Exposing the Myth of Plastic Recycling | Hacker News Reader

Exposing the Myth of Plastic Recycling

wbur.org

46 pointselorant17 comments

There are 2 points that all these stories miss. Recycled plastic is more expensive and less sturdy than new plastic. Also, there are limits to how many times plastic gets recycled. Example: there are companies that make cloth from recycled bottles but it's often mixed with other fibers which makes the cloth unrecyclable.

Plastic recycling just does not happen. Eventually, all of it is burnt or dumped.

This seems unsolvable without new compostable or otherwise easily processed plastics.

At our university a bioplastic "nonoilen" was developed that can be made from waste biomass (PLA + polyhdroxybutyrate formula) and compostable without any toxic residues. So far, like most "compostable" plastic, it requires industrial composter with temperatures over 50°C, but further improvements are being developed.

https://www.plasticsinsight.com/stu-team-develops-second-gen...

Toothbrush manufacture is planned (Slovak language, sorry). Hope it works out: https://aprilmagazin.curaprox.com/prve-curaprox-kefky-z-biop...

Yep. There is only one case where plastic can be reused high efficiently (during molding any bad parts or scrap are chucked right back in). But otherwise it's a nightmare of problems from being able to clean out contaminants, the inability to remove the color dye, the various mixtures of plastics, etc.

This is one of those weird topics where you get two different groups agreeing from quite different perspectives.

You get one side represented by this article, that thinks recycling is a plot by the plastics industry to green wash their products. And that it's shocking that we export plastic to China where it is burnt or landfilled.

Then on the other side you get fossil fuel sponsored libertarians saying that recycling is a big scam perpetrated by the hippies, who do it to feel good but it's actually better economically and environmentally to landfill or incinerate it and keep using oil and gas to make new plastics.

Both narratives seem to turn on the big "recycling is a hoax" twist, which is obviously a big clickbait success but then go in opposite directions with it. I'm not really sure it's possible for both to be true at the same time.

Note that most mainstream sources, the EPA etc. suggest recycling plastic is better environmentally and economically than the other disposal alternatives, though not as good as reducing usage in the first place. Though, there will likely be times when plastic is overall the better option if you take everything into consideration and dispose of it properly.

It's not clear to me why reduction advocates would start by attacking recycling? Does that really make strategic sense? Is this yet another false flag by the devious plastic industry? Or would it simply not get any traction if it just said something boring like "we shouldn't use too much unnecessary plastic when there are better alternatives"?

> Both narratives seem to turn on the big "recycling is a hoax" twist, which is obviously a big clickbait success but then go in opposite directions with it

Erm, what? On the topic of recycling, your two "sides" seem wholly compatible - you've just ascribed different group identity caricatures. Which says little about people, and is mostly a reflection of how the political parties work to divide us.

Disagreeing about whether to outsource a problem to China or deal with it locally is ultimately a separate topic.

I believe these articles are being driven by a backlog of stuff at recycling centers because gasp the abstraction where you just put your stuff in a separate bin and your consumption-waste is magically absolved has been shattered. We've already been inundated with a message telling individuals to "use less" for decades, so any effect has basically already been realized (meanwhile every other advertising message and economic signal continues to say "use more").

One side is clearly favoring landfill over recycling and the other is horrified that stuff they thought was recycled is going to landfill.

One is suggesting avoiding nearly all plastics, while they other has studies showing that replacing plastic bags with organic cotton bags is 20,000x worse for the planet and will probably give you salmonella.

One complains that recycling is too hard, because you have all the different boxes and people only do it to punish themselves out of some puritan impulse and the other thinks it's too easy and people do it to make themselves feel better about their consumption.

These are not the same thing, they only seem to agree that recycling is bad, but for opposite reasons.

The answer almost certainly involves more (genuine) recycling but that seems to be the only thing people are united against, so it's not likely to end well.

Each of these "sides" is a simplistic half-idea rooted in using only half of a brain - deductive/inductive right/left etc.

The dichotomies are better seen as thesis-antithesis, with the goal of synthesis. It's only the political machine that emphasizes and exacerbates each half-idea, pits them against one another, to ultimately foster commercial expedience winning out.

> The answer almost certainly involves more (genuine) recycling

The converse here is retuning the economy to produce less stuff in general, as well as dismantling the economic treadmill that causes us to value "convenience" above all else. Which even fewer people want to hear.

Probably the best solution would be a “waste tax” i’m not that old and i still remember the days when you had to bring an empty glass container for beer or soda those where replaced for plastic because it’s cheaper than having to transport/ process/ clean/ refill empty ones.

I agree with you. It seems to me that we have two choices to address "sustainability":

- Give up the convenience of modern life, permanently, for everyone (don't allow any more industrialization than already exists) - Drastically reduce population

I’ve read that plasma gasification is very energy intensive and elsewhere that we have a lot of renewable energy wasted because of no storage. Is there an opportunity there to get rid of plastic without damage to the environment?

plasma gasification is very energy intensive but in theory at least it releases more energy than you put in. I think all the operational plants right now still use slightly more energy than they capture. And some of them (like the tiny ones aboard US aircraft carriers) don't even attempt to capture the energy created.

If the effect of having plastic recycling collection is increased plastic consumption (less guilt “it gets recycled”), and our ability to recycle is as abysmal as is reported in many places... we may be better off stopping plastic recycling collection. We could then focus more on eliminating unwarranted usage and/or safe disposal.

The motto of waste management is "reduce, reuse, recycle" and they're in order of priority. First order of business is to reduce the amount of waste we produce.

A lot of this debate is unfortunately centered around irrational arguments. People are (rightfully) concerned about microplastics in our oceans but jump to conclusions when it comes to single use plastics being a main cause for that.

This guardian article https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/22/tyres-an... breaks it down nicely. Single use plastics are a source of this type of pollution but not a huge or dominant one. If you think about it, if you dispose of your single use plastic the appropriate way, it is extremely unlikely to ever end up in an ocean. I live in Berlin. That's a few hundred kilometers from the sea. Most waste plastic here ends up being garbage collected and probably incinerated. Fish aren't exactly choking on plastic in the single river that runs through this city. Apparently it's quite clean these days.

On the other hand, anything driving on the German autobahn is probably dumping tire particulates by the kilos per year on the road, straight into the sewer and into the water ways. A kilo in tires is just normal wear and tear. A kilo in plastic bags is an enormous amount of plastic. Also that road you are driving on is being ground to dust by anything driving over it and that is quite nasty stuff as well.

I still think getting rid of single use plastics is a good idea but for me the primary reason would be reducing our dependence on the fossil fuels used to produce them and the dirty energy used to produce and transport them. Paper is biodegradable and can be made from sustainable stuff (trees). The energy used to do that is still a problem. So, single use paper bags and cups are not much of an upgrade here.

We should focus on producing and using things that are recyclable or at least sustainably produced and disposed off. E.g. germany has an awesome bottle collection system where people pay a deposit when they buy a can or bottle and get back that deposit when they return it to the store. Dumping plastic or glass bottles on the street here is a form of charity. Plenty of people around interested in collecting those. I usually leave my bottles in a visible/convenient spots.

Doing something is better than doing nothing, right?

If the cost of doing Something is larger than the benefit then, no, doing Nothing is better.

Doing something in this case is making us feel good about consuming plastics, where the better thing would be doing nothing and have the packaging industry avoid it where possible.

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