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Comment by xyst | Hacker News Reader

If billions of dollars spent on various recycling programs fail, I can’t see these homemade machines solving this problem either. It’s clear this is not immune to the sorting problem which is the root cause of why plastic recycling is unprofitable.

I can see this as an educational program for children and adults that ignorantly throw anything plastic into the recycling bin thinking it would be recycled. But in reality, it’s likely going into the local landfill (or overseas).

The only way to solve this plastic problem is to ban all single use applications (ie, cups, straws, takeaway containers, grocery bags, ...).

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The latest trick for plastic items is for companies to say they are reusable. So instead of a box of plastic straws, it is now a box with "reusable plastic straws" written on it. Same exact product, but now marketed to get around any single-use bans.

There's a lot of things that can be economically viable at the personal/household scale that can't work at the commercial scale because of the regulatory requirements of a modern first world workplace.

Most of the time when you see a kit to DIY something this is the niche in which it lives.

Not saying the economics work out for this particular thing but just because it's not commercially viable doesn't mean it's not economically viable. You don't see scrapyards hiring people to drive around picking up scrap metal yet people do it for a net profit, same concept.

That’s true, this might actually work if it’s done at the household or neighborhood level. The big problems with recycling plastic are manual sorting and cleaning the gross stuff people leave in it. If you’re recycling your own waste you can tackle those problems easily. If it’s your neighbour’s water then you can ask them to be responsible or lose access to your service and good will.

Plastic needs classified as toxic and treated as such. There are beaches now covered in plastic chips instead of sand (the sand is underneath). The real scary part is waking up one day and realizing that we are infested with microplastics to a dangerous and irreversible saturation point from the natural breakdown. Man made fibers, water bottles, children's toys...all will break down to microscopic levels. We can probably filter it out effectively for drinking but the whole deal is just another log on the fire that humanity has built under themselves.

You know, I actually prefer plastic sand.

The sorting problem is mostly due to people feeling like they can get away with not washing their recyclables and throwing anything into the recycling bin. If you have to deliver those recyclables to a local business in person and they can tell you to your face that you didn’t do it right and you have to take your bin over to a washing station and redo it before you can leave it there you can be sure it won’t happen again.

With the current state of plastic packaging, I don't think most people have the time to do that.

The only way that I could see that being viable is if it was mandated that the plastic class be embossed into the product with a minimum font size, labels be easily removable, and the package be shaped in such a way that it be easily cleanable.

> If you have to deliver those recyclables to a local business in person

But you don’t have to. You can just throw it in the trash or blue lid recycling bin, emptied every Monday.

What motivates someone to spend hours scrubbing and personally delivering clean plastic?

> What motivates someone to spend hours scrubbing and personally delivering clean plastic?

Hence why taxes on fossil fuels should be so high that a plastic bottle costs $10 and plastic toys cost $100, so the alternatives are worth it and the plastic is not made in the first place.

Fossil fuels aren't the only possible feedstock for plastics, just the current cheapest option. If you make fossil fuels more expensive, then people will use ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioplastic

Interesting! I guess there would also have to be a disincentive to use plastics period.

Do hospitals get a special exception or do we go back to risking infection due to insufficient sterilization?

Society is free to allocate more plastic to sterilization, it’ll just have to come from somewhere in society’s “fossil fuel” budget.

The point is the amount of fossil fuel consumption is causing environmental problems, just not in current society’s decision makers’ lifetimes. The only solution is to bring down the amount of fossil fuels consumed.

Yeah, screw poor people. They don't deserve toys anyway.

Poor people and avoiding environmental calamities are separate problems with separate solutions.

If your solution for environmental issues is to make everything dramatically more expensive, they are no longer independent problems.

What would the solution here be? Raise prices on everything containing plastic, but then give the bottom x% of the population money to offset the increased cost? That is a net effect of zero, with lots of inefficiency in the middle.

Increasing prices only works as a way of changing behavior if people feel the effects of the increased prices. You cannot handwave away "poor people will get a separate solution" when your entire proposal is to make people lose money.

One problem is the environmental effects of using a certain product, which in this situation are fossil fuels. The only solution to the problems caused by fossil fuels, from emissions to microplastics, is to decrease the use of fossil fuels period. In order to decrease the use of something, you can increase the price.

Another problem is the income/wealth/opportunity gap between people around the world. This might be solved by transferring income/wealth/opportunity from those that have it to those that don’t. It does not need to be linked directly to taxes on fossil fuels, like most other government expenditures are not linked to specific taxes.

This is not a net zero effect with lots of inefficiency. It’s actually the most efficient way I can think of, certainly more than hoping people sort and clean their recycling properly, ignoring the fact that recycling doesn’t even really work.

The whole point is to make people feel the effects of increased prices. It will mean fewer plastic toys, and toys in general since they won’t be so cheap, less flying, smaller homes and lots since transportation for longer distances is more expensive.

But that is the goal, to reduce the use of fossil fuels. Which all of our modern quality of life revolves around. And why, politically, there will not be a real solution to damage caused by fossil fuels in any relevant timeframe.

Your solution sounds equivalent to creating a permanent economic depression. Good thing that anyone who implements this will be outcompeted by those who don’t.

I’m well aware it would create an economic depression, hence my acknowledging that politically, a real solution is not possible to enact.

Our economy and expectations of life are based on consuming as much as we can, and so we shall. The optimal move for each individual is to enjoy life as much as they can, regardless of the effects of their consumption.

Whether or not it’s a good thing (for descendants) depends on how true predictions like these are:

https://xkcd.com/1732/

Not everyone has that available to them. In my county there is no municipal trash services. It’s all private and the commercial providers make vague references to single stream recycling. I’m skeptical they’re doing a good job of extracting recyclables from waste.

They stuff that garbage into empty container ships where it's 'recycled' in impoverished nations in Asia.

Trillion dollar question.

>What motivates someone to spend hours scrubbing and personally delivering clean plastic?

Image.

If you can convince a bunch of dumb yuppies that they will sound like the hippest hipster in the break room when they chat with all their coworkers about what they're up to they will shovel inordinate amounts of money in your direction. And after a good run at that either you sell out and move down market or someone else comes along and develops a 90% as good solution that's accessible to a much broader cross section of the population.

Pulling that off is the big question though. Premium consumers are more fickle than normal consumers.

> It’s clear this is not immune to the sorting problem which is the root cause of why plastic recycling is unprofitable

Yeah, they depict collectors bicycling around town with a trailer and then washing and delabeling the collected plastic in a domestic kitchen sink. They would have to charge thousands per ton for the clean stock.

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