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Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

It makes me wonder if we were ever really recycling, or if "recycling" was a marketing buzzword for "cheaply dumping your trash in China".

I seem to remember a lot of controversy over recycling in the 80s and early 90s, with my local town government insisting it was too expensive. Suddenly everything changed in the late 90s, right around the time that globalization took off, and recycle bins took off everywhere. By the late 2000s everything was moving to "single stream recycling", where you just throw all your trash, cardboard, plastic, etc. in one bin and somehow it'd magically get sorted at the facility. That frankly seemed a little too good to be true to me, but everybody was buying into it.

Suddenly Plastic China comes out, China stops accepting recyclables, and we're back to where we were in the early 90s. What if all the "progress" was just an illusion where companies figured they could brand trash-hauling as recycling for eco-friendly customers, charge more for it, and then dump the trash on an unregulated Chinese buyer who could do whatever they want with it?

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Many years ago while dropping off a pickup full of cardboard I got to talking with the guys at the recycling plant about what they did with it. They said the aluminum, iron, and clear glass gets recycled in the US; non-clear glass is sent to huge piles of glass somewhere to be stored indefinitely; and all the plastic, paper and cardboard is sorted out, compacted and bundled, then put on a train that goes to a freighter that takes it to China and then they recycle it there. I researched the Chinese side and found the plastic stuff is stored in huge piles for years on end because it's all dirty and rural villagers eventually bike it to their house and individually clean each piece using spring water, and only then is it suitable for recycling. And the cleaning process toxifies their rural farm land and streams. The cardboard and paper is shipped to inner China where it is burned.

At that point I stopped recycling paper plastic and glass since it was clearly absurd and far more resources such as fuel and labor were being expended on this charade than if one were to simply burn their trash in a barrel in the backyard. I'd tell people about what I'd learned but no one believed it.

What if all the "progress" was just an illusion:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Merchants#Plot_summa...

"Through advertising, the public is constantly deluded into thinking that the quality of life is improved by all the products placed on the market."

I recently have 'converted' to minimalism, after having watched a few documentaries (Minimalism, True Cost, etc.) it made perfect sense to me that since using MORE and recycling MORE is not the solution (especially when 'recycling' it not actual recycling) and now I feel and I do better for me, and the planet's future.

I also came across this nice video: The History of Stuff [1] that describes ncely the current production - consumption model and why it is not sustainable.

It is 20mins long but I found a great educating value to it.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM

The three "Rs" were always about the first one: Reduce.

People got caught up in the wave of recycling with the idea that somehow we could actually recycle all these materials with anything approaching reasonable effectiveness. Outside of aluminum, it's basically worthless - and in the cases of recycling paper, it has led to Superfund sites and terrible pollution.

Rainforests are regrowing [0] as at least America has forced companies to actually care about replanting and not just widespread logging with no consequences, but China doesn't give a shit. It's important to note in the blame game that America has done an incredible amount to reverse CO2 pollution, rampant logging, and reverse other environmentally damaging practices in surprisingly quick fashion over the last two decades, but it hardly matters, since industrial Eastern countries have essentially zero environmental regulations.

[0]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rainforests/tropical-rain...

First step is Refuse. Refuse to buy anything that has unnecessary packaging. Otherwise Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

I started bringing my own containers when shopping for groceries. Reduce my trash to 4-5 kilo per week.

I like this idea. I'm wondering how much extra time and effort you put into this. Loading up the containers to bring to the store, bringing the containers into the store, filling the containers, cleaning the containers, etc.

Don't forget that what we consider "progress" today is capitalism progress.

It's all about owning more and constant economical growth, it has very little to do with social or ecological progress, these might benefit from capitalism from time to tie when their goals are aligned but that's all.

Recycling is like everything else, it's done when it's economically profitable (via state/country funds, tax returns, &c.)

"At the heart of capitalism is a vast and scarcely examined assumption: you are entitled to as great a share of the world’s resources as your money can buy. You can purchase as much land, as much atmospheric space, as many minerals, as much meat and fish as you can afford, regardless of who might be deprived. If you can pay for them, you can own entire mountain ranges and fertile plains. You can burn as much fuel as you like. Every pound or dollar secures a certain right over the world’s natural wealth."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/15/capita...

I wonder how western nations culture and ~religion even will adapt to the fact that we reached equilibrium. Meaning that we can't explore new spaces, or consume more. So we'll need to live in around a balanced zero. Over consuming will become a sort of a crime and maybe games of efficiency will appear as a sort of leisure.

That's the end of out current economical system for sure. It relies on constant growth and ever increasing production/consumption.

Everything else is considered a failure.

in case people missed it, it's on online archive (see external links category down below the link)

I suspect you are correct here. We were shoving "recycling" in otherwise empty shipping containers and sending them to China where they get dumped on the ground and the poorest of the poor pick through them for the few things that are actually recyclable.

I saw at least one person say back in the 2000s that single stream recycling was basically a lie, but it was worth it to get people into the recycling mindset. This is the same reason many towns still do "recycling" pickup, but then haul all of that straight to the dump. Personally, if it's just not feasible I'd rather they go back to only taking aluminum, steel, and maybe glass than try to pretend that they're actually reusing any of that plastic or paper.

> I suspect you are correct here. We were shoving "recycling" in otherwise empty shipping containers and sending them to China...

This actually makes sense. The container trade imbalance leaves the U.S. with a large excess of containers (it costs more to return them than for China to make new ones apparently).

I actually just bought a condo on eastern shore of MD. The small town stopped recycling a few years ago to save $800K/yr, and is instead burning the trash in Pennsylvania at a power plant. I wrote the council an email and said I'm willing to pay more to reinstate recycling, and I bet many residents feel the same.

However, I do wonder, even if this hurdle is jumped, if the refuse is actually getting recycled in the end. Ignorance has been my bliss, but maybe it's time for me to stop being ignorant.

Consider advocating for plasma gasification after the low hanging recycling efforts have been picked (metals, glass, and construction material must be presorted from gasification feedstock to prevent excessive slag production). It's cleaner than incineration, and the resulting syngas and slag can be used for energy generation and road construction (respectively). There is a cost of course, but is arguably a net positive versus landfilling or burning recyclables.

In the end, with much effort, America is going to need to adopt the sorting required for multi stream recycling/waste disposal if we want to "clean up our act", until such time a machine is invented where unwanted matter goes in and desired matter (and/or energy) comes out.

https://plastics.americanchemistry.com/Sustainability-Recycl... (Warning, PDF: Gasification of Non-Recycled Plastics From Municipal Solid Waste In the United States)

Recycling is basically fake outside of aluminum (and other metals, and very specific plastics - but those are effectively impossible to sort properly by consumers [0]).

[0]: Remember all those codes on the bottom of bottles in the 1990s?

What about glass? I always assumed that was pretty recycling friendly

Clear, maybe. Mixed glass? Unlikely, since who wants weird looking glass?

Re-reading this article from The New York Times Magazine, “Recycling Is Garbage” (1996) is really interesting today. It goes over the whole panic that kicked off the recycling movement during that time period.

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/30/magazine/recycling-is-gar...

I had almost forgotten the story of the Mobro 4000. For days the national press was obsessed with watching it try to find a place to offload.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobro_4000

Tierney had a followup some years later. Little had changed.

http://www.aei.org/publication/john-tierney-in-ny-times-recy...

In many ways, China's chief export for the past two decades has been its environmental sink capacity -- that is, absorbing both pollution and extractive environmental disruption.

It hasn't just been China. Pharmaceutical manufacturing in India is an environmental disaster.

Certainly, much of the developing world is in the same boat.

What's notable is that China is actively and aggressively transitioning.

Becoming the factory of the world was never China's end goal, just a step on the road to a first world economy. Now that China is becoming more middle class they don't need low skill jobs as much anymore.

Anywhere I can read more on that?

Viceland has a good series called Hamilton's Pharmacopeia which goes into some of this as well as other third-world drug manufacturing... processes.

The movie "Plastic China" is must-see, in my opinion. It is streaming on Amazon Prime:

https://www.amazon.com/Plastic-China-Jiu-liang-WANG/dp/B06XV...

There was, and still is, actual recycling. I remember taking the (sorted) recyclables to a recycling business, which paid by the pound. I remember watching the homeless guys in LA pick aluminum cans out of the blue bins early in the morning on trash day, presumably for the money.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the single-stream version were largely marketing (by weight). WM or whichever company picks out a few things that are valuable enough to separate, then treats the majority as waste.

Yup. Metals are actually worth recycling. Little else is.

If a business or government pays you for it, then recycling is effective. If they don't, then obviously it isn't useful.

I never really understood why people could not grasp this basic concept.

A much simpler concept is that you pay for the trash that you don't recycle.

Switzerland recycles 93% of all glass bottles(color sorted by consumers) and 83% of all PET bottles. Everything else has to be burned in a plant with minimal emission to recycle energy. PET recycling is financed by a fee of around 2 cents per bottle that every manufacturer has to pay.

Remember also that in Switzerland you pay for your trash bags. A bag that you have to throw away costs €1-2. Recycling is essentially free.

However, if the charge for trash is too high, it encourages littering, illegal dumping, and discourages public waste receptacles (which encourages littering even more).

This can only really work if the cost of disposal is baked into the goods at sale, and refunded for recycled goods. I suspect it would just end up causing people to use the landfills they have paid for.

Cost is around one dollar per 35 litre bag. There are no landfills for common trash. Average is around 80 dollars per person per year. Less if you use PPP-Dollars. That is not enough to cover all cost of proper disposal, so the rest is payed by the state.

Point is, it works. There is no excuse for other countries to do the same.

Do consumers generally color sort? What about the eight percent of men who are color blind?

This is one of those things where you can probably just go to your local sorting center and ask for a look at what they do.

Cardboard is profitable to recycle domestically...

That's true. Sort of. Clean cardboard is recyclable. But cardboard with broken glass, not so much. And not cardboard with food waste. Or even cardboard with too much plastic tape.

Recycling only works with source separation. But how does that work when there are so many types of plastics in use? And worse, stuff made from multiple types of plastics? Often now plus aluminum and paper.

It's a mess.

I had the opportunity to do this about 15 years ago. I found it pretty shocking. The recycling center consisted of two large and open warehouses on the site of a landfill. Inside were a series of multi-level conveyor belts staffed largely by Hispanic workers.

In front of each worker was a station on the other side of the belt with several chutes for different types of materials. The workers operated in shifts with the belts moving at what felt like an impossible pace. The primary job requirement according to an overseer was not vomiting during a two hour trial run working in front of the belt.

Despite being in central Arizona, the interior was darkened with a confetti of small paper particles hanging in the air and covering every surface in nearly an inch of "dust". The only thing I could liken it to was the ash particulate in the aftermath of a volcano eruption. I wouldn't want to spend any time in there without heavy air filtering, yet I saw many workers operating without even light paper masks.

The experience brought home what the cost was for single stream recycling. Short of automation I have a hard time justifying that human sacrifice even as I continue to recycle out of habit.

I assure you that anything metal gets recycled. It's much cheaper to recycle than dig more ore out of the ground.

tosses brake rotors in city recycling pickup bucket

Have you ever been to Australia where iron ore is less than 1 meter below ground?

Is that really true?

Accurate to within an order of magnitude. The Pilbara has a number of mines that are perhaps more accurately described as ditches. Source: Mining Engineer, been to the Pilbara.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel-iron_deposits#Economic... - the 'little or no need for drilling and blasting' suggests <20m deep to me. There certainly is iron on the surface, the Pilbara Banded Iron formations can be something like 300m thick or something silly - I'd be surprised if it didn't outcrop. The issue is more which parts are most economic to mine, which is a question of depth vs grade.

Australia is rich in many minerals. Nonetheless, I'm willing to bet that people sending the metal to a truck to bring to a foundry is still cheaper than mining with all of its environmental impacts. Also, this: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/metal-recycling-where-australia-...

I assume there's a lot of things cheaper to recycle than to create new, but the problem is how to extract/separate it out of an overwhelming stream of unrelated materials, is it not?

Person from Germany here where we have 4 different bins per household - paper, recyclables (metal, plastic), compostables and dump (+ glass by color, batteries and electronics at dedicated sites). We get to a recycling rate of about 20-30% (effective at plant) with really wanting to and having it ingrained into our culture.

Recycling is hard at the best of times. Unless packaging gets much better at identifying as recyclable it will be a long road ahead (it's the small things, black plastic is hard to identify and get's burned, composite plastics are problematic, like different plastic foil over plastic canister). At least people think about it around here, but it is a very hard problem.

Damn, I had no clue that it was just 20-30%. That's depressing.

German 66.1 percent recycling rate in 2015. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&plugin=...

Germany used to export 69% of collected plastic to China too, so they will likely face a similar crisis as America. https://qz.com/1310240/chinas-ban-on-plastic-recycling-impor...

Consider also: recycled black plastic is often made from electronic waste, which isn't done very carefully, and so black plastic often has heavy metals from computer components. Problem is, this recycled black plastic is often used for food containers.

What could possibly go wrong?

In my neighborhood, you can leave metal objects on the curb and they're gone within hours, loaded into a pickup or trailer and taken to the scrap metal recyclers for cash. That came in handy when I was doing rental property maintenance, but unfortunately used mattresses have 0 scrap value.

Mattresses and couches are a mix of fabric, wood and metal. Most places don't accept them unless you strip them down, which is a PITA (which is precisely why they don't take them).

  tosses brake rotors in city recycling pickup bucket

No core charge or other incentive from the parts store?

Not on brake rotors, no[1]. They are always from new - there's nothing to recondition on them, they're only suitable for melting down again. I'd think they would be prohibitively expensive to handle for the retail chain, given their low scrap value.

[1] Aside from top-end stuff that has a separate bell and rotor, but this is maybe 0.001%, if that.

Single-stream recycling may well have been an illusion. Certain types of plastics, too. But clean streams of many types of recyclables are even today still plenty profitable.

Copper and brass, for example. Maybe too profitable.

Exactly. If the 'recycling' is actually a one way door to dump all trash on China and forget about it, it is not really 'recycling'.

It is right about time that Western countries to come to realization that recycling need more smarts and efforts other than making it other people's problem.

> It is right about time that Western countries to come to realization that recycling need more smarts and efforts other than making it other people's problem.

This is not just a Western problem. A look at emissions and other pollutants show it is actually far less of an American problem and far more of an Eastern problem.

It was an illusion. Specifically, it was an illusion that allowed capitalism as normal to largely continue, with a bit of greenwashing here and there.

Things you can actually recycle: Aluminium, iron/steel scrap, and to a lesser extent glass.

Plastic was never recyclable in the sense of "circular economy indefinitely".

Recycling was never an effective way to save resources, compared to its ugly stepsisters "reuse" and "reduce". But they didn't accord with "buy it, use it, bin it".

Paper must be recyclable, or else all of these "made from 100% recycled paper product" things wouldn't be possible, nor the many actual plants the recycle paper.

Sure. But it's only clean paper that's recyclable. And not just clean paper, but the right kind of paper. Low-lignin paper and high-lignin (e.g., newsprint) can't be mixed.

Some are things like the scraps from the factory when they trim the edges of the sheets of paper. But some things are labeled as having some "post-consumer" recycled paper content.

There's a category of things that can go once or twice around the carousel. Paper, becomes low grade paper, become toilet paper, and gone. Plastic, becomes "bags for life", becomes bin bags, and gone.

I refuse to call them recyclable. The circle isn't closed.

> Things you can actually recycle: Aluminium, iron/steel scrap, and to a lesser extent glass.

Agree, with one caveat: Very specific plastics can be recycled as well, but it requires source sorting by consumers and industry and that's just not gonna happen.

Not into things of equal quality. You can just melt and re-cast glass, but with plastic, it's going to be something lesser, like a tile or a bag.

Glass quality also lessens due to impurities, which is one important reason why certain glass types, like beer bottles, have a mandated deposit and collection system.

If done properly, PET bottles can be recycled into PET bottles.

Consumers have to do their part though. But that is possible. 83% of PET-Bottles in Switzerland get recycled, this is done without any bottle depot. Recycling cost is between 1.9 and 2.3 cents per bottle.

For all other trash, the most environmental friendly way to dispose it is to burn it and use the energy.

Overall, top countries recycle more than 50% of all trash. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling_rates_by_country

Public utilities manage residential trash pickup and incinerators. The state also owns and manages landfills. Yes, there are private or at least nominally private exceptions to both, but state-owned facilities have unavoidable economic calculation problems, and these — along with legislation that permits certain levels of pollution — spill over into other distortion.

We seem to agree that the cost of waste disposal is too low. It isn’t capitalists who are setting that price.

Single stream recycling doesn't mean what you think; trash and recycling mixed and someone magically sorts it all out. It just means the recyclable materials don't need to be separated.

Sadly this is a very common misconception with single stream recycling and leads to significant contamination of the recyclable material [see article!].

I see where you're coming from, but some of the things you said don't gel with the state of recycling pre-Plastic China:

1. Waste management companies charge less for recycling to incentivize separating trash and because it was profitable to sell.

2. Single-Stream recycling programs still require consumer separation of non-recyclable trash from potentially recyclable material.

It's all about capital investment. It is expensive to develop and buy machines that specialize in sorting massive amounts of trash at a high throughput. Globalization allowed us to export that to places where labor was cheap enough that real humans would actually sift through the stuff.

The thought process is: why make the investment in specialized machines when there's human labor cheap enough to do it by hand, land cheap enough to store it in perpetuity, or environment regs lax enough to openly burn it and all that’s preventing these alternatives is government regulation?

In places where there’s strong faith in government like Europe you see many companies investing the R&D dollars in these machines. They also have strict packaging requirements that limit the number of inputs that these machines can expect to handle.

Here, the EPA and Dept of Interior can change hands every four years to people wholly uninterested in preserving our commons for the next generation. This administration is selling off pieces of National Parks for oil exploration, to name just one of many examples. It’s no wonder no one wants to actually put dollars towards green R&D.

I moved around some last year, and locals I met in New Mexico and Illinois would swear that their local recycling organization simply throws away their recycling into the landfill.

That's part of the reason people are sceptic with programs to "solve" climate change and other various green initiatives, there is too much politics and money involved and it is very hard to understand what's going on, what are the right solution and who is earning from what. As per usual, letting the market do its own thing will probably be the best solution, if recycling makes sense the free market will figure it out, same goes for all other green initiatives, take it out of the government hands and let the market comes with solutions.

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