[HN Gopher] The truth about soft plastic recycling points at sup...
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The truth about soft plastic recycling points at supermarkets
Author : Kaibeezy
Score : 98 points
Date : 2025-05-26 08:47 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.everydayplastic.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.everydayplastic.org)
| biofox wrote:
| How is turning it into fuel pellets not recycling? It's giving it
| a second life, rather than going into a landfill.
| XorNot wrote:
| Sending it to landfill would produce a lot less CO2.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| If we are going to phase out fossils, we might just as well
| as phase out plastics _last_. (By burning it.) It the
| meantime, figure out how to make plastic less toxic and also
| how to use less of it.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Maybe in a few generations there'll be a ban on burning any
| fossil fuels other than plastic.
| mike-the-mikado wrote:
| That assumes that it does not decay in the landfill. Even if
| that is true today, I don't think we can rule out the
| evolution of bacteria etc. (possibly bio-engineered) to feed
| on plastics.
| sparsely wrote:
| The energy produced from burning it would come from somewhere
| else, which on average won't be 0 CO2 either.
| bn-l wrote:
| It may be
| aloha2436 wrote:
| It's barely one step removed from just being burned in an
| incinerator, it's maybe recycling in a very strict sense but
| it's definitely misleading to say that.
| throw310822 wrote:
| Well, plastic came from the underground (as oil) and to the
| underground should return, as much as possible. You could argue
| that when plastic waste is not burned, a corresponding amount
| of fossil fuels are extracted from the underground to make up
| the difference, but I think the existence of renewable energy
| sources makes the replacement ratio (waste plastic to new
| fossil fuels) much less than 1 to 1.
| meindnoch wrote:
| I'm OK with burning it in power plants. Polyethylene has 4-5x
| higher energy content than lignite.
|
| Instead of digging up lignite to burn, and putting plastic in the
| ground as landfill, just burn the plastic and leave the lignite
| in the ground. Easy peasy.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| Sure, you just need to make sure that wherever it's being
| burned isn't just sending the byproducts into the air, because
| when you burn plastic, you get a lot of crap coming off it from
| incomplete combustion which isn't particularly healthy
| meindnoch wrote:
| That's not true when burning in a power plant. Incomplete
| combustion is caused by insufficient airflow.
| esseph wrote:
| I hope you have excellent regulations and unyielding
| oversight with strict fines from the government level to
| maintain accountability and keep it that way, otherwise...
| optimizing for cost.
| meindnoch wrote:
| A powerplant is optimizing for producing the most energy
| from their feedstock. Incomplete combustion means they
| would be throwing out usable energy, that they could earn
| money from.
| Retric wrote:
| Only up to a point, there's always a tradeoff which
| limits economic efficiency below theoretical limits.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Complete burn is not guaranteed to be 100% clean. If you
| don't filter coal plants you get all the nasty up in the
| air.
|
| If you could burn something at a level you don't need
| exhaust filters, and that even doesn't clean up all the
| harmful particles, we'd be building coal plants
| everywhere, rendering PV and renewables (and even
| nuclear) research unnecessary.
| esseph wrote:
| This is very pie in the skyish.
|
| If only humans operated as you suggest.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| Even with complete combustion, the byproducts are CO2 and
| H2O. And power plants won't get extra profit from dealing
| with the CO2
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > Incomplete combustion is caused by insufficient airflow.
|
| In fact it's often due to insufficient _temperature_ , that
| can be caused by excessive airflow.
|
| But that's right that a power plants (in a country with
| good enough environmental regulation) shouldn't have this
| kind of problem.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Also post-processing any exhaust is much simpler when you
| have large enough scale. And incinerator powerplants can
| get to that point.
| tokai wrote:
| Thats a solved issue.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| Surely the choice is not only between digging up lignite and
| putting plastic in the ground. We can also leave the lignite
| alone, put the plastic in the landfill, and not increase the
| concentration of CO2 in the air.
| seanalltogether wrote:
| Didn't Penn and Teller do a video about this 20 years ago showing
| that glass and metal cans are the only real recyclable products?
| I'm guessing not much has changed since then.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Metal cans also contain a plastic layer inside.
| sevensor wrote:
| I imagine they burn it off along with the food residues when
| they go to melt the can.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| There's no escape, is there? I'm not even talking about
| recycling at this point. If metal cans are plastic-lined
| inside, is there any way to avoid microplastics in drinks? I
| guess glass, but that's exceedingly rare and some drinks
| don't have a glass option where I live. Mostly it's sugary
| soda that does, or alcoholic beverages.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| You can just drink water?
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Water destroys bridges and roads, imagine what it would
| do to your intestines :) (old drunkards joke)
| PinkSheep wrote:
| _drum roll......_ bottled water!
|
| > In fact, 34 percent of the growth in bottled water
| sales during the past 11 years (from 2012 to 2023) has
| come from people switching from soft drinks and fruit
| drinks to bottled water. U.S. consumers now drink an
| average of 46.4 gallons (176 liters) of bottled water per
| person, compared to 34.4 gallons (129 liters) of
| carbonated soft drinks. --
| https://wcponline.com/2024/10/01/2024-state-of-the-
| bottled-w...
|
| PS: To be fair, I switched from the (acidic!) soft drinks
| to tap water. Almost always boiled water. Despite being
| comparatively confident in the quality of our tap water,
| the pipes mustn't be great. According to our city's water
| supplier, the tests come out classifying the water at
| their end as "soft" (bordering very soft). Yet on our
| end, there's a lot of chalk build up in the water kettle.
| I am entertaining the idea to send a sample of the tap
| water to a lab.
| tallanvor wrote:
| My understanding is that soft water is classified as 0-60
| mg/L of CaCO3 equivalent, so there's no such thing as
| "very soft"). Maybe they're claiming "Moderately hard" is
| actually soft water?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Yet on our end, there's a lot of chalk build up in the
| water kettle.
|
| That's practically unavoidable, rapid changes in
| temperature cause the limescale to crash out of solution.
|
| Get a water filtration device.
| altusbrown wrote:
| If you really want to avoid getting anything in your
| water - even essential vitamins and minerals - you can
| always distill your water. It's worse for you though,
| much worse. That 'chalk' in your carafe is just small
| amounts of minerals you need anyway that come out of
| solution.
|
| Bottled water has it too.
|
| If they build up to the point it's bothering you, a
| little vinegar will dissolve them right out.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| I live in a hard water area as well.
|
| I researched about this, and the best solution is to get
| a water softener. These are devices that mix salts with
| the water that break down the limescale minerals.
|
| That said, most reputable manufacturers and installers of
| these devices will recommend you have an unsoftened tap
| for drinking water. The minerals in the water are
| actually good for you, and removing them could have
| deleterious effects on your health. Watering plants is
| generally best done with unsoftened water as well.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| Of course I can, and tap water, filtered or not,
| constitutes most of my liquid intake. That said, I also
| like to drink other things every now and then. Sparkling
| water, kombucha, the eventual beer or cider...
| ekianjo wrote:
| Perrier used to sell water in glass bottles. Not sure if
| it's still a thing
| cassianoleal wrote:
| Yes, they do. It's not everywhere but I can find them.
| That's what I mean though, there are alternatives - only
| fewer and far between.
|
| As another user pointed out, even those still probably
| have plastic in the lid. That's not great, but at least
| the lid is a very small contact area, whereas a lining of
| the entire interior of a metal can is about as large as
| it gets.
| owenversteeg wrote:
| I avoid microplastics by drinking only water and wine. I
| was never really one for other types of beverages, so this
| isn't very limiting to me. Keep in mind that any closure
| other than natural cork contains plastic or other noxious
| chemicals: in theory there's also metal, wood, natural
| waxes and rubbers, but they are rarely used without
| plastic.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| And in the USA, at least, glass containers that could be re-
| used are instead crushed and then either (a) used to create new
| glass, significantly more energetically costly than re-use OR
| (b) used for applications like asphalt.
| sroussey wrote:
| Erewhon is a grocery store in LA and makes its own sauces.
| You return the bottles back to the store and they reuse them.
|
| Reminds me of my childhood when a milkman delivered milk to
| your home in bottles and you washed and left the old bottles
| for him to pick up. (Plus, as a kid, you would tease your
| friends that the milkman was your real father).
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Cardboard and paper are also recyclable.
| comrade1234 wrote:
| Only PET can be recycled. Here in Zurich all other plastic is
| incinerated to produce power and the CO2 captured and sent to
| greenhouses and also sold to soda bottlers.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| They do say that 30% of it is "downcycled" into lower grade
| products. That sounds like a win to me (although obviously not
| completely circular).
| scotty79 wrote:
| If you don't to cram it back underground and it has no other use
| then burning it (cleanly I hope) is the next best thing.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| I can only assume that burning fossil fuel represent an order of
| magnitude bigger problem than burning soft plastic. So until we
| have phased out fossil fuels it seems relatively unproblematic to
| burn plastic?
| preinheimer wrote:
| I think it's a problem to lie to people about what's happening
| with their "recycled" goods.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Sure it's a lie which is bad, but collecting soft plastic
| separately may still be a net win for society so how do we
| give a simple enough explanation for the nuance?
| sparsely wrote:
| Yeah, this seems fine to me. I believe my general waste is also
| incinerated though so I wish they'd encourage adding the soft
| plastics to that to simplify recycling - it might lead to more
| hard plastics being recycled!
| PlunderBunny wrote:
| I think the results of soft plastic recycling are highly
| dependant on the country doing it. In New Zealand, soft plastics
| are mostly recycled into fence posts, which last 50+ years and
| are every bit as good (or better) than treated timber [0].
|
| I'm not saying that we shouldn't reduce our soft plastic use, but
| - like all recycling - you need to do a bit of research and think
| about it, instead of adopting a "recycling is good"/"recycling is
| a myth" mentality.
|
| 0. https://www.futurepost.co.nz/
| jemmyw wrote:
| Just a clarification: in NZ most soft plastics are sent to
| landfill, regardless of what happens to most of the plastic
| that is actually recycled. We're pretty bad for general
| recycling and really bad for plastic recycling. Most soft
| plastics here are from agriculture so it's probably a more
| solvable problem than if it was weighted towards domestic
| waste, but farming often manages to lobby their way out of
| regulation.
| PlunderBunny wrote:
| Sorry - yes. What I meant to say was "most soft plastics that
| are recycled, are recycled into fence posts".
| meindnoch wrote:
| >which last 50+ years
|
| So it takes 50+ years for UV, rain and wind to turn it into
| microplastic mush? Sounds like a great product!
| PlunderBunny wrote:
| No one (including the manufacturer) knows how long it will
| last - 50 years is as far as accelerated aging can test to.
| You're assuming they split or break apart. The posts
| themselves are recyclable, so maybe in 50 years someone can
| pull them out of the ground and recycle them?
| idoubtit wrote:
| Plastic recycling is a drop of water in an ocean of plastic.
|
| > In New Zealand, soft plastics are mostly recycled into fence
| posts
|
| The latest (2025-01) official report[^1] I could found states
| that the recycling of plastics in NZ is poorly known. On page
| 135, it mentions the report "OPMCSA plastics research (2019)"
| as the reference in the domain.
|
| According to that 2019 study[^2], the plastics used each year
| weight more than 700k t. Much more, because this ignores
| packaged imports, construction and agriculture. 31% of plastics
| imported are LDPE (so around 170k t), which is mainly used for
| producing soft plastics.
|
| Out of those 600+k t/year, 380k t go to landfill waste, and 45k
| t are collected for recycling. Assuming generously that 50% of
| those intended for recycling are actually recycled, I'd
| estimate that 1.7 to 3% of the yearly NZ plastics are recycled.
|
| Here's a quote about soft plastics: In 2017,
| 365 tonnes of soft plastics were recycled - but a lack of
| recycling market for these plastics meant that in the following
| year, plastic was stockpiled whilst new onshore markets were
| developed and a percentage of non-conforming plastic was
| landfilled.
|
| 365 t of soft plastics recycled out of 170k t of LDPE!
|
| [^1]: https://environment.govt.nz/assets/publications/New-
| Zealand-...
|
| [^2]: https://www.pmcsa.ac.nz/topics/rethinking-
| plastics/quantifyi...
| PlunderBunny wrote:
| My wording was poor - I meant to write "most soft plastics
| that were recycled, were recycled into fence posts". Not that
| most soft plastic was recycled.
|
| I'm not disagreeing with any of what you have posted.
|
| For reference, the 52 posts that I have on my property are
| constructed from more milk bottles and soft plastic than I
| will ever consume in my lifetime. It's a drop in the bucket,
| but it's significant to me.
| kristjank wrote:
| If it's burnt properly, it provides useful energy and is removed
| from the environment to a degree that's better than the landfill.
| The rest is NGO bikeshedding drivel I don't really care about.
| chimprich wrote:
| From the article: "70% of the soft plastic that reached a known
| destination was burnt, not recycled".
|
| That doesn't seem too bad. That means 30% got recycled, which is
| more than I expected given the general cynicism around plastic
| recycling. 30% definitely seems worthwhile.
|
| For the plastic that got incinerated, it is presumably more
| efficient to burn products for energy reclamation that are
| already separated by type.
|
| Having these recycling pathways set up is a necessary step
| towards improving recycling rates. We should be able to improve
| on that 30% over time.
| BlackFly wrote:
| What fraction of all total soft plastic is collected by
| supermarket take back schemes compared to road side curb
| collection (where only 10% of municipalities "support" its
| recycling)?
|
| I have a strong prior that they can achieve such high numbers
| only because they only capture a small amount of the total
| amount of soft plastic waste. If they had to deal with it all
| there wouldn't be enough demand to burn or recycle and it would
| end up buried. This is somewhat supported by the fact that by
| official definitions supermarket take back schemes are not
| counted in official recyclability numbers:
|
| > Soft plastic collected via supermarket collection points does
| not satisfy this definition [of working at scale] and therefore
| was not counted towards WRAP's UK Plastics Pact recyclability
| target.
| masfuerte wrote:
| Supermarkets collect carrier bags and bread bags. Road side
| collection doesn't, at least not anywhere I've lived. I'd
| guess that close to 100% of the soft plastic collected is
| collected by supermarkets.
| ars wrote:
| That's even better than you describe, it means that 70% is
| burned which is even better than recycled, and more than I
| expected.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| In a world of climate change, best bet is too keep the carbon
| out of the air. That's why the landfill is the best place for
| plastic, where it won't bother anyone and definitely won't
| contribute to increasing the global average temperature.
| alwa wrote:
| In fuel pellet form, isn't it a more-or-less direct
| substitute for oil or coal that would have been burned
| anyway? So until the grid fully eliminates other petroleum
| products from the mix, isn't this more or less a similar
| carbon cost, with the added benefit of less landfill impact?
|
| What's wrong with recycling the plastic into energy?
| zdragnar wrote:
| How energy-positive is incinerating the plastic when it
| needs dedicated collection, sorting, processing into
| pellets, and specialized incineration to scrub waste
| gasses, compared to collecting natural gas and burning it?
|
| The difference is what determines whether burying or
| burning the plastic is better from a C02 emission
| standpoint.
|
| Also, if we don't have enough plastic to completely offset
| the need for natural gas energy production, then the
| biggest cost of natural gas- the drilling and transporting-
| isn't a part of the equation.
| morsch wrote:
| On the other hand, dumping garbage isn't free, either.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRx_dZawN44
| michaelt wrote:
| Most definitions of "recycle" are from the recycling of
| glass, aluminium, paper etc - they involve the material
| being reused in approximately the same form.
|
| Being "burned" is how most English speakers would describe
| being "recycled into energy"
| smileysteve wrote:
| When people think of burning, they think of a trash /
| leaf pile in a yard, not an arc reactor or modern
| turbinrengine; but that doesn't mean we don't fly jet
| engines or run power plants
| alwa wrote:
| Burning is the how, but turning it into useful energy is
| the what. When I think of burning waste, I think of burn
| pits: making the stuff go away, but not making anything
| new with it. This seems different from that (and even a
| clean, high-temperature incinerator, one that fully
| combusts everything, is a different beast from a smoggy
| sooty open burn).
|
| Of course glass, aluminum, and paper aren't made of
| lightly-modified oil: they're not all that useful as far
| as producing energy, nor can they substitute for new
| extraction of an energy resource.
|
| I guess you could process paper into pulp pellets for
| fuel, and by instead turning paper into slightly-crappier
| paper you cut out a highly intensive transformation from
| timber to paper. But for plastics, isn't the
| transformation from oil to plastic relatively minor?
|
| Why is it especially virtuous for the end recycled
| product to be a structural product as opposed to a fuel
| product? Especially when it's substituting for existing
| petroleum-based production, and unlikely ever to drive
| demand of its own? And why would burying it in the ground
| compare favorably to either?
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| >What's wrong with recycling the plastic into energy?
|
| Anything that vents ancient buried carbon into the
| atmosphere is wrong.
| dmurray wrote:
| This seems like a plausible argument, but you can extend it
| to any source of fossil fuels. What's wrong with providing
| oil from my oil well, since it's a substitute for oil or
| coal from another provider that would have been burnt
| anyway?
|
| At the margin, some of it must be competing with
| renewables. Additional supply of fossil fuels - cheap, or
| even negatively priced - must drive down the price of
| energy and make investment in renewables less attractive.
|
| Incinerating plastics is only good if landfill is bad.
| Landfill really seems like it could be made cheap and safe:
| a landfill of a single cubic mile would last the US for 20
| years.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| I generally agree - unless you have access to recycling that
| will actually reclaim the plastic to make other plastic
| things (like LDPE/HDPE tubs into plastic lumber, or better
| yet actually circular recycling like PETE clamshells chipped
| up to be made into more clamshells). That also keeps the
| carbon locked up, and doesn't require more oil to make virgin
| plastic for the same jobs.
| lm28469 wrote:
| I mean if you frame it like that sure. I'd frame it like: we
| extract dino juice that's hundred millions of years in the
| making, process the shit out of it to make an item that will be
| used once, and which we probably could get by without, then
| burn it
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It's tree fern juice that exists today because fungi weren't
| around to turn it into CO2 back then.
| James_K wrote:
| I was expecting it to end up in landfill, so it getting burned
| was a pleasant surprise.
| lotophage wrote:
| In Australia a company called REDcycle supposedly recycled soft
| plastics from all the major supermarkets. After a decade or so
| operating the business collapsed and it was discovered that they
| had about 11,000 tonnes of the stuff stockpiled in 40+ warehouses
| across the country because they hadn't figured out how to recycle
| it.
| mariusor wrote:
| And how is that a bad thing?
|
| Instead of being in a landfill and leaching microplastics it's
| all bundled up and contained. I don't really understand this
| defeatist attitude where if something is not perfect we should
| drop it all together. From my point of view any effort at
| sorting trash is beneficial to the ecosystem because even if we
| don't have a method to deal with the problem now, we can wait a
| generation or two for technology to improve.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| It's bad because they were committing fraud.
| mariusor wrote:
| In what way? Do you know if they were contractually
| obligated to the municipalities to "recycle" the plastic?
| redczar wrote:
| They tried to keep it secret that they were storing the
| garbage instead of recycling it. The trash still needs to
| be disposed. Your response is to question whether this
| was fraud and a bad thing. That's a weird response.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| The costs of storing more and more plastics will only
| increase, storage is cheap at first, and that's why they did
| that, and when it starts getting expensive, they abandon
| ship. It is either classic fraud or incompetence.
|
| These plastics will have to be dealt with eventually,
| recycling, burning or burying them. Waiting is just a waste
| of money. If we wait "a generation of two", we will be
| drowning in warehouses full of plastics like over-ground,
| inadequate and expensive landfills.
|
| These are plastics, not nuclear waste. The "wait and see"
| strategy works for nuclear waste works because such waste is
| compact, hazardous and potentially very valuable. It also
| decays naturally, so the simple act of waiting makes it less
| hazardous. Plastic waste is the opposite of that: bulky,
| relatively harmless, mostly worthless, and it becomes worse
| as it degrades.
| michaelt wrote:
| Some cynics think the plastic industry supports sham
| "recycling" efforts that don't actually work, in order to
| alleviate customer guilt and forestall a ban or mandatory
| reformulation.
|
| The bad thing, in this line of thought, is that we're being
| lied to and taken for fools. Tricked into buying things we're
| promised are recyclable when they're not.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| >> Instead of being in a landfill and leaching microplastics
|
| I _want_ plastic to be in landfill leaching microplastics.
|
| The idea of storing all waste plastic in warehouses is
| impractical, it has to go somewhere.
|
| Where do you want it leached to, if not into the contained
| area of a landfill? Do you want it somewhere in the
| environment?
|
| And I'm pretty sure landfills are toxic anyway.
| guidedlight wrote:
| It's a shame about Redcycle.
|
| However since then many small cycle plastic to oil (Pyrolysis)
| plants have popped up, which are set to scale up. This
| reclaimed oil will be used to create new plastic.
|
| Australia is targeting 50% recycled content in its packaging by
| this year.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| I think that the focus on technological solutions is beside the
| point. What would accelerate reduction in use and an increase in
| recycling would be a total ban on exports of used plastic and a
| ban on packaging plastic from non-renewable sources. This should
| also cover clothing.
|
| The technology required can be left to the industry once it
| becomes impossible for them to hand off the responsibility to
| foreign and unregulated third parties.
| Molitor5901 wrote:
| Around 2015 China stopped buying much of the worlds' plastic
| refuse which caused most municipal waste recycling programs in
| America to shut down. Since then it's sort of just been thrown
| away because plastic is really hard to recycle into something
| equally useful, in a way that does not just add more pollution.
| Even LEGO won't use recycled plastic.
|
| The solution is to move away as much as possible from disposable,
| and most forms of consumer and retail plastic. It has invaluable
| uses, but there is simply too much and it's polluting faster than
| we can clean it.
| c22 wrote:
| LEGO is well known for using high quality extremely durable and
| long lasting plastic in their products so saying _even_ LEGO
| doesn 't use recycled plastics seems painfully apparent. There
| are other children's toy brands that _do_ use recycled
| plastics.
| thefz wrote:
| Just stop producing it.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| How. People oppose even paper straws. Most of the food can be
| and should be stripped of usage of plastic, but then there also
| is medical usage.
| tehjoker wrote:
| Medical usage is often necessary. Why not just start with
| things that are completely extraneous, like packaging,
| bottles, etc.
| i80and wrote:
| We should. But even small baby step measures with no
| downsides like plastic bag bans are wildly contentious.
|
| I live in a county that's enacted one, and it's been
| unambiguously an improvement for the area on top of the
| core goal of "reduce plastic waste". But visiters look at
| me like I live in East Germany when I mention that.
|
| I don't say this to discredit the idea, but it's
| politically treacherous, and not a lot of people are
| willing to stick their necks out for the right thing.
| Caelus9 wrote:
| As an ordinary person, what we can do is try to reduce our use of
| single use plastics as much as possible, but single use plastics
| are everywhere in daily life, which can indeed be frustrating.
| pfdietz wrote:
| An intermediate step between recycling and combustion would be
| disassembling the plastics back to useful feedstocks, potentially
| including monomers of the plastics involved.
|
| This (and combustion) would be easier if the plastics were not
| chlorinated, I think. So maybe focus on elimination of PVC and
| the like from the waste stream?
| ninalanyon wrote:
| This article is mostly about soft plastics used for food
| packaging, surely little to none of that is PVC. It least here
| in Norway most such plastic is low density polythene and PET,
| neither of which are chlorinated. Most PET bottles are
| separated from general waste because bottles have a deposit on
| them here.
| pfdietz wrote:
| I was going to point to Saran Wrap, but it was changed from
| polyvinylidene chloride to polyethylene in 2004.
| olejorgenb wrote:
| This is pyrolysis based recycling (also called chemical
| recycling I think). My impression is that it's fairly energy
| intensive and can still be hard to purify. Some companies claim
| to be able to to it relatively effective.
| https://www.quantafuel.com/ claims to have a catalyst which
| improves the efficiency for instance. They are now privately
| owned and the amount of news they publish has become limited.
| This makes me believe they still struggle to make optimize the
| process.
| Scramblejams wrote:
| There's too much toxic flame retardant in recycled plastic,
| apparently.[0]
|
| So until we can guarantee that recycled plastics don't end up in
| contact with food, or the plastic that does doesn't contain nasty
| chemicals, it's probably safer to bury the stuff.
|
| [0] https://share.upmc.com/2025/03/black-plastic-cookware/
| ars wrote:
| That research was partly debunked. The authors made several
| errors.
|
| Some of the work is still true, but the final conclusion about
| black plastic is not.
| Scramblejams wrote:
| The link I provided mentions a correction they made (where
| they undercalculated the EPA's reference dose of decaBDE by a
| factor of ten), but the study authors maintain the overall
| conclusion is sound. And I'd rather have zero decaBDE in my
| breakfast than what the EPA says is okay, whatever my
| cookware's color might be.
|
| I've searched around for other corrections or challenges but
| haven't found any. Got a link?
| ars wrote:
| From what I remember after the correction there was no
| longer a correlation with color.
|
| Obviously no one want flame retardant, but staying away
| from specifically black plastic doesn't do anything.
|
| I can't find a link right now, but for what I remember
| other authors agreed with the data after correction, but
| disagreed with the conclusion.
| Scramblejams wrote:
| My original post wasn't color-specific. But if that's the
| case, then all the more reason to just bury plastics.
|
| (Or burn 'em, I guess, but when you have potentially a
| whole host of mystery toxic chemicals hiding in them, is
| your garden variety scrubber going to catch all of 'em? I
| don't know the answer, but I'd be surprised if
| specialization wasn't required.)
| sroussey wrote:
| Personally, I wish they would get rid of these recycle centers in
| grocery centers. They take up space, stink, and replicate recycle
| bins at every home.
| wffurr wrote:
| This is about plastic bags, which no municipal curbside
| recycling takes.
| stevep98 wrote:
| Trex makes composite decking planks from recycled shopping bags.
| Seems like a perfect use for the material. Its durable. It
| doesn't have to be sterile or pure. Apparently 100,000 bags will
| go into a typical deck.
|
| https://nextrex.com/
|
| Having said that I don't see what's wrong with incineration if
| it's done correctly. It's not open pit burning, with waste gases
| going into the environment. It's high temperature, with
| additional gas and oxygen to promote more complete burning. And
| waste gases are filtered.
| vosper wrote:
| > Seems like a perfect use for the material.
|
| Provided they don't get too much sun, because those dense
| plastic planks get much hotter than wood (I've measured 65C on
| mine). A deck is not much good if you can't stand on it.
|
| Also they're expensive and don't look very good.
| teeray wrote:
| Which is also why it's critical that they be installed with a
| gap between the boards (Kreg makes a useful set of spacers
| and drill jig to hide the screws). Otherwise expansion will
| destroy the deck.
| vosper wrote:
| Oh, mine have spaces and all (the very-expensive, not-
| optional mounting clips create the requisite spacing).
| They're just hot. Google "composite deck heat" etc will
| find lots of people complaining about it.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| I think some of the Trex looks pretty good, they're
| definitely not all the same. If you do go this route then you
| will need an outdoor rug on the planks if it gets direct sun
| though. They're just way too hot otherwise, as you've stated.
| But throw a nice outdoor rug down and it's problems solved.
| foxglacier wrote:
| CO2 is a major waste gas which can't be filtered. That's one
| problem with incinerating plastic waste. Being buried in a
| landfill, that CO2 wouldn't be released. The other
| environmental problem is that it's not being reused so more
| virgin plastic has to be produced, and that production process
| releases CO2.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| A long time ago (2? years back) I remember a guy on Joe Rogan
| speaking how 'the best case scenario' is to burn that plastic. I
| did some reading about the fact, spoke with a guy that I knew
| that owns a "recycling factory" and I was 'convinced' that
| realistically this is (and should be) happening.
|
| We know that now 'they' lied to us and most plastic is NOT
| recyclable, and they did so only to continue the oil business.
|
| Seeing the map (Finland, Turkey, France), and in the past having
| garbage shipped all over the planet, do people calculate the
| "carbon tax" to move X tonnes to another country? The total cost
| of extract the energy from (the) earth (petrol for ships, fuel
| for planes, etc.)? Would it be better to use modern filters (as
| others wrote in comments) and burn them at the place of
| production?
| altusbrown wrote:
| Landfilling is even better.
| hyperman1 wrote:
| Afaik the idea of giving plastic back to supermarkets, is to make
| them give less plastic to us in the first place. In this case,
| the point is not what percentage is recycled. The point is
| shrinking the total amount of plastic, i.e. the number to which
| the percentage is applied. Do they burn 70% of 10 tons or 70% of
| 1 ton.
|
| So is this happening?
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| The main point of the linked website seems to be that providing
| "recycling" collection in supermarkets is basically a fraud to
| make consumers more comfortable using soft plastics -- if it
| can be recycled, then using more isn't so worrisome.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| The safest place for waste plastic is in a landfill.
|
| Landfill is not a demon.
|
| Landfill contains the toxicity.
|
| The obsession with recycling plastic leads to unintended
| consequences.
|
| For example some countries put waste plastic in roads, where cars
| and trucks grind it out into microplastic that go into air water
| food animals dust adults and children. Parts of India require
| this by law.
|
| The entire concept of recycling plastic is ridiculously false and
| is perpetuated by the plastic packaging companies so you won't
| question the infinite firehose of plastic packaging they are
| blasting into every part of the earth.
|
| What exactly is all this plastic being recycled into? I certainly
| hope not food containers. The real answer is "not much", because
| there's zero match between the output of the plastics packaging
| industry and the "recycling". Go ahead try to make a list of what
| could possibly be made from the gagillion tons of new plastic
| packaging. It's fiction.
|
| Why are we so desperate to "keep things out of landfill"?
|
| Landfill is where plastic _should_ go.
|
| I personally throw all my plastic waste not in the recycle bin,
| but in the waste bin, to ensure it goes to landfill, and because
| I don't want to be part of the lie that is plastic recycling.
| teeray wrote:
| I don't understand why we can't do the propane tank model at
| grocery stores. Reusable bags that I drop off on the way in, I
| get some token for N bags so I don't have to carry them around
| the store, then I get cleaned bags on the way out (deducted from
| my credit). If I need more, I buy more immediately and more bags
| are on my account. Stores could even partner to share bag
| programs (again, like Blue Rhino).
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| maybe "cleaned" is too expensive to implement
| owenversteeg wrote:
| I didn't see anyone else bring this up here, but the real issue
| with plastic recycling is twofold: it is a dead end and recycled
| plastics shed microplastics like crazy. Other materials, like
| aluminum, can effectively be infinitely recycled, but plastic
| cannot; recycled plastic is worse than virgin plastic in every
| way. It also destroys the environment around us, because recycled
| plastics are effectively really shitty plastics that shed
| everywhere.
|
| In short, plastic recycling is a fraud perpetuated by
| greenwashing initiatives. The only proper thing to do with old
| plastic is to incinerate it at high temperatures that achieve
| complete combustion. This is rare though; most plastic is burned
| at low enough temperatures that it causes pollution.
|
| Great stuff, plastic, huh?
| uxjw wrote:
| Even if you buy aluminium cans, there's a thin layer of plastic
| lining to prevent reactions with the metal. I've also noticed
| lots of paper/cardboard packaging have a plastic coating.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| I thought it was common knowledge that plastic recycling
| (including soft plastics) was only ever a way for the plastics
| industries (and downstream businesses lile food packaging) to
| keep on pumping out the plastic. And I say this as someone who
| keeps putting plastics into my domestic recycling here in the UK,
| and taking soft plastics to the supermarket collection points.
|
| Question: would it be better if I just put it all in the non-
| recyclables bin?
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