Amazon packages burn in India, final stop in broken recycling system
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Resist buying stuff you don't really need. Can you repurpose an item? Then turn to the recycling industry and maybe it will find a way back.
Resist > Reuse > Recycle
I imagine you could apply the same thinking to shopping. Before checking out, pick one or two items to cancel or leave to the next purchase, or choose a smaller size.
Sometimes it costs a little more per unit, but the upside is you consume less.
This has always been true. There's just been a lot of "feel good" marketing around this point to beguile the market out of this rather common sense in the past few decades.
> Then turn to the recycling industry and maybe it will find a way back.
Putting my curmudgeon hat on for a second, I remember a time when we used to make products with high enough quality and durability that they would either last nearly a lifetime or get repaired when they didn't.
A lot of the money in tech seems to be tied to the same marketing, convincing people to consume. The greenwashing is a problem as well, although I wish I weren't so cynical when I see a company trying to do better so often it seems to read as "We're making our X more green and efficient, so buy more of them"
I was swimming in a lake this summer with a friend involved in marketing when he made a comment about what happens when they run out of people's attention seconds. Do we make more, fight harder to retain attention, die?, or is there another solution.
For the last six months or so, I've been aware that I want to buy an iPhone even though I have a smartphone that fulfills all my needs. The cost for the value proposition of the iPhone is inferior to many smartphones, and for me, it has zero marginal value. I don't care about the iPhone's prestige or "lifestyle" angle. There is no justification for buying it. Still, it appeals to me, and I don't know why. This could be a problem if I did not have the rational faculties of an adult. And now and then, I read about a kid saving up for an iPhone and being very disappointed/regretting the purchase.
It's seriously hazardous that we no longer have a way to opt out of this influence of advertising. I wish we did (on reasonable terms, without completely withdrawing from society). For a while in the 2010s, minimalism and anti-consumerism became more popular. But looking back, they seem to have been more of a fad. Now if a kid doesn't have an iPhone in school, it's "cringe".
Prior to driving age, it was other things. But there's always something.
Sounds like it has some marginal value, otherwise, by definition, you would not want it.
I wouldn't blame yourself. Humans are curious and seek out new things. Humans like things of "beauty" and Apple does an unbelievable job of marketing & product design.
It helps.
The other part is to ground your identity in a different set of values. There are many circles in which frivolous purchases are a sin. There are many people who find virtue in economy and restraint.
I don't intend this as a slight, but as an honest question: do you feel like you correctly compensate for survivorship bias when looking back at how products were made?
I ask because, in my experience doing repairs as a hobby, it's just the nicer things that have survived. People don't remember the cheap record players they got as kids, the cheap tools, &c.; they remember the things that are still with them, which are the higher-quality ones.
Edit: In particular, it's pretty hard to repair a lot of consumer goods from the 1930s-1970s: they tend to use plastics that crack very easily and that aren't mendable, or are outright hazardous to repair (like bakelite, which sometimes has asbestos mixed into it).
There are at least two issues at play:
1) If I build something, I can do it again. I won't use ultra-thin metal which is likely to be damaged being welded, injection molding, or similar sorts of processes which require a factory.
2) I'll do a bit of overengineering. Modern consumer goods use the absolute minimum in materials possible. If you take things apart, it's pretty magical.
I'll also take care of it (and know how). If something costs me a week's salary, I'll buy fewer things, and I won't want them to break. If a gizmo costs a few minutes' salary, I'm better off replacing it. Maintenance is a nice hobby for some of us, but far from economically rational.
My favorite in this vein is furniture. Yes, if you use hardwood that is not legal for very valid reasons, it can possibly last longer. Or if you get a worker to use toxic paints and other hazardous repair techniques, it is amazing what you can restore.
Meanwhile, the true irony is that a household going through several modern appliances probably still uses less electricity and other raw materials than the older ones that supposedly lasted longer. All while not poisoning the users.
Don't get me wrong, early adopters still typically get bad products. But one need only look at modern lighting to see an example of how the old way was borderline garbage. Yes, the first led bulbs were bad. Same with early low flow toilets and high efficiency washers. Modern ones, though, are so much better than the older ones that it is hard to believe.
If you want to focus on the infrastructure, the amplifiers needed for old communication were ridiculously expensive and actually somewhat justified long distance fees. The repeaters of modern tech are far superior.
It's incredible how much stuff is produced just to be thrown away. But I guess it keeps the wheels turning? I often wonder wether this is the best system there is. Something tells me it's not.
You're much better off selling something at a price below market value if you want it gone cheap to someone can use it.
A lot of times I'll just list something for 20 bucks just to weed those people out. Then when a buyer shows up just telling them it's free.
Cooking for many people, sharing tools, common areas, etc, saves a lot of money and resources. We are thus able to support a wide range of income levels. With the caveat that we're in a fairly equal country (Northern Europe), the community attracts a wide range of backgrounds, from unskilled workers to teachers and doctors. Everyone gets chores and responsibilities assigned based on personal priorities, skills and the needs at the time.
We have a "rule-book" that defines a democratic voting system for making decisions. We hold meetings every other week. I would lie if I said it was always pleasant or easy, but it does work surprisingly well. I think it helps that the place is around 50 years old, so we've had the chance to learn from mistakes and update the "rule-book" along the way.
I don't think it's for everyone, and I'm not sure how well this scales beyond 50-100 people, but I do think that you can be happier, healthier and wealthier living in suitable small-scale communities, sharing everyday tasks and tools. Instead of everyone owning their own everything.
See also, resin code marks which incorporate the recycling symbol, used on plastics which aren't recyclable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_identification_code#Tabl...
Uuuh, none? I've gone through 2 years and it was literally either a consumable (dog treats) or some kind of hardware tool that I still have and will last me a lifetime.
I have no idea how many things you buy, the average, or what is the general opinion about it. Everyone buys a lot of stuff, I guess? Everyone saying that everyone buys a lot of stuff?
Nevertheless GGP accusing me (and some similar comments) is annoying, probably it annoys GP too for the same reason.
Is accusing the general reader that useful? Is it even true?
Narcissism much? When the comment doesn’t apply to you, it isn’t directed at you.
Then in my city came the startups, the tech bros and sisters without tech background but marketing-fu and now you have to pay a monthly fee to lend and rent screwdrivers.
Back to getting on a first-name basis with my neighbours then.
I'm in the process of itemizing everything,
https://litemize.com/mrtedbear
And my aim is to keep the number below 200 items (excluding books) and 500 items in total, and to minimize purchase and disposal activity.
Passwords like haQ#YuaDC3&j!mm^ are rejected.
BTW: I like the idea behind https://synced.to/, I have entertained the idea of geotagged digital/virtual tag/graffiti for a while without doing anything about it.
There's a few motivations. One was me noticing how I'd somehow just accumulated stuff over time, and I've seen the longer term result of that with my parents. So I wanted to be on top of what I'm getting and why, how long I'm using it for and also how I'm disposing of it.
A second motivation is to use others' lists to make more considered decisions.
And thirdly I'm curious to figure out what might be the minimal set of things one needs to live comfortably.
And cheers, I'm working on an update to Synced which I think will be quite cool! (coming in the next couple of months).
[edit: fixed password issue]
Ha! I'm always reminding people that the original order was "Reduce > Reuse > Recycle" but it seems as if many people just never learned that or quickly forgot. They jump right to "recycle" as if it's the obvious environmental choice.
But I like your version better and will start using it. Seriously, don't get sucked in to getting your brain Dopamine hits from buying stuff. You'll save money and the environment.
PE burns much cleaner than coal, and probably paper too.
Burning plastic releases a slew of toxins into the air, including dioxins, furans, mercury and other emissions that threaten the health of people, animals and vegetation, according to multiple studies.
Unless they're somehow burning lots of chlorinated/fluorinated stuff (which is almost certainly not being used for much in the way of packaging, simply because those plastics are so much more expensive), that's just fearmongering. ...and mercury? WTF. That's where I stopped reading the article because it stopped making sense. Combustion certainly can't transmute elements, and mercury wouldn't be present unless they're burning something else...
...like coal, which does contain mercury as a significant impurity.
Incineration of plastic waste in an open field is a major source of air pollution. Most of the times, the Municipal Solid Waste containing about 12% of plastics is burnt, releasing toxic gases like Dioxins, Furans, Mercury and Polychlorinated Biphenyls into the atmosphere. Further, burning of Poly Vinyl Chloride liberates hazardous halogens and pollutes air, the impact of which is climate change. The toxic substances thus released are posing a threat to vegetation, human and animal health and environment as a whole.
So if the study is on municipal solid waste overall, being burned in a pit, it's probably not very relevant to burning plastics by themselves. Municipal waste contains all sorts of things you wouldn't want to burn, like phones, batteries, fluorescent light bulbs etc.
I believe I still identify strongly with the article and I believe that it is easy for consumers like me to forget that my purchasing actions have many consequences like children and people getting sick because of the plastic waste burning as a result of a recycling program that is largely bs.
But that doesn’t mean I am right, and I feel that it is quite important for me to realize that my sources of information are largely imperfect, often with huge biases present in them.
This thanks to Big Oil.
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...
I hate this kind of cynicism, because it's disempowering when the truth is so much more actionable. In reality, it was designed to be cheap and useful, and with the disposal costs handwaved [1] away.
Plastic can be overcome by developing equally useful and cheap materials.
[1] "handwaved" really understates the amount of effort that went into dealing with the disposal costs. You don't create national recycling programs and international standards by handwaving. But reality didn't pan out relative to the hopes.
I wonder if she actually means the resin identification code (RIC) and is confusing that with a recycling symbol. (Edit to add: as in “this is recyclable in your particular blue bin”)
Another example of a symbol is a stop sign. When you see a stop sign with a slightly different color or font than you're used to, you (correctly) think "that's a stop sign, I should slow to a stop before proceeding". You don't think "that orange octagon that says STOP isn't the exact vector image that I saw in the textbook, so it could mean anything and I will just ignore it".
It's like if I bought fat-free milk that actually had fat in it, and the company said "oh you must have been confused, Fat-Free™ is our line of products for those who feel liberated to consume as much fat as they want".
GP is also correct, in that this RIC could have been a number surrounded by (say) a circle, a square, or a pentagon -- but instead, the manufacturers of plastic deliberately chose a triangle, *because it looks very much like the official "this is recyclable" symbol* as a calculated tactic to rely on people being misled by this similarity.
If most people understood how little of their plastic is actually recyclable, they might re-examine what they buy, and how often.
Where I live, the dumpster area usually has at least one information board or sticker describing what the colors of the bins mean, and what goes into which. It shouldn't be hard to also include an explanation like "Pay attention: ♲ - this is a recycling symbol; ♳ - this is a resin identification code".
I throw all plastics into the garbage bin - this is because I don’t believe in plastic recycling.
The smoke is dense, white and spreads quickly. It has a strong smell to it and quickly seeps into adjacent homes (which are 5 storied apartment buildings, so it reaches a lot of people). It gives me a headache that lasts for at least a couple of hours.
I can't even imagine what it would be like to live in Muzaffarnagar (city from article) next to one of these plastic burning facilities if one small pile on my street had such a big impact on my family's wellbeing.
> Around Muzaffarnagar, respiratory problems such as asthma and bronchitis along with eye infections associated with air pollution and the burning of plastic are on the rise, up as much as 30% over the last few years, according to Muzaffarnagar’s chief medical officer.
Mainstream narrative over-indexes on long-term impact of global warming vs. the shorter term health impacts of pollution. This makes sense: when developed countries dictate global media narrative, they're not going to focus on the pollution aspect much because it doesn't impact them in a tangible, day-to-day basis.
But the immediate health impact is a stronger narrative: there are people who are impacted by it every day and are dying. It has a face to it. We need a lot more coverage on this front. Grateful for this article.
Many countries, desperate to make use of the gargantuan flow of waste plastic, and desperate to avoid it going into landfill, are putting the waste plastic into roads.
This is called “recycling”.
Sounds like a great idea until you realize that cars and trucks drive on the roads and grind them into dust - dust containing microplastics.
The microplastic dust will go into air, waterways, rivers, oceans, food, plants animals and people.
All this is because the environmentalists have decided that “keeping plastics out of landfill” is more important than anything.
Plastic roads are an environmental disaster in an epic scale being created in the name of “recycling”.
The worst thing is that for some reason it’s not obvious that this is a disastrous idea, and all around the world people are breathlessly talking up plastic roads like its a solution to the plastic waste problem.
“In 2015, the Indian government made it mandatory for plastic waste to be used in constructing roads near large cities of more than 500,000 people”
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210302-could-plastic-ro...
Mandated madness. The safest place for the fire hydrant of waste plastic is in landfill, not “recycled” into microplastic dust.
Would you like a plastic road outside your house, or outside your kids school?
It may be that recycling your plastic is fully useless or even harmful, but there are municipalities where plastic in the recycled waste stream does get reprocessed into new products, and as one of the sibling comments notes, burying waste in a landfill isn't the obviously better solution either. It's also fine to have ire for the people who push plastic recycling for consumers without ensuring plastic waste gets into a stream where it's responsibly reprocessed. I'm sure there are some less-than-circumspect environmentalists who are responsible for this, but there are plenty of others, including politicians and industrialists who push recycling as a way to avoid reducing plastic consumption or to use still more single-use plastic items.
Plastics into landfill is better because the toxicity/microplastics are constrained to the immediate ecosystem of the landfill, rather than being distributed everywhere.
1. Getting hit by a car
2. Health impacts of car exhaust
3. Microplastics coming off the cars themselves (https://www.wired.com/story/microplastic-san-francisco-bay/)
4. Microplastics from the road
Also, while it certainly wouldn't surprise me if plastic roads produce more microplastics than plastic landfills, I wouldn't take it as given. Landfills aren't frozen in time, stuff degrades and gets blown around by wind, and I have no idea how the process of making a road affects the plastics and their capacity to degrade.
There really aren't any. The amount of pollution from cars rounds to zero.
Industrial pollution meanwhile continues unchecked.
[1]: https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news...
[2]: https://theicct.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/true-diesel-t...
If you live on an interstate, and don't want to, the best course of action is to move.
Sometimes you don't live on an interstate, but the interstate moves next to you anyways[1].
Other times, you live in a beautiful residential neighborhood (like I do), but 18-wheelers drive through your neighborhood and idle next to the public schools because there's no enforcement and it's convenient.
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss... https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-transport
Which is to say, while landfill escape is certainly possible - when it comes to plastic, it's essentially not a problem at all compared to just the ongoing and continuous dumping of plastic into the oceans where it degrades to microplastics.
Landfills, properly managed (i.e. no liquid chemicals in them) are shaping up as the best option environmentally because they're local and while not completely frozen in time, certainly frozen enough. You dig up a landfill, you'll largely find...everything which was originally put into it.
[1] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b02368 [2] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluti...
Based on a brief inventory of scientific journals, it looks like the answer is no at best and inconclusive at worst.
I'd like no road at all, please. A street (and a bike lane) will suffice.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2264585-microplastics-f...
> Microplastics were present in all samples except one, with a count of approximately 40 microplastic particles per cubic metre of seawater on average. They found that synthetic fibres made up 92 per cent of the microplastic pollution in these samples, and 73 per cent of this is polyester.
Logistics, probably. Wooden furniture is heavy. Much heavier than furniture made from modern, plastic-infused materials. This weight increase generates additional costs at every step between the manufacturer and your living room.
(I guess traditional materials might also be less suitable for making flat-packed furniture that can be assembled by the buyer.)
Plenty of poly nets too, eg http://www.hiseamarine.com/polyester-fishing-net-5674.html
This stuff is made of oil. The last thing we want to do with oil, from an environmental standpoint, is turn it into greenhouse gases. The best way to accomplish that would be to leave it underground. Since we're not doing that, perhaps the second best thing is to convert it into a solid material and then put it back underground. It seems like landfills are our chance at keeping this stuff reasonably contained, and, in that setting, the fact that it lasts forever hopefully means that this carbon we dug up from underground won't end up in the atmosphere quite so quickly.
All other options seem to ultimately lead toward large-scale greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution and water pollution. Recycling seems to be, at best, a more scenic route to that same destination.
But why?
Waste plastic belongs in landfill.
It’s crazy to try to address the plastic waste problem by keeping it in the environment, as though “it’s useful so it’s OK” makes sense.
Just dispose of it safely.
I think it probably comes from the same place as organic food and suchlike: a conflation of "more natural" with "better for the environment." They're not necessarily the same thing, and we're finding increasingly many situations where doing things in a "more natural" way is actually pretty terrible for the earth's ecosystems when seven billion humans are trying to do it at a planetary scale.
Because plastic producing companies have spent the last 40 years and a lot of money telling us that plastics are good "because they can be recycled" while not recycling and not addressing the very real problems caused by plastics because profit.
https://www.dailyimpact.net/2020/11/24/the-second-biggest-sc...
I gotta wonder, how many people did the reporters have to contact before finding the perfect subject to put a human angle on this part of the story. Kudos to them for doing the legwork
Amazon doesn't test a lot of their returns and they get sent out like that.
Bargain Hunt's business model is entirely reselling amazon returns.
As well as reducing plastic usage in low value applications. It is sad, all the plastic litter in the world.
An waste industry buddy of mine designs landfills, and this is his take too. It's better to throw your plastic into regular trash (and other recyclables into the recycle bin), because then you at least know it's likely to end up in a landfill where it's safe, instead of being exported and dumped in the sea.
The ones that don't can be GHG emitters, but that just means there are less emissions somewhere else (where trash was collected from), because you just concentrated a bunch of matter in one place. It's not a significant net emitter.
I think it's more likely that regulated and aggregated pollution management will be at least somewhat successful. These plants will buy up vast sums of waste that would otherwise often get into the environment and oceans. Honestly with good air scrubbing it could replace many of our coal plants with better air quality outcomes.
Even pro nuclear folks will recognize that it has drawbacks and needs to be managed carefully. They believe that those drawbacks are less than that of fossil fuels and that nuclear can be ramped up faster than renewables.
Ultimately environmental impact is mostly about CO2 release these days. We're not running out of most of these raw materials. And for the one big one we are (oil) having it end up buried in a landfill is about the best realistic option we have today.
https://ikhapp.org/stories-and-research-brief/defining-the-r...
So yeah if you want to collect all your metal scrap for a year and bring it to the local yard then yeah that's a net positive. But skipping a single plane trip is probably worth an entire lifetime of recycling.
> Recycling scrap aluminium requires only 5% of the energy used to make new aluminium from the raw ore.[4] For this reason, approximately 36% of all aluminium produced in the United States comes from old recycled scrap.[5] Used beverage containers are the largest component of processed aluminum scrap, and most of it is manufactured back into aluminium cans.[6]
This seems to line up with the fact that you can actually get paid for aluminum cans, the metal used aluminum cans are made of has enough value that it actually makes economic sense to pay people to recycle them.
>This seems to line up with the fact that you can actually get paid for aluminum cans, the metal used aluminum cans are made of has enough value that it actually makes economic sense to pay people to recycle them.
It's not economically viable to send trucks to pick up people's recycling like most cities do. As an example, my city charged $120 per residence to do that.
You've got to account for everything that goes into the typical single stream recycling we do. The emissions of the trucks, the sorting plants, and the cost to pay people to do this. I've not see an analysis that tracks the carbon emissions of all these to see if it outweighs what we get from recycling. But looking at the dollar flow it seems basically impossible that it's a net positive. You just can't charge $120 a year to haul away $30 of scrap (or less) and end up with a carbon savings.
The issue is the small scale household recycling that does require subsidies and is a strain on local government budgets. You are basically cutting needed services to the community such as funds for libraries, parks, police, and schools in order to subsidize good feels for upper middle class households, which is a regressive and wasteful policy.
This is really a technological issue -- in 15 years, it might make sense to recycle something else, but then a market will develop and cities wont have to pay to do it, as it will pay for itself. But regardless of future breakthroughs, it's unlikely that we will ever be able to recycle a substantial proportion of household waste.
What we should be doing is shifting away from plastics and towards using materials that are biodegradable.
There are a lot of actors pushing for municipalities to collect plastic separately (like paper and glass), but stories like these make you wonder if that even makes sense at this point.
1: https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2020/10/16/plastic-afval-hoe-een-n...
Not that we shouldn’t identify these things. But the issue is often not quite related to the country, but a larger issue.
As others have pointed out, for whatever reason, plastic is difficult to recycle and through deception, we’ve been sold the idea that it can be recycled.
The most promising stuff I’ve seen is waste to energy (basically, burn the stuff). As long as we can effectively capture the emitted toxins from burning the plastic, then it seems like a pretty good system. And some countries have already been doing this.
For example: what would it cost Amazon if they were charged a recycling fee for all single-use packaging by the state California?
The bigger question is what would it cost the planet. For Amazon to collect and recycle the packages, rather than the local municipality, would enormously increase the amount of emissions created.
You would be making things much much much worse.
It doesn't actually cost them much per item, but in aggregate they'll foist the cost onto consumers where they are allowed.
If you are suggesting shipping the stuff back to Amazon, you should think about that a bit more - the amount of energy you'll use to ship it is an order of magnitude more than the amount you'll save.
You would be harming the planet in order to make it seem like you did a good thing.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaschenpfand [2] https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wooden_Matchbox_E_...
> unmasked waste pickers sifted for metal cans or intact plastic bottles that could be sold
The plastic they burn is envelopes made of soft plastic that have been incorrectly sorted by the recycling process and bundled with paper that they do actually want.
I've observed a number of people who haven't seemed to internalize the current rules about what can be recycled. People especially want to think that thin plastic bags can go in the recycling with everything else. I don't think people are going to move away from single-stream recycling, which appears to be a big part of the problem.
I'm virtually certain that's not even close to true. I remember reading a study that pretended like that was the number, but looking closer the "study" was basically "let's make up numbers, and extrapolate them", and they didn't collect any actual data.
"Want to save the oceans? Stop recycling plastic
"If you put your plastic in your recycling bin, there’s a decent chance it will end up in the seas off east Asia. If you put it in landfill, it’s going nowhere"
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/landfill-better-recycled-plastic...
This is a false connection. Countries pay money for recycling, they are not going to turn around and dump that valuable material in the ocean.
Contrary to what many people think, recycling producers do NOT pay poor countries to accept plastic, it's the other way around.
It's estimated that incinerating the entire annual waste for one person in Vienna produces the same carbon emissions as driving a car 100 km. [0]
I would prefer a system were each country cleans up their own mess but robots are more expensive than people.
A plastic tree in Brazil that came all the way from China! It's surreal.
This is not to say that we shouldn't stop wasting, but let's not exaggerate. That being said the Earth definitely will become less comfortable if we don't put a pin on some of this stuff.
Obligatory reminder: unless you're Sentinelese, it's highly unlikely you or your community is actually self-sufficient. For most people, everything they eat, everything they wear, everything they live in and live with, is a product of, or is directly dependent on, international manufacturing and shipping. If that goes, billions of people starve.
There have been a few other outlets that have focused on this problem in the past. John Oliver did a segment too.
Are there any startups working in this space? Incineration is quite bad if the fumes aren't contained - is there research happening in controlling/eliminating toxins even if incineration is done?
This has been the reality since (just after) the onset of the recycle narrative took off. Noise is made, action never taken. The news outlets that show the horrific fatal diseases that children (with no other income) acquire through the scavenging has been a slow news day story for decades. See youtube - children, scavenge, dump. Anyone who sees the horrific waste of child-serving-sized coke plastic bottles, held together by more plastic, for 8$ at Target^ should be disgusted by the unavoidable sins of the US capitalist culture.
^You can get glass bottles held together by cardboard for slightly less, not that I'm advocating this purchase either.
Article has nothing to do with Amazon it's about recycling.
And they're not burning packages they are burning a small amount of plastic contamination mixed into paper recycling.
> India may be bringing in as much as 500,000 tons of plastic waste hidden within paper shipments annually, according to a government environmental body that estimated the level of contamination at 5%.
The plastic is being burned for energy, which is the best way to handle plastic.
The only real issue this article raised is the poor quality incinerators, that don't do a good enough job of burning the plastic. I call this article click bait because they spend way way too long on utterly irrelevant stuff, and the only important part is 2 sentences.