Plastic manufacturing is shockingly cheap, especially when the design never changes. Maybe it shouldn’t be that cheap (since it’s probably being externalized somewhere), but lots of companies are surviving (and thriving) at these price points.
I mean, there's four main pieces to this:
- Injection moulding machine
- Mould itself
- Raw materials
- Disposal
The moulding machine is quite expensive until you amortize across the number of produced pieces. Most of the time these aren't custom-built and can be used to make multiple patterns.
The mould is also quite expensive and is made for one specific part. To your point, this is why things get cheap when the design doesn't change. They will eventually wear out, but from a high quality mould you should be able to get roughly a bazillion of these consumer plastic parts.
The materials are ridiculously cheap. Polyethylene, as an example, is $1200/metric ton: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1171074/price-high-densi.... I don't know exactly what a laundry basket weighs, but I'd guess somewhere in the 500-1000g range, so somewhere between $0.60-$1.20 worth of plastic.
The recycling at the end is the part that isn't really baked into the price. A quick search didn't reveal much as far as the costs for recycling/kg, but did suggest that recycled PET seems to sell for more like $0.20-0.30/kg. This, to me, suggests that either it needs a fair bit more processing to make it into "useful PET" or that whatever recycling process they use requires minimal energy & processing compared to the initial chemical inputs that made the plastic in the first place.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/single-use...
In theory, the cost of manufacture a new piece of plastic should pay for the recycling of that same piece of plastic.
Recycling plastics breaks down the polymers into smaller ones which degrades the quality in almost every respect. The cheapest way, for example, is literally just shred the plastic into lower quality injection moulding pellets.
I agree we should stop. Perhaps we are the corrupt country who exports it's waste to places where disposal is controlled by gangsters. Supply and demand.
Why don't we just put all that garbage into big pits domestically, instead of exporting it? I guess you need to convince voters to like this solution better. I think it's important that we don't just dump the trash in poor and politically unpowerful neighborhoods and regions to (which is kind of what we do now, just internationally).
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/oct/05/h...
I wonder if anyone has calculated approximately what that cost might be. I suspect it would make plastic much less attractive than it currently is. Which would, I guess, result in significantly less plastic use. Which is good, because plastic recycling is not an answer, it's basically a myth, it's not affordable, it's not currently hardly done (which actually makes it hard to estimate what the cost would be to include as a 'tax' in original price -- we don't actually have the infrastructure available to reclaim and sort and do all that recycling. What the cost would be is kind of a guess).
We need to significantly reduce plastic use, recycling isn't really the answer.
Now, if including cost of recycling in all plastic sales also would be likely to result in a giant economic recession, that's a problem to solve too.
(I am not arguing for continued plastic use the way we do now. I agree the cost of recycling should be borne by original sales. I am however saying that this is not in fact a simple fix and recycling is probably not the answer, at least not in the present environment. Perhaps if we invent more recyclable types of plastic, use fewer kinds of plastic to make them easier to reclaim/sort, etc. And use a lot less plastic).
When I worked on an anti-counterfeiting and supply chain integrity startup, one of the kinds of counterfeits I heard was of factories that make the legitimate product secretly also make the counterfeits. (Sometimes called "third-shift counterfeits".) They'd not only reuse the design and processes, but also reuse the same tooling.
Corner-cutting the design/materials/QA is optional.
There's huge money in counterfeiting (hey, the brand hand counterfeiters their IP and brand-building and even tooling; and counterfeiters just pay materials, labor, and distribution), and some other supply chain shenanigans.
My impression was that besides hurting many businesses large and small (e.g., lost sales, price pressure, brand damage, and support/returns costs), and consumers (e.g., substandard product), it might also be concern for the relative economic power of countries (e.g., interests in one country steal profits from a major company, then that company sometimes also gets bought out by interests in that same country). (Though, bought-out companies still sometimes face supply chain fraud problems, including originating in other countries, so it's just not one single coherent national entity that's the problem.)
Had Covid not hit right after my startup's successful factory launch, and then the subsequent VC skittishness when we really needed a round (to grow our big-ticket enterprise sales/partnership and high-skilled engineering), we might've made bigger dents in the problem.
That said, if the paper and binding quality are the same between shifts and there’s no identifying mark like unique numbering on each copy, there’s no telling how many first editions in circulation are really third shift printings. So few of the books survive the centuries that I’ve never heard of more first editions showing up than the publisher admits to printing to bibliographers.
Edit: They’re not really “worthless” but old and rare books might see one genuine first edition sold every few years to some rich person with a hobby. Many if not most of these books are bought and sold by knowledgeable collectors so if a client is going to drop thousands on a book, they're going to buy the copy that is most likely to be genuine, making any also rans effectively worthless because there’s not enough of a demand to force buyers to settle for riskier copies.
[1] because they’re unauthorized and the publisher doesn’t talk about them to the bibliographers
Both color, and chemically.
If someone leaves their old laundry basket out in the sun, that will degrade the plastic in a way that will make it unusable if recycled, and there is no easy or scalable way to detect it.
Same with it someone spilled a bunch of nasty pesticides on it, or used it to hold some kind of toxic heavy metals.
This is rather different than metals, but a similar problem exists with glass (but less severe), which also makes it hard to effectively recycle.
That the raw new material is dirt cheap doesn’t help.
Plastic in my eyes is basically petro byproducts 'blitzscaled' to all layers of the economy, all the way down to the literal bloodstreams of all living organisms.
Like it or not; we will use every drop of oil there is, one way or another. I wouldn’t bet against oil companies even if all cars were electric by means of a genie.
Two things to your post though. Yes, making things out of oil is probably better than burning it. But don’t mistake how much oil is used in the side-processes.
We will burn the oil one way or another. Until there is a better source of energy with better safety and density than hydrocarbons, we’ll use it all. If not in cars, in power plants, if not there in military, if not there in 3rd world, etc.
I'm sure composites make electric cars better, but I don't think electric cars are impossible without composites.
Throwaway plastics are far more of a problem, although the scale of the problem is often overstated for ideological reasons. For example, we're not at risk of running out of landfill space; and while plastics in the ocean are worth fixing, but there's little evidence that they're destroying ecosystems or harming health.
Plastics are essentially a distraction. The vast majority of emissions that actually harm the environment come from other industries, but these problems are less tractable, so we get preoccupied washing yogurt cups and banning plastic straws instead.
On the second point, I don't find it too convincing that I don't have to worry about plastics in my blood, my children's blood, their children's blood, because we don't understand it very well yet. And on the ocean plastic, that's just the tip of the iceberg that we can see and talk about easily. The real thing that's killing ecosystems en masse is not at the output end of the system, but on the input end. Global reliance on petrochemicals, industrial pesticides derived thereby, etc. I'm a scuba diver and I've watched reefs die with my own eyes.
I just can't shake the feeling we are on course to strip the planet of billions of years of biodiversity and in 1000 years whoever is left will regard the decisions of our time w.r.t. resource extraction as catastrophically stupid. But I do acknowledge how this is idealogical and emotionally based as you point out, and I can agree to disagree. My friends tell me: we won't be alive in 1000 years, so who cares? That doesn't sit well with me, but I get it.
Edit: noticed your edit and agree a lot with that point!
About 300 years ago Europe was mostly stripped bare of forests. It helped us get to the point where we can say “Wow that was stupid”.
Now we use forests less (thanks to coal and later oil) and Europe is regrowing most of them. Yes ecosystems were impacted and biodiversity changed … now it’s slowly coming back. On the scale of millions of years this event is largely invisible.
> As a result, during the period 1750-1850 forests in Central Europe had been decimated, causing a serious lack of timber. Some contemporary reports even spoke partly of desert-like landscapes at that time. During the late 19th and 20th centuries a huge amount of artificial reforestation was implemented.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_forest_in_Cen...
> The area of forest in the EU increased by almost 10 % in 1990–2020; with the largest relative increase in Ireland (by 69 %) and largest absolute increase in Spain (by 4.7 million ha). Estimated 63 % of the net annual increment of timber in EU forests was logged in 2019
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
Plastic waste in the ocean is a major issue for seabirds [1]
> or harming health
"The combined data, although fragmentary, indicate that exposure to micro- and nanoplastics can induce oxidative stress, potentially resulting in cellular damage and an increased vulnerability to develop neuronal disorders." [2]
I do agree that single-use plastics are a much bigger issue than less-durable plastic stuff like that laundry basket, and that greenhouse gas emissions are a bigger issue than waste disposal. That does not mean that plastic waste is not a big problem.
[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5714369/Film...
> "The combined data, although fragmentary, indicate that exposure to micro- and nanoplastics can induce oxidative stress, potentially resulting in cellular damage and an increased vulnerability to develop neuronal disorders."
I.e. just like GP said, there's little evidence. Not a complete nothingburger, but also nothing that enables you to truthfully say "microplastics are harming health" in a nontrivial sense, demanding priority attention.
Note the language used in the abstract you quoted: "can induce oxidative stress, potentially resulting in cellular damage and an increased vulnerability to develop neuronal disorders" (emphasis mine). The very next sentence continues: "Additionally, exposure to micro- and nanoplastics can result in inhibition of acetylcholinesterase activity and altered neurotransmitter levels, which both may contribute to the reported behavioral changes." (emphasis again mine).
"Can", "potentially resulting", "increased vulnerability", "may contribute" - this language is very deliberate: "Can" means, it also could not, or could sometimes not; the potential in "potentially resulting" may not realize; "increased vulnerability" is true even if the increase is completely insignificant; "may contribute" doesn't say which way, or how much. Scientific papers use such constructs to hint at potentiality without committing to it. A big shmaybe.
(Politicians and marketers and activists (and small children) use this kind of language too, relying on the audience to miss the hedge, so they can convince people to believe in lies, without technically lying to them.)
Conversely, when someone has something concrete to say, they don't hedge like this - instead, they say "does", "results in", "causes X under conditions Y", "increases vulnerability by Z", "contributes to U", etc.
So, in short, no: the bit of abstract you quoted isn't refuting GP's point, but actually confirming it. Microplastics are a pure distraction.
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In case you have doubts, I recommend reading the full text of the article[0]. All those hedges are made more concrete in the article body - some in the analysis of prior work, others in the conclusion. Interesting quotes:
"Moreover, the potential health risks resulting from micro- and nanoplastics exposure, uptake and translocation is poorly investigated and is an important matter of ongoing debate [14, 18, 34,35,36]." (From "Background")
"The extent to which these effects are also applicable to micro- and nanoplastics is however largely unknown." (From "Main text")
"In striking contrast to the relative wealth of available rodent in vivo studies with metal(oxide) nanoparticles, there are only two studies that investigated the neurotoxicity of micro- and nanoplastics in rodents. This is particularly striking given the observed neurotoxic effects of exposure to micro- and nanoplastics in fish and (marine) invertebrates." (From "Neurotoxic effects of micro- and nanoplastics in rodents")
"Information regarding levels of small plastic particles in the environment, (drinking) water and food chain are still scarce and often only limited quality criteria are reported. More and improved data on the occurrence of small plastics particles in the different environmental matrices is needed to reliably estimate human exposure and aid hazard and risk assessment, and current efforts aim at harmonizing monitoring methods and quality criteria [106,107,108]." (From "Reflections on and potential implications of neurotoxicity induced by micro- and nanoplastics")
"The concentrations of micro- and nanoplastics used in experimental studies are often (much) higher than those currently found in the (aquatic) environment. (...) Unfortunately, the dose is often expressed as weight/volume, without info on particle density. Consequently, information regarding particle numbers is often unknown. Although exact details on human intake of micro- and nanoplastics are often also unknown, these are likely to be much lower. (...) Notably, while some information is available on (human) intake, the information regarding uptake and translocation in animals or human is even more scarce. Few of the studies published so far made serious efforts to quantify particle uptake and translocation, so it is often unclear whether or not the particles actually made it to the tissues/systemic circulation, whether or not particles can subsequently be excreted/eliminated, and how uptake and distribution relate to the observed (neurotoxic) effect." (Ibid)
"Notably, most experimental exposures used so far are not very realistic for human exposure. Most studies used short exposure durations, with high exposure levels, while humans are chronically exposed to low levels. Additional shortcomings of the available studies include the use of (virgin) particle types and shapes that are not environmentally relevant. Moreover, a systematic comparison of different particle types, shapes, sizes and concentrations is lacking and to date most research focused on aquatic species." (From "Conclusions")
And there's many, many more statements like this - I recommend reading the full article; I omitted quotes with numbers and details that would require quoting half a page here. The article raises a good point that there is a reason to worry - micro- and nano-plastics have structural similarities to chemically inert metal particles, which are known to be hazardous to health. But while it's rather apparent micro- and nanoplastics are harmful to some degree, whether or not and how big of an issue that is is very much unclear at this point.
The way this is a distraction is because it competes for attention and care with CO₂ emissions and climate change, which is known to be an imminent extinction-level threat. Additionally, some of the proposed mitigations for plastic pollution problems run counter to what's needed to deal with climate change at the moment.
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[0] - https://particleandfibretoxicology.biomedcentral.com/article...
As nice as it would be to be able to focus all our efforts on just the one Big Problem, I just don't think that's a viable approach for the reality we live in. We need to simultaneously address plastic waste, which is a real problem, and all the other stuff too.
Does anyone have insight in what the negative effects here are, if any? It feels like this should be problematic, but I just can't put my finger on what problems this is creating. Like e.g. extracting oil to create single-use plastics that get put in a landfill after usage: it sounds bad, but what's actually the problem (assuming the whole process is done without burning any of the oil - which afaik is possible)?
As long as we're hooked on the conveniences of plastic and gas stoves, it will be difficult to achieve a Star Trek type future.
I suppose you could make a cheap laundry basket out of chicken wire, but there would have to be some way to protect from rust caused by damp clothes.
Crap, if people just spotaneously started buying qualty, durable things, and companies actually made them, that would go an enormous way to help the global environmental collapse.
Unfortunately if you live in the US you're starting out at about $50 instead of $5. I think that's a little bit of a HCOL price point, though. I picked up a burlap shopping bag in India earlier this year for about the equivalent of five cents, that any store here would have charged a couple of bucks for.
You have anyway lots of company. That should not be reassuring.
(I use "you", here, to denote all readers in the same boat, not any particular individual.)
Notice that the basket from the article has rounded edges, and rounded cutouts. The plastic appears to be thickish and should be very slightly flexible/rubbery (bending because the material is flexible, not merely because it is thin).
These products should (and definitely can) last decades.