The Great Recycling Con [video]
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
- Recycling companies in Mexico will not accept any material that they can't make a profit on. Only a few numbers of plastic are recyclable/profitable.
- Recycling companies in Mexico enforce sorting and cleanliness before receiving any material. I clean everything, even run it in the dishwasher if there's space. Pizza cardboard is straight out.
- Glass is the hardest the recycle. There's a global glut of used glass. This goes against the normal idea that it's the easiest to recycle because it can be simply melted down. On the other hand, some beverage companies wash and reuse returned bottles. Those are the only bottled beverages I buy now. Buy a case, pay a small deposit, then continuously swap it for full bottles.
- Aluminum is the easiest to recycle and the most profitable. I've switched to buying as much as possible in cans. Especially switching from drinking beer out of bottles because it "tastes better" to buying it in cans and pouring it in a glass.
- Clean cardboard (and paper to a lesser extent) is fairly easy to recycle.
- Companies pay you a small amount for material. It's not a lot but it covers the cost of dropping it off.
These basic economic rules apply in the United States too but it's masked by the con described in this op-ed, temporary recycling subsidies and "wish-cycling" [0]
[0] https://recyclecoach.com/residents/blog/help-put-a-stop-to-w...
FWIW, that was never true, anyway. It's just that, once upon a time, cheap beer came in cans and expensive beer came in bottles, so it was hard for consumers to make a decent comparison.
When I was in beer judging class, we did an interesting blind taste test among various beers that are available in both bottles and cans. The cans consistently won. It didn't take too long to notice the pattern, either: At least for beers with a more delicate flavor, the bottled version tends to have a certain subtle hint of soggy cardboard that's absent in the canned version.
A lot of that could be mitigated by finding products that are bottled locally in reusable bottles. I don't know about other countries, but that's become all but illegal in many US jurisdictions.
re: frosting, it really depends on how how you like your beer. If it's an American pale lager like Miller or Budweiser, where the defining feature of the style is that it's meant to have as little flavor as possible, yeah, a frosted glass will help with that. As will a bottle, since bottles are perfect for minimizing your nose's exposure to what you're drinking. If it's an ale that's meant to have a lot of complex flavor and aroma, and you like those things, cellar temperature will bring them out more.
This looks like a situation with dissimilar metals and an electrolyte. You might just have a battery.
Canning is generally considered to be a better packaging method for beverages when it comes to flavor preservation, as opposed to bottling. Bottles allow light in, which leads to unwanted flavors developing in the beverage.
Reducing consumption is the only answer, and further down is reusing. But recycling is so inefficient, I assume it has mostly been for political points, and conveniently, we had tons of containers going back empty to China.
I think they meant that they do it then they do dishes and have space for cleaning trash. In that case there is nothing wasteful in it.
A dishwasher is more efficient than hand washing under normal circumstances (not an ancient dishwasher, not pre-washing dishes, more than one plate to wash, etc).[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]
Edit: added citations and removed "IIRC"
[1] https://www.pcrichard.com/library/blogArticle/why-dishwasher...
[2] https://www.reviewed.com/dishwashers/features/please-stop-ha...
[3] https://www.treehugger.com/kitchen-design/built-in-dishwashe...
[4]https://www.realsimple.com/home-organizing/cleaning/more-tec...
[5] https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-much-water-do-dishwashers-us...
[6] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/11/24/564055953/to...
[7] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wash-dishes_n_7232216?guccoun...
[8] https://www.energystar.gov/products/appliances/dishwashers/d...
In addition, a dishwasher has high pressure pumps, a centrifugal grinder, and its own water heater (to heat hotter and more localized than a central water heater, above sanitizing levels)
* You don't need rinse water, so the total water needed is at least halved. Since the water is just sitting in a bucket, you can do many, many washings with the same water which increases that efficiency even more.
* You don't need heated water as sanitation and complete cleanliness is unimportant. Heating the water alone uses more energy than everything else put together.
* You don't need particularly clean water, just clean enough to prevent large dirt from adhering. As such you could use floor-cleaning chemicals that clump the dirt and precipitate it to the bottom increasing use time. Reusing water and the chemicals in that water for longer has a very large impact on the environment.
* a couple strokes with a bottle brush take way less energy than a high-pressure pump and once again, get the item clean enough.
* Fewer things going through your dishwasher increases its lifespan and decreases the total cost of operation. This is also better for the environment
please don't be so quick to judge when the individual's circumstances may be more complex than first assumed.
The only case where they might have any weight would be widespread collection of water to the extent that it had a measurable impact on the community, but this would involve large quantities of water and would almost certainly involve business interests rather than personal ones.
[1]: https://attorneys.lawinfo.com/water-rights/nevada/las-vegas/
I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.
Consider bricks, both traditional and in the style of the typical concrete block. These could be glass. There are many options for making them: full melt, sintered, or as aggregate cemented with something else.
Floor tiles ought to work. The result need not be transparent; other ingredients would stop that.
Fiber glass insulation seems like a reasonable use.
The truthiness of this statement depends a lot on the region of the world you are looking at.
In Europe there is a consolidated and expanding recycling market for many different types of materials. For example more that 30% in eight of the plastics sent to recycle in EU actually ends up being recycled [1]. (It would be closer to ~40% if it weren't for France.) These are big numbers that are having a meaningful impact on the amount of CO2 produced, not just "jobs programs".
BTW, a decade ago I met the owner of a factory that used only post-consumer plastic and he stated that his business was limited by the lack of good post-consumer plastics: the biggest share of the best kinds of plastics are being bought, at an higher price, by incinerators operators, leaving his factory and others to deal with second-rate plastic.
[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/201...
In Asia, plastic bags are given for free, and I'm sure charging a few cents would have made a massive difference. Uber Eats, GoFood, and Grab Food all have made some changes so you can mark if you do not want the plastic cutlery. There is a company in India, Zomato, that even sends recyclable bags along the food. All of these changes should be appreciated by both media and consumers.
Recycling would never solve the problem alone. It's an illusion of a solution. Using less and less plastic and more alternative material would.
Add to that: Even if you can't be bothered to return a bottle for the Pfand you can just dump it in a visible place and it will be picked up in minutes and returned by somebody who needs the money more urgently than you.
As to whether those wear marks on glass beer bottles are from them touching together during transport I'd suggest that this actually is not the case. They shouldn't come into contact with another, seeing as they are transported in crates with pockets for individual bottles. It is far more likely that those marks come from handling in the bottle washing-, filling- and labelling machines where the bottles gang and rub against each other. If you're from Germany you might have watched 'die Sendung mit der Maus' ('the program with the mouse', a long-running television program aimed at children which amongst others details all sorts of industrial processes) where this process is followed from start to finish. Here's an example from the '70s:
I'm drinking from thick reusable/reused plastic bottle everyday here in Berlin, even coke is sold in them, they still exists
> it ended up being more expensive to clean these plastic bottles
Which is a shame because what we save in $s now will cost us much more than $s in the future.
> It is far more likely that those marks come from handling in the bottle washing-, filling- and labelling machines where the bottles gang and rub against each other.
Could be, either way it's a sign they are indeed reused. Thanks for the link.
edit Why are incinerators purchasing stuff to burn at all? That should have been my first question. What is the profit in purchasing stuff to burn? Is this a energy production source or something?
Those things don't burn as well.
Most of it will be feel good low impact measures and policies that mostly are a way for people on the inside to make money.
The solution is clear: use aluminum instead of plastic for packaging. Possibly cardboard.
(That said, my understanding is the straw research is based on a 5th grade science project and most of the straws that reach the environment are from third world countries that don’t have good landfills or waste disposal systems...)
I wash them, as long as they haven't held something that could be an issue. For example, this morning I used the last muffin in a freezer bag. As part of the morning washing up I did that bag, and it will take an hour or so to dry, and then I'll use it for muffins again.
It "solves" sorting logistical issues nicely and any actually worthwhile recyclables can be removed still. Granted care must still be taken for handling emissions and it is more a "supplemental generation for disposing" than any significant generation. I wonder if I am missing anything about it aside from "landfills may be cheaper".
Why not just let garbage rot (i.e. compost)? Why worry about actively recycling that which will fade away on its own?
Seriously, every time I read a comment like this it's like Dr. Strangelove has walked off of Kubrick's set and into real life.
After some initial griping I've gotten used to it. Its not a lot of money, but it makes you more conscious of it (Because "do you need a bag" = $).
I personally am part of the "we should charge corporations who generate the refuse for disposal, clean up and recycling as well as carbon in production, and let the market and human ingenuity then sort it out via a whole range of specific interventions that match the needs of each sector" team.
That solution will almost certainly involve a whole bunch of recycling, plus other things like making things easier to recycle, using more recycled material, but apparently both the hippies and the libertarians think recycling is a scam for entirely opposite reasons and so it's hard to have a nuanced cost-based discussion about this, at least in the US.
In Europe they generally track the stats on how much is being recycled and continuously aim to improve that, tweaking things as they go.
EDIT: example of measurement unit shown
* Jmf pris 21:27 /kg
* Jmf pris 38:55 /kg
* Jmf pris 16:95 /kg
[0] https://www.mathem.se/sok?q=snabbmakaroner&page=1&pageSize=4...
Not to mention that there is also a difference in environmental impact of the same resource consumption that differs by location - brewing using great lakes water vs a depleting aquifer. Or power usage in aluminum from solar or geothermal vs burning coal to do it.
I wish composting was more widespread. We could solve so many issues with waste management with it.