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Comment by throw1231312 | Hacker News Reader

> Heinz has taken a major step forward for sustainable packaging with the introduction of ....

> The new cap's uniform composition of polypropylene (PP) simplifies recycling and ...

> Currently only about 3% of PP products are being recycled in the United States.

Until someone develops some sort of multi-spectral imaging that can reliably sort plastic based on it's composition there's little hope of recycling plastic. And then you still need different enzymes that can break down different compositions.

It's sad, but realistically almost all plastic one disposes of needs to go in the trash can rather than recycling.

You can't even rely on dedicated collection - https://abcnews.go.com/US/put-dozens-trackers-plastic-bags-r...

I wonder how much plastic you'd need to pile up to start pressing out oil again at the bottom of the pile?

You mean ... by gravity? :-D

Conventional multispectral and hyperspectral can't keep up (and integrate well) into existing sorting lines. They induce a slow-down in conveyer belt speeds or you have to install splitters and buy multiple $100K cameras.

(we're working to solve this problem though in the classic VC backed way - DM for more information!)

Ah, another factorio fan I see.

Got me there...

How does Germany recycle 60% of its plastic waste?

There is obviously hope, just not enough incentive because it costs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container-deposit_legislation

I can't even begin to imagine the discourse (and "experts" brought on-air at Fox News) that would take place if such legislation was proposed in the US.

A few states in the US as per your link, do have this system

Differences:

* Single-use plastic bottle have a 25 cent deposit in Germany. This is 5x the 5cents in California.

* Germany has enacted this legislation federally.

* The legislation also requires that any retailer that sells plastic bottles (and glass bottles) must also facilitate the return of these bottles.

I lived in California for a couple of years. I never saw a recycling machine at any Safeway, Walgreens or even Whole Foods while I was there. The closest thing to a "recycling machine" is the army of homeless people pushing trollies filled with bottles to take to a recycling center. I don't think that really counts.

Michigan does have the sorting machines at supermarkets, just like in Germany. Michigan also has a 10¢ deposit.

We do. As Fox News likes to point out, it's hard to find a place that'll actually let you recycle for the full refund.

In Europe the store that sold the deposit bottles has to also accept them back.

That used to be true here, but they added so many exceptions that the law isn't really enforced

In Michigan, I never ran into difficulty outside of needing to take it to a store that sells it (Trader Joe's is the biggest pain). Supposedly there were a lot of places putting arbitrary hours on when they accept them now, but I've never heard anyone not get the "full refund" unless a machine malfunctions.

Step one: virtually eliminate uneccesary plastic so there's far less waste and ideally most is of the type that can be recycled.

I've not been in Germany for a long while, but I was impressed when last there by a near complete absence of excess packaging, nails in big boxes sold by weight rather than pre sorted into tiny plastic packets, etc.

No idea if they kept that up.

Addendum: Apparently so, and they have 5 types of household bins for seperating waste: https://greenendeavour.com.au/is-germanys-waste-management-s...

Yea, that's basic culture here. The bins are also sized according, and using the recycle bins is cheaper. There is still unsorted/compound waste, but plastics + metals go into the yellow/recycle bin automatically. Same for paper. Municipal waste centers are basically recycling sorters, where you have to declare waste type. You can offload recyclables for free and other waste costs you an arm and a leg, so there most certainly is incentive to follow.

Not that I'd take the recycling percentage at face value, there are certainly challenges. But the overall system is fairly solid.

Culture and regulation, and.. enforcement. In the Netherlands we have separate garbabe bins for various waste streams for many years. Culturally accepted by now. But there's not much enforcement of people who make a mess in these bins. In Switzerland when hiring a vacation appartment I noticed how people are frantically trying to separate correctly, and you receive strict instructions to do so too. There's enforcement and fines if you are too lax.

German waste processing is however known for simply dumping things in Eastern Europe. In terms of actual processing I think only the Netherlands breaches 50%. I don't like the 9 trash streams though.

Do you have a source for that? I'd be interested to read more, because there are similar statistics that only count the percentage collected, not the percentage actually recycled. e.g. there's quite a bit of "mixed" recycling in the UK, which firms count as "being recycled", but when they get to the recycling plant if there's "too much" contamination (e.g. food, non-recyclable plastic etc.) then it's sent to the incinerator.

https://www.sustainableplastics.com/news/germanys-plastic-re...

https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/indicators/waste-recyc...

I am unaware of the percentage of rejected contaminated plastics you mentioned, but Germans being Germans I assume it is not scandalous

Thanks, will take a look.

The number is greenwashing because it's including "thermal Recycling" aka burning.

https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/daten/ressourcen-abfall/verwe...

How is that even allowed to be called recycling? As in, is it genuinely a term defined legally and, if so, who allowed this to happen? Because burning is most certainly not recycling.

Recycled as fuel. Its not that bad energy-wise. We have power plants running off that stuff.

Some people consider it a better use of oil than burning it directly.

Goverment can make it's own rules I guess...

Copenhagen recycles 70% of collected plastic, with the rest incinerated (used for heating homes, I think).

Almost all plastic packaging is collected, including wrappers and trays.

https://affald.kk.dk/affaldsfraktion/saadan-sorterer-du-plas... (in Danish)

The last time I saw such numbers for impractical-to-recycle stuff like thins and foamed plastics, it ended up that the companies were just lying

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-30/redcycle-soft-plastic...

It's just not possible in any way to recycle 70%! Politician number fudging like this completely destroys the reputation of these initiatives.

I'm still not convinced after looking at the actual numbers, that "recycling", putting stuff into 6 different bins etc, makes any difference at all in the grand scheme og things. Instead it's a big show hiding the fact that the problem is with over-consumption and non degradable materials being legal in the first place. Bottle and glass recycling for money seems to be semi working though but then we'll need QR codes on each item, better but still not eliminating the transport and seperation issues, and the fact that a lot of recycling is actually dumping stuff on poor people far away, and that industry is polluting way more than end consumers.

As some people have pointed out it's actually the opposite, a smokescreen invented by the industry in the 90's to shift responsibility to the consumer so you do "some magic complex performance" at home and think now it's ok while everything just continues as is defacto, ie. worse than doing nothing. Instead we should ban or tax non degradable materials, and stick to the few working areas while regulating industry and materials even though it'l be rough until we're forced to create better materials.

I have 3 bins (rubbish; garden waste; paper/soft plastic/glass), and take thin plastic and tetrapaks to the supermarket to be recycled.

Takes me months to fill the rubbish bin

https://cphsolutionslab.dk/media/pages/cc/about/behandling-o...

The fourth page "PLAST" (plastic) has a pie chart showing the composition of collected plastic waste. The red 23% is "residue for incineration".

The other text includes "The Municipality of Copenhagen has demanded that at least 75% must set aside for recycling and a maximum of 25% as residual fraction for incineration."

Does "recyling" include paying Chinese "recyclers" to take it? Because if so then I don't think it's actually being recycled.

What, pray tell, are they doing with this low-grade recycled plastic? Putting park benches out into the environment that will degrade faster, distributing microplastics everywhere?

Or are they investing a ton of time and energy to recycle the plastic into higher use (than park benches), which likely has significant input energy costs, which in turn is probably harming the environment?

You can't get anything for free, and recycling plastics least of all. The most environmentally friendly solution I'm aware of today is to simply relocate it all into one contained location and incinerating it as cleanly as possible or burying it in a landfill with protective sheeting. We're not even close to running out of landfill acreage on this planet.

All your snarky points are answered in the linked site.

Hardly? It says the plastic is shuffled off to other recyclers in the EEA, but gives no indication how much of the material those recyclers actually recycle. Maybe it doesn't end up in a Chinese landfill, but substitute "China" with "Latvia" or "Estonia" and the point still stands. Show me the miraculous Estonian recycling industry where 90% of consumer plastics comes from recycled material and I'll take my words back.

What are they actually doing with the recycled plastic? Making it into pellets and flakes. They call out that you could use these to make shampoo bottles, but dare not actually claim that such a thing is happening. My understanding of recycled plastic is that it is inherently lower grade than new plastic. If recycled plastic is that much cheaper but still as useable, then surely manufacturers are jumping at the bit to use it everywhere?

Finally, there is no mention of the energy cost or environmental impact of the recycling.

I would argue burning it (and maybe capture the generated CO2) is the only recycling making any sense with the plastic garbage we have. And then stop using it for everything and start classifying/labeling the plastics where we neee them, so they can be sorted automatically later so then you can recycle them.

Here in germany some sort of plastic recycling actually works, because there is a deposit fee on all plastic bottles - you bring them back to the supermarket to get it back - and then there is one source of the same plastic, that does get used for new products.

>Until someone develops some sort of multi-spectral imaging that can reliably sort plastic based on it's composition

Funny you phrase it like that, because that's exactly what the STEINERT UniSort does. Plastic waste is finely shredded, dumped onto a conveyor belt, imaged, then passed over air puff sorters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3QHa9oQshw

Is it worth it? Of course not. Far cheaper and easier just to burn it. But for EU nations that are really dedicated to recycling, it can be done.

A lots of recycled plastic (I mean what people put in the plastic recycling bin) in the EU ends up being burned. They are sorted, cleaned up, then packaged into burnable units, because it’s the most cost effective way to reuse it

I see 42% “energy recovery” from https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20181212STO... from 2018.

I found this from January 2024: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/theme-new-b...

> In Europe, about 40 % of post-consumer plastic waste is incinerated with energy recovery, and the rest is either landfilled or recycled. About half of the plastic waste collected and recycled is treated in the European Union; the other half is exported, mainly to China.

I fully expect that what's really happening here is that it's slightly cheaper to manufacture the caps as a single mold, rather than needing to combine two parts.

The recycling also doesn't achieve anything environmentally

The recycling reduces the amount of oil that goes into new plastic, which eventually will be incinerated and contribute to the climate crisis.

the demand for non-virgin plastic is practically zero, while the cost is higher

there are no economic incentives to use recycled plastic, and regulation mandating its use is minimal to non-existing. so most plastic that could be recycled isn't, and not because it isn't available/collected/sorted.

It seems though like many of the throwaway plastic containers I can find here like shampoo, water bottles, containers for sauces - NOT the Heinz ketchup bottle in my fridge though (which does say the body is recyclable but the cap is not) mention some percent of recycled plastic contents, from 90% to 20% in the items around me.

So maybe it's more expensive but there seems to be some kind of incentive for these companies, even if it's just marketing.

Food containers are tricky. Huel ready-to-drink seems to be 49%, because they need the inner coating to be virgin plastic.

Yes, processes that are bad for the environment is cheaper. I find that a failing of the capitalist system, not the recycling process. If externalities were properly priced, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

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