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Comment by scottndecker | Hacker News Reader

This. Most plastics can't be recycled; it was a PR play by the plastic industry decades ago. Using plastics for such things as medical devices and such makes complete sense to me. Using plastics for items which inherently are only used for a few minutes or an hour (see the F&B industry) makes no sense at all to me.

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"Using plastics for items which inherently are only used for a few minutes or an hour"

Of course it makes sense. Plastic is cheap, light, watertight, strong, and mallable.

It's kind of a miracle material, except that it's too stable. If we had a version that decomposed in a year, it would be awesome.

Compostable "plastics", e.g. PLA, which sometimes is corn-based, exist; in California I've seen compostable disposable silverware, as well as compostable decorative planters (I own two, holding up good after three years, which makes me wonder how compostable they really are). But compostable "plastics" do exist, at least in some markets.

Surely the companies that print the symbol and "Please recycle!" on non-recyclable plastic wouldn't label non-compostable silverware as compostable...

I've successfully run "compostable" plastic through the dishwasher several times and haven't seen any sign of decay. The county I live in offers composting service and begs people to please not put "compostable" plastic in it.

A quickly decomposing plastic wouldn't be awesome either as it would add all the carbon extracted from fossil sources into the short term carbon cycle more quickly.

There are a few companies claiming progress in chemical recycling. eg.:

https://quantafuel.com/ | https://newsweb.oslobors.no/message/513575

80% (by weight) recovery into high quality liquids (eg.: nafta). They claim the majority of the energy used by the process comes from the remaining 20%.

The acceptable input is mostly PP and PE, the two most commonly used plastics (at least for packaging). A special catalysator is used to remove additives like chlorine.

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