Texan used Apple AirTags to discover plastics in Houston aren't being recycled

Multiuse plastic releases much more phthalates and is very expensive. It’s both a pipe dream and a bad idea. The only solution is landfill.

Or… we can trust Exxon (ffs) to build a recycling plant of the future that somehow is green also.

> I get extremely irritated when folks fail to understand that demand is for energy, our energy distribution is interconnected via a grid, and those points make energy a fungible commodity.

And I get irritated when people don't understand basic economic concepts like supply and demand. Texas is overwhelmingly building renewables to meet demand. The more demand there is for energy the more renewables get built, further driving down costs. It's a virtuous cycle.

> Better than powering recycling plants, though, is to stop producing and consuming single-use plastics. A great way to do this is to stop subsidizing recycling programs and bake the energy cost into the product that must eventually be recycled.

Sure, then write a well researched article about it and back it up with facts then post it here. The low effort cynicism farming in TFA isn't helping. In fact it does the opposite because it makes people feel helpless, which only benefits incumbents.

The real danger with plastic is that it'll go to some under regulated recycler which picks out the 30% of plastic that it can recycle and then dumps the rest in the nearest river. If I put it in the trash in a modern country I can be sure it'll at least end up in a land fill or the equivalent. And in contrast to the incredibly wonderful glass and aluminium recycling systems plastic recycling doesn't really save that much production energy.

My local grocery store sells paper bags that are the exact right size to line the city provided recycling bin.

You may as well just throw everything in the trash then. You should be cleaning your recyclables. If the bin is "dirty" then you are doing it wrong.

Our recycling company can't even just name the numbers that are recyclable. They give us a list of examples and name some items, but it's nowhere near comprehensive even for some things commonly used. For example, reusable plastic food storage containers (tupperware-like items) are not listed. To-go containers are prohibited, but these are heavier, more durable plastic.

If something seems recyclable, I'll throw it in on the chance that the sorters will accept it, rather than guaranteeing it goes to the landfill by putting it in the trash bin.

Some countries do recycling of aluminium well, Japan for example, most don’t. Issues with contamination, sorting, pipeline, storage, just to name a few make it hard to implement well.

Always was, I think?

At least for domestic uses, I know nothing about fancy alloys.

Even when I was a kid, people were big on separating steel and aluminium cans and showing off how recyclable aluminium is.

Thanks for these stats, it changes how I think about aluminum packaging/cans.

And energy savings might be the secondary benefit -- the primary benefit IMO is not having to dig the ore from the ground.

And this is why we really could use government intervention - to create standardized markets for recyclable products.

Basically - the CME for recycleable material, leading the way to gradations and cleanliness standards.

Right now this is an industry that could benefit from creating more scalable markets within the food chain.

> ”They're basically stockpiling until the plant is operational.”

Sounds like a variant on the classic tire recycling scam:

1. Lowest bidder wins contract to recycle tires, by offering to do it cheaper than anyone else.

2. Starts storing tires somewhere while they “get up and running”.

3. Discovers it’s cheaper to just keep storing the tires than to actually process them, besides they bid too low to make it viable anyway.

4. Years go by and eventually an enormous tire mountain is discovered (or maybe it catches fire), resulting in big cleanup costs usually paid by taxpayers…

Taking a look at their website, 2 things jump out to me:

> A lean operation, leveraging Africa's strength in labour costs

Which is of course a euphemism for "leveraging the low wages of African laborers". And:

> We purchase today from out of work fisherman

So it seems that this operation can exist because their costs are extremely low due to a poor local economy and a surplus of cheap labor. This does not translate to success in an industrialized first-world country.

Not op nor do I disagree but if recycling plastic involves lots of energy and toxic chemicals, one should compare both of these two evils.

I do disagree. I don’t believe a food giant such as Evian to tell the truth. I don’t believe McDonalds or Starbucks either. It’s only told for advertising purpose, at least since the 80s if not more.

I might agree if it was actually zero sum, but as far as I know we still make new plastic from oil pumped out of the ground. Demand for recycled plastic is simply indirect demand for new plastic.

Even if all plastic was recycled, there is still the issue of microplastics polluting our water and food supply.

If a consumer is conscientious enough to recycle something, the counterfactual is that they put it in the trash rather than that they throw it into the nearest river. In a landfill, a plastic bottle will lock up its constituent carbon for hundreds of years. In that long we should either have learned to manage the amount of carbon in our biosphere. To the extent that the amount of carbon we pump out of the ground is inelastic, better it get locked up in landfills than that it get burned. Now actually it is fairly elastic but given how much worse carbon burned is than carbon stored for hundreds of years I think disposal is probably better for the climate than recycling.

That depends on the definition of "100% percent recycled plastic". What most people understandably think this means is "Made 100% from plastic that was used in some product and then thrown into a recycling bin". What the FTC defines as "recycled", for the purposes of advertising that your product is made of recycled content, can be found in section 260.13 of the FTC's "Green Guides": https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/press-re...

"Recycled content" is defined as:

> materials that have been recovered or otherwise diverted from the waste stream, either during the manufacturing process (pre-consumer), or after consumer use (post-consumer)

And they do not have to inform consumers of this distinction:

> Recycled content claims may – but do not have to – distinguish between pre-consumer and post-consumer materials.

> Recycled content includes recycled raw material, as well as used, reconditioned, and re-manufactured components ... The term “used” refers to parts that are not new and that have not undergone any re-manufacturing or reconditioning.

Well, taking what was previously waste in the plastic manufacturing process and turning it into more plastic is better(?) than nothing. But I think most people would think of this more as "making plastic manufacturing more efficient" than "recycling plastic". It makes plastic manufacturing margins more profitable, as now what was waste has value. It means that "100% recycled plastic" still relies heavily on the production of virgin plastic.

If people who would have not bought plastic bottled water DO buy it because it is "100% recycled", then the satisfaction of that additional demand requires the production of virgin plastic. Even if the number of people buying Evian bottles doesn't change, Evian is still buying the results of plastic production from plastic factories, which is likely to increase the amount of plastic in the world.

Again, it's better than nothing. But it certainly isn't a silver bullet, and many would argue that it is still not sustainable.