lot of expectation that any of them will be
| solved even _if_ catastrophic events like constant war and
| mass deaths happen. I also have doubts that whoever
| survives any of these kinds of events would be more
| genetically predisposed to solving these problems in the
| future either.
| dahart wrote:
| > recycling plastics is not cost effective
|
| This is a specious claim with an unjustified goal.
| Municipal waste management is not expected to be "cost
| effective". We don't need to recycle because it's
| profitable, we need to recycle to reduce plastic production
| and plastic waste.
|
| Of course we need to reduce demand, you're right. We need
| to avoid plastics in the first place, and that should be
| higher priority than recycling.
|
| But there's nothing wrong with the idea of recycling. Yes,
| today's recycling is not happening as advertised. But
| that's not because recycling doesn't work, it's because
| people aren't doing it. It's a social problem we have, not
| a process problem.
| nostromo wrote:
| The problem isn't collection. It's what happens after
| collection.
| gosub100 wrote:
| this has 2 major consequences: it invites homeless people to
| pilfer through the trash - often throwing it down without
| cleanup. secondly, it invites people to take bottles from
| outside the jurisdiction of the reward and "redeem" them.
| Thus stealing money from the program.
| occz wrote:
| In practice, number 1 really never happens in Sweden. Sure,
| there are people looking for bottles in public trashcans,
| but they are not exclusively homeless nor do they leave a
| mess behind after collecting any potential recyclables from
| the cans. Private trashcans don't really contain
| recyclables as everyone collects what containers they buy
| and redeem them at the store when going to buy groceries.
| Number 2 doesn't happen either because the bottles have to
| have barcodes that actually grant the reward, which foreign
| containers do not.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| pretty sure this is a US west coast only problem and a more
| recent one at that. but yeah i do wish we stopped paying
| for recyclables for that reason
| StrandedKitty wrote:
| This problem is noticeable here in Amsterdam too --
| homeless people tend to just take the whole garbage bag
| out of the can, and empty it on the sidewalk so that it's
| easy to spot and collect all statiegeld (deposit) cans
| and bottles.
|
| It looks like the best solution the municipality has
| managed to come up with so far is to attach metal
| cupholder-like thingies to new trash cans, and people are
| expected to put statiegeld bottles and cans there, so
| that others can take them later and get a refund. Though
| I don't know how a regular uninformed person is supposed
| to figure out what these cupholders are for -- it's not
| intuitive at all.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| > often throwing it down without cleanup
|
| Around here they're polite and don't make a mess. But on
| the flip side you could only go around making a mess so
| long before you got beat up or something and good luck
| getting a police response for that so it's probably not in
| their interest to be obnoxious.
| occz wrote:
| Note that our method of "recycling" plastic is burning them
| for energy in the form of district heating/electricity.
|
| Still, beats landfilling.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| yes the bounty for bottle cap idea was created in America,
| but the downstream recycling of everything other than just
| metals is pretty much fake
| lefstathiou wrote:
| 100%. Collect all garbage (and recyclables) in one shot and
| sort at the destination!!!
|
| So many billions of hours and dollars lost to this nonsense.
| tempestn wrote:
| If you do it that way, the garbage contaminates everything
| else, making recycling much more difficult or impossible.
| Especially for paper and cardboard, which is very recyclable.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i've basically never seen single stream actually work
| somewhere... every time i've looked into the details it
| appears they just skim off the metal and landfill/burn the
| rest
| hooverd wrote:
| Why doesn't everyone already do that if it's so simple?
| landryraccoon wrote:
| > What is needed is not new recycling processes, but a
| government that is not beholden to plastics industry lobbying.
|
| I honestly don't understand what this statement even means.
|
| Are you saying that recycling technology is so cheap, efficient
| and easily deployed that government is the only obstacle to
| better waste management?
|
| If that's the claim, it's audacious to say the least. Where's
| your evidence to back it up?
| tantalor wrote:
| I think recycling, or reuse, could be made to be cheaper or
| more effective with better policy. This has to come from the
| top down. For example, by regulation on product design, or
| better incentives for consumer recycling (like deposits).
| atmavatar wrote:
| I thought it had more to do with the fact that plastic
| recycling is largely a scam - i.e., recycling logos are
| printed on nearly all plastics, less than half of which are
| _actually_ recyclable. Yet, there 's been no crackdown on
| such brazen fraud. I'm sure the assumption by most is that's
| due to lobbying.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| They're all recyclable. Just not into grades of plastic
| anyone wants to manufacture things out of.
|
| Recycled plastic are used heavily in things that people
| touch and need a lot of chonk to them relative to their
| strength to feel substantial and high quality or stuff
| that'll almost purely be loaded in compression (like bolt
| on plastic pads that prevent metal to metal contact or
| allow nice sliding).
| jonas21 wrote:
| Good luck with that. In the meantime, recycling process
| improvements can make plastic recycling less of a failure, and
| eventually a success.
| XorNot wrote:
| Virtue motivated reasoning: a bunch of people are dead set on
| something being morally bad, and it's deficiencies are
| interpreted as karmic punishment. Therefore improvements and
| optimisations are to be opposed or derided.
|
| See also: all the people completely certain that Semaglutide
| will definitely cause HyperCancer or something "soon".
| gosub100 wrote:
| You're almost right about a government mandate. But instead it
| should mandate that _waste_ management corporations step up
| their game and actually do the "manage" part. First of all, no
| more recycling trucks. Force them to sort the garbage and pull
| the plastic, aluminum, and glass out of the waste stream. This
| will get trucks off the roads and offload the mental tax (as
| well as political element) from consumer households. If the
| separated plastic is able to be recycled, WM can do so. If not,
| store it and all other materials in segregated areas of the
| landfill so if that changes in the future, the material can be
| easily dug up. They are the ones who should be "going green",
| consumer's job is to use the service they are paying for. There
| is no reason WM should get a free pass to stagnate while most
| other companies are innovating.
| blackqueeriroh wrote:
| Do you have any idea how critical plastics are to medicine? How
| much more expensive health care would be without them? You
| could reduce and recycle and in some cases reuse plastics in
| healthcare, but you cannot get rid of them without
| significantly affecting the quality of the medical care we all
| get today.
| Over2Chars wrote:
| plastics are, for some applications, a miracle material. My
| argument is about the fraud of recycling, not the evil of
| plastics.
| dahart wrote:
| Nobody's saying eliminate plastic completely, you don't need
| to defend medical uses. Healthcare is maybe ~3% of plastic
| use (based on very quick googling). I'm sure healthcare
| plastic use can be reduced, but let's first go after the 50%
| of plastic production that's unnecessarily going to single-
| serving drinks and food. BTW, in 2024 we use as much plastic
| for drinks as we produced globally in the year 2000. Plastic
| production has gone way up, and it doesn't need to.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Just like last time, and time before that, and the time before
| that: please stop posting this stuff until there's a solution
| that actually works at scale. It's like the little brother to
| cold fusion.
| BirAdam wrote:
| Except worse because plastics are destroying ecosystems and
| recycling makes people feel better about it despite most
| recyclable statements being effectively false. Most people have
| no idea what cold fusion is, and they know even less about why
| it would be good.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >despite most recyclable statements being effectively false
|
| I keep seeing these sort of statements but have yet to see
| one backed up by a link to some reputable evidence.
|
| My local supermarket accepts clean soft plastics for
| recycling and when I investigated I found membership of
| schemes to ensure full transparency. Looking further I found
| the companies accepting the waste and financial statements
| indicating heavy investment in machinery to deal with it.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Okidokey: https://www.youtube.com/climatetown and
| specifically https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJnJ8mK3Q3g so
| there you go.
|
| Plastic recycling, because of what plastics are, is
| basically impossible at cost. PET recycling might make you
| think "see, we _can_ recycle plastics " but first and
| foremost, PET recycling isn't recycling, it's reuse (using
| the PET as a base material to make something else, like
| fleece, which cannot be recycled), and second: the majority
| of plastics aren't PET and literally have no recycling
| path.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| I'm not sure that video backs up your assertions. The
| presenter states at the end of the video that "we have to
| keep recycling".
|
| I was hoping for something academic rather than a YouTube
| video.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Turns out you can fit a lot of papers in a youtube video
| when you have a degree in the field and you're doing
| investigative journalism that you present in a way that
| people might enjoy watching.
|
| And the final message is definitely a little more nuanced
| than that =D
| fluorinerocket wrote:
| I think any university press release should be not be posted
| XorNot wrote:
| Neat to see this for PET, since my goto filament is PETG at the
| moment.
| CarVac wrote:
| Apparently PET is even nicer to print with if your hotend is
| capable of that temperature.
| insaneisnotfree wrote:
| Instead of plastics we mush use glass on everything, so it can be
| reused.
|
| What we need is a new approach about plastics. We need to
| dissolve all of the plastics we have created and forget them at
| all on our lives. That involves making our politicians act about
| it on regulations for all of the enterprises. And us not buying
| anything with plastics.
|
| It is not only about the ecological contamination but biological
| contamination on all the life on earth including us.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| My understanding is that while glass is reusable/recyclable,
| nobody is really willing to do it.
|
| So is it much better than plastic?
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| They certainly used to. Why do you say we don't recycle
| glass? It's basically the same process as making new glass,
| you just add broken up glass in with the silica sand.
| Nevermark wrote:
| My guess: logistics of recycling glass is more expensive
| than getting sand.
|
| And glass in landfills isn't doing much harm.
|
| My town doesn't recycle glass.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Yeah this is basically it. And then with the glass you
| also have to keep it separated by color.
| AngryData wrote:
| You don't HAVE to, but you aren't going to be making
| clear glass again if you mix it with other colored
| glasses. Im not an glass expert though and it could be
| more of a cost consideration in not having to chemically
| separate out colored elements from glass when you can
| much more easily just get clean sand again for
| significantly cheaper.
| maeil wrote:
| > My understanding is that while glass is
| reusable/recyclable, nobody is really willing to do it.
|
| Plenty of people have been buying glass over plastic exactly
| when possible for this reason. Those people show that it's a
| concious decision and are not to be waved away.
| dartos wrote:
| If we lived in a perfect world, we wouldn't have let it get
| this bad in the first place.
| freeopinion wrote:
| So I just need the hotend of my 3D printer to hit 1600C? I
| better add a few more solar panels.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Check out Markus Kayser's solar sinter :)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptUj8JRAYu8
| kaonwarb wrote:
| I sympathize with your concern about the ecological impact of
| plastics; I also think you vastly underestimate the beneficial
| effects of plastics. Plastics are incredibly useful materials.
| There's no going back.
| Osiris wrote:
| Yeah, we're not going to build car parts, laptops, phones,
| keyboards, etc. out of glass. Plastics are in everything.
| tcbawo wrote:
| Single use plastics are convenient, are 99% of the problem,
| and could be phased out feasibly. Perfect is the enemy is
| good. Not pointing fingers at anyone in particular, but
| people arguing with absolutism on plastics is a dead end.
| jfkfkdkf wrote:
| Never going to happen. People already hate paper straws.
| No one is going to look at the current replacements and
| say "Yeah life was better after that" besides activists.
| someotherperson wrote:
| Maybe if the straws weren't laced with PFAS they'd get a
| better reception.
| ChArkingTurtLe wrote:
| Do they really hate them or do they just complain about
| them like some bad season of some series they will
| continue to watch anyway?
|
| Life is better without plastic straws and plastic plates
| and plastic knifes and so on ... and people who don't
| care usually care but the brain structure to admit that
| is premature.
| bennythomsson wrote:
| Propaganda will always be a problem. But progress is
| possible.
|
| Nobody will really miss single apples wrapped in plastic
| in the store.
| defrost wrote:
| I live in a first world G20 country with a greater life
| expectancy than the US.
|
| In 60 years I don't recall _ever_ seeing a single apple
| wrapped in plastic in a store.
|
| I have seen a plastic bag of apples pre selected weighed
| and ready to be grabbed .. but most apples are loose and
| you bag them yourself picking as many of the ones you
| want individually.
| bennythomsson wrote:
| If your country can do it, then the US also can!
| ChArkingTurtLe wrote:
| not wrapped in plastic but sprayed with "stuff".
|
| "how many apples are thrown away" is not just a question
| of personal responsibility and brains but how the public
| was "raised" over generations of mass production and
| cheap methods.
|
| "even" in Germany ( I don't know why I keep saying this
| ), and in upper class super markets, fresh produce rots
| much quicker than anything we produce in our gardens.
| mid-priced frozen stuff triggers unhealthy/gassy
| reactions in stomach and guts that are not triggered by
| higher-priced frozen stuff but again, the crowd doesn't
| care because it was raised that way or does not know.
|
| cheap liquor produce triggers worse reactions in body and
| brain, short-, mid- and long-term because the production
| methods are not as clean because producers are OK with
| the negative outcomes because they were raised to believe
| that their customers are "fucking stupid".
| bennythomsson wrote:
| I understand much of your rambling, but the wax that's
| sprayed on apples isn't an issue. To the contrary, it
| increases the shelf life of them, reducing waste. And
| it's not dangerous either, so pouncing on that particular
| detail isn't furthering your cause..
|
| https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/you-asked/why-do-they-
| spra...
| maeil wrote:
| In the same vein, no one hates them unless they didn't
| grow up with them. If you'd have grown up with glass
| straws, you'd love glass straws, especially if you'd been
| brought up being taught about the harms of single use
| plastics.
|
| 99% of these things are entirely cultural and habitual.
| AngryData wrote:
| I doubt that anyone would prefer a glass or any other
| hard material straw, straws made out of hard materials
| are just bad. And I say that as someone who was very
| enthusiastic about getting steel straws until about the
| forth or fifth time I nearly broke a tooth on them.
| Klonoar wrote:
| You could, alternatively... just not bite down on steel.
|
| Straws are just another utensil, I agree with OP that we
| could largely make do with alternate materials for them.
| dahart wrote:
| Straws aren't the big problem, single-use bottles are.
| likeabatterycar wrote:
| Maybe we can carve our computer keyboards out of bone and
| tusks like the cavemen did.
|
| The irony of making phones out of glass is they are
| terribly fragile and often become e-waste after so much as
| being knocked off a table.
|
| 20th century plastic telephones were so rugged they often
| doubled as weapons in films.
| ChArkingTurtLe wrote:
| there were, are and will be alternatives. we won't go back
| but we evolve. plastics ruin taste and they feel bad.
| people's senses are just a "bit fucked up" due to the many
| "other" things in water, air, soil, drinks and food.
| Eavolution wrote:
| The alternatives were for the most part replaced with
| plastic because of plastic's remarkable qualities. There's
| very few relatively inert materials that are cheap to
| manufacturer, durable, light, can withstand (reasonably)
| high temperatures, can be formed into whatever shape you
| want, and can be as hard or flexible as you want.
|
| Glass bottles used to be much more common but they're more
| expensive, very easy to break, and heavier, which also
| increases cost of transportation. Paper containers for
| things can't be allowed to get wet which often makes them
| impractical. Metals are expensive, potentially reactive,
| heavy, and inflexible.
|
| Yes plastics are very environmentally problematic, but they
| do solve a lot of problems that aren't really solved by any
| other kind of material.
| ChArkingTurtLe wrote:
| The following are assumptions based on vague memories
| from books, articles, documentaries, anecdotes and
| thinking based on observations of past and current events
| and economic methods. You'd have to consult historians
| and engineers to confirm.
|
| The choice was a purely pseudo-economic one.
|
| a) Alternatives needed less than 12 months longer R&D.
|
| b) Alternatives were less than 5% more expensive.
|
| c) Alternatives were reusable/repairable and would not
| have been single-use, which would have reduced production
| mid- and long-term.
|
| d) Alternatives would have sparked more industries and
| would have created more jobs, more captains and more
| (metaphorical) ships, especially in engineering and
| crafts.
|
| e) Alternatives would have meant better production
| methods and waste that would be easier and more
| constructive to handle, which would have meant better
| health and a more thriving environment and natural
| produce, which would have meant less opportunity to study
| negative impacts on humans as well as flora and fauna and
| less opportunity to make all kinds of swarms dependent on
| corporate "solutions".
|
| Again, alternatives would have sparked more industries
| and would have boosted our civilization's/colony's R&D by
| 50 or more years. And the resulting cumulative
| competition would have boosted R&D even further. More
| money overall, less of gap between the wealthiest and the
| rest.
|
| Pretending that the growing populations required
| unhealthy factory jobs is thus irrational. People were
| keen to learn and work and thrive and even dimwits like
| me had enough brains to catch up within a few months or
| years.
|
| The conventional argument "do we create jobs now or
| later" is nonsense, as more emerging industries would
| have meant at least just as many jobs.
|
| I could probably use an LLM and some books to craft a
| much better and technical answer but I probably won't use
| any for at least some longer while.
| elif wrote:
| Single use plastics which dissolve in over 20 years could go
| away though as a paradigm
| userbinator wrote:
| I don't know if I'm reading satire or not.
|
| Glass is much more energy-intensive to create and process than
| plastic, and its strength-to-weight ratio means that you'll be
| spending more energy (carbon emissions, whatever) on
| transportation too. It's also not flexible nor resistant to
| impact.
| bennythomsson wrote:
| But it won't invisibly accumulate in your food chain.
| asdff wrote:
| Depends how you power the glass factory. It certainly can
| if you use coal or gas.
| chairmansteve wrote:
| Natural gas is clean, apart from CO2. And if the glass is
| reused, you don't need so many factories.
| asdff wrote:
| I forgot about leaving bottles for the milk man.
| Certainly a more expensive way of doing business than a
| one off bottle you don't have to collect and clean
| though.
| chairmansteve wrote:
| Glass reuse was everywhere before the modern disposable age.
| My first ever job was crating beer bottles for return to the
| brewery.
|
| One problem is, the economic externalities are not priced
| into plastic.
| Thorrez wrote:
| I bought a special eco friendly floss that came in a glass
| bottle. I accidentally dropped it on my tile bathroom floor
| late one night while flossing and it shattered.
|
| Glass is heavier and more breakable than plastic. I'm not sure
| I want to give my baby glass cups. He tends to drop and throw
| things.
| conception wrote:
| I mean.. glass baby bottles were a thing for long time before
| plastic.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Were injuries from glass baby bottles a thing?
| azinman2 wrote:
| In about a year into glass baby bottles and so far no
| injuries. They're quite thick and don't break easily.
| HKH2 wrote:
| They last a lot longer too. Plastic gradually gets stained.
| ravetcofx wrote:
| #1 source of environmental and biological contaminated micro
| plastics source is car tire dust.
| https://e360.yale.edu/features/tire-pollution-toxic-
| chemical...
| tempestn wrote:
| Glass tires!
| Euphorbium wrote:
| Unironically just ban cars.
| AngryData wrote:
| I doubt your baby is going to be holding glass objects 5 feet
| above a tile floor and also being significantly heavier they
| are pretty hard for babies to throw. So I don't think
| breakage is nearly the problem you are imagining.
| chrismcb wrote:
| Do you realize just how much plastic we use? Almost everything
| we use had plastic in it (in some form or another) Not saying
| we can't go back, but it isn't as simple as "don't use plastic"
| likeabatterycar wrote:
| Hyperbolic statements like this is why no one takes recycling
| seriously.
|
| Plastics enabled many advancements in modern medicine. It's
| literally everywhere in medical equipment. We're not ditching
| sterile IV bags and going back to glass bottles like 1930s Don
| Corleone in the hospital "men are coming here to kill him".
|
| Talk about "biological contamination"... do you think they
| should be reusing syringes? I'm sure they'll rinse them out
| really well.
|
| They can't exactly replace all the tubes with taped together
| paper drinking straws, either.
|
| For the record sharps containers and their contents are
| incinerated because they pose such a health hazard which on a
| purely scientific basis takes priority over "but the plastic".
| bennythomsson wrote:
| Irony is, syringes can be reused well after sterilizing with
| heat.
|
| But I agree that extremism usually just drives people the
| opposite way. Especially in the medical field plastic will
| stay, but in lots of other areas it can be reduced.
| beAbU wrote:
| Plastic is not just something we put food in, it's _everywhere_
| bennythomsson wrote:
| There are lots of wasteful uses for sure. Too much crap out
| there being produced essentially for the land fill. This can
| all go away.
|
| But there are many areas where plastics are quite literally
| life savers and it will be hard to replace them. For example,
| look at a modern ER and imagine it without plastics. Won't
| happen.
| asdff wrote:
| Is glass manufacturing of a coke bottle better for the
| environment than plastic manufacturing in terms of say
| emissions in manufacturing or supply chain?
| mkoubaa wrote:
| I'd be happy if we just put recyclable materials in their own
| corner of the landfills marked "TODO"
| userbinator wrote:
| Everything is recyclable.
|
| What do you think oil and coal come from...?
| metalman wrote:
| not bad, not bad at all, except for the whoh!man! that a bit
| too real, but it is actualy implimentable on a very short time
| frame and exceptionaly low budget, so I will be including that
| (your?) idea, into my own ,not infrequent rants
| bastawhiz wrote:
| Unfortunately it seems that in many places, that's pretty much
| what they're doing instead of doing any actual recycling. If
| you collect more than you're capable of processing, you
| inevitably just end up with an ever growing TO-DO pile.
|
| The sad thing is, if you pretend to recycle instead of actually
| recycling, you're just a landfill operator. And landfills can
| be run profitably.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Isn't the entire landfill really a huge TODO anyway?
|
| "We'll let some magic future AI figure this out. Meanwhile,
| we'll put dirt on it"
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Not all TODOs are created equal. Example:
|
| //TODO: Collisions are too common here. Implement a custom
| hashing function to improve the performance of this
| algorithm
|
| //TODO: This class is 60k lines and has no tests. Replace
| it
| giarc wrote:
| In my city, there is a GIANT pile of glass sitting on a slab
| near a landfill. The commodity price of glass is so low it's
| not worth selling, so they just store it in hopes of maybe one
| day selling it. I doubt that will happen and I suspect it's
| just been put into the landfill by now.
| adrianN wrote:
| Glass recycling generally makes little sense because the raw
| materials are abundant and recycling glass takes a lot of
| energy.
| unwind wrote:
| In Sweden, where the main glass recycler claims we're
| world-leading glass recyclers, the claim is that recycling
| saves 20% of the energy. That is not nothing ...
| adrianN wrote:
| 20% Energy savings probably have a hard time paying for
| the wages and the infrastructure needed.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| If you price externalities it can make more sense
| crawftv wrote:
| The glass recycling in my area is hauling my glass to a
| container and it gets turned into fiberglass.
| bandrami wrote:
| It would be cool if we could actually start recycling plastics
| rather than shipping them to China where they are shredded and
| put in landfills
| pasttense01 wrote:
| China is no longer accepting plastics where they are shredded
| and put into a landfill.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| we have just outsourced to neighboring countries in SE asia
| Hilift wrote:
| China stopped accepting trash long ago. 90% of plastics are
| trash. Many municipalities adopted thermal trash burners that
| generate electricity. Expect to see a lot more of these in the
| next four years.
|
| https://energyjustice.net/usplants/
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/florida-popul...
| 0x00cl wrote:
| New recycling discoveries for plastics is good news, but at the
| same time I feel that people and specially governments should be
| promoting the old 3R or the 9R framework (Refuse, Rethink,
| Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Refurbish, Remanufacture, Repurpose,
| Recycle and Recover)
|
| It seems people forget that _recycling is and should be the last
| thing_ we do with objects/materials that we don't use anymore, it
| requires energy to create a new object and at the same time
| recycling materials doesn't always recover 100% of the original
| materials.
| bennythomsson wrote:
| 100% this.
|
| Also, keep in mind that the article is from his university's PR
| dept. It's not independent work by a journalist.
| chrisbrandow wrote:
| It is just the press release. There's a submission to ACS
| that looks completely valid.
| bluedino wrote:
| My apartment complex doesn't have a recycling program, just
| garbage, and the amount of Amazon packaging alone that piles up
| in a week makes me sick
| musicale wrote:
| Cardboard recycling seems fairly successful (and perhaps
| Amazon boxes are already returned directly to Amazon?), but
| it does seem like there has to be a better way.
|
| Amazon eventually realized that boxed returns were
| inefficient and implemented unboxed returns via UPS stores.
|
| It seems like unboxed delivery to a store or locker would
| also be more efficient, but for customers it's less
| convenient than front-door delivery.
|
| Perhaps delivery workers could also collect reusable Amazon
| boxes while making deliveries.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I think we've just passed the point of momentum on reduce.
| There's only so much reuse/repurpose that can be done with
| single use plastic.
| 1over137 wrote:
| The thing is that the 3Rs/9Rs are basically anti-comsumerist /
| anti-capitalist, and as such can't gain traction in our current
| system. The system wants you to buy a new widget, not to reuse
| or repair your old one.
| elif wrote:
| I think the fundamentals of material capitalism taken to its
| current extent do not leave room for ecology.
|
| This article about PET recycling probably won't do much to
| improve the 6-8% recycling rate for plastic waste primarily
| because there is no economic incentive to do so.
|
| In fact, market economies are actively avoiding PET plastics for
| health reasons, so this effort is double dubious IMO.
|
| I don't mean to inject cynicism to downplay their achievements,
| but I think it's as crucial for ecology that we be honest about
| the limitations of our existing efforts within the market
| capitalist/individual materialist paradigm.
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