Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Earth China

'Vast Quantities' of Recycled Plastics Are Actually Burned Or Dumped In Landfills (theguardian.com) 172

"A Guardian investigation reveals that cities around the country are no longer recycling many types of plastic dropped into recycling bins. Instead, they are being landfilled, burned or stockpiled..."

An anonymous reader shared this eye-opening report from the Guardian. "From Los Angeles to Florida to the Arizona desert, officials say, vast quantities of plastic are now no better than garbage..." As municipalities are forced to deal with their own trash instead of exporting it, they are discovering a dismaying fact: much of this plastic is completely unrecyclable. The issue is with a popular class of plastics that people have traditionally been told to put into their recycling bins -- a hodgepodge of items such as clamshell-style food packaging, black plastic trays, take-out containers and cold drink cups, which the industry dubs "mixed plastic". It has become clear that there are virtually no domestic manufacturers that want to buy this waste in order to turn it into something else.

Take Los Angeles county, the most populous in America. The Guardian has learned that recycling facilities are separating "mixed plastics" from those plastics which still retain value -- such as water bottles, laundry detergent bottles and milk jugs -- and, contrary to what customers expect, sending them directly to a landfill or incinerator. Los Angeles county public works estimates that in 2018, the county sent more than half a million tons of plastic to four different landfills, and nearly 20,000 tons of plastic to its waste-to-energy incinerator. And it appears that many other recyclers are doing exactly the same thing...

"Most people have no idea that most plastic doesn't get recycled," said John Hocevar, the Oceans Campaign Director for Greenpeace USA, referencing a study which found that just 9% of all plastic ever produced has been recycled. "Even though they are buying something that they only use for a few seconds before putting it in the recycling bin, they think it's OK because they believe it is being recycled."

The Guardian concludes that Americans "continue to throw away millions of tons of plastic each year, even as they run out of ways to dispose of it." But there's also an interesting observation from Coby Skye, the assistant deputy director of environmental programs at Los Angeles county public works: that it's never been possible to recycle some plastics that Americans were putting into their recycling bins.

"[China] would just pull out the items that were actually recyclable and burn or throw away the rest. China has subsidized the recycling industry for many years in a way that distorted our views."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

'Vast Quantities' of Recycled Plastics Are Actually Burned Or Dumped In Landfills

Comments Filter:
  • by BrendaEM ( 871664 ) on Saturday June 22, 2019 @12:40PM (#58804996) Homepage
    Not only does excessive packaging was plastic and fill landfills, it also affects transportation. You don't need to put a small flash memory card in package that's bigger than a mousepad. You don't need to put metal foil on a toothpaste box. You don't need to put a power supply or a bottle of booze in a velvet bag. And do you know what? We don't need to buy things that have excessive packaging. You vote for plastic waste with your money.
    • by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Saturday June 22, 2019 @01:05PM (#58805118) Homepage
      Anything that is approved for single stream recycling gets to put a giant green recycling stripe around it's product package.

      No stripe, no recycle. Take all the confusion away.

      Let the products that don't have a stripe be shamed by just sitting there on the shelf.
      • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Saturday June 22, 2019 @01:41PM (#58805238)

        The main point of recycling is to make people who drive 4 ton SUVs feel like they are "doing their part" to deal with environmental problems.

        Recycling aluminum makes sense. Recycling cardboard is also cost effective, but far less so. Recycling other paper, and plastics, has very little benefit. It is done mostly to make people feel good. Glass recycling is a net loss. Glass is inert and harmless in a landfill, and new glass can be made with fewer resources from sand.

        We would be doing far better if we put half the effort into reduction that we put into recycling.

        I recycle cardboard. I don't recycle aluminum because I don't buy anything that comes in aluminum cans. I recycle plastic, but I don't delude myself into believing it makes much difference. I throw glass in the trash.

        • by Strider- ( 39683 ) on Saturday June 22, 2019 @03:54PM (#58805790)

          On the other hand, Glass is significantly reusable. Require beer, wine, and pop to be sold in refillable containers. In British Columbia, most bottled beer is sold in the Industry Standard Bottle. You pay a $0.10/bottle deposit. On average, each bottle makes it through the system 15 times.

          • Require beer, wine, and pop to be sold in refillable containers.

            Or, even better, educate people enough so that they realize "glass pollution" is a non-existent problem and we should be focusing our money, time, and political capital on things that actually matter.

        • by Dustie ( 1253268 )

          and new glass can be made with fewer resources from sand

          Mining sand is not such a good thing as you seem to think. Recycling glass is better. https://www.theguardian.com/ci... [theguardian.com]

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • I used to return glass bottles for the small deposit on them. Then I just realized that because of their weight, fragility, and so on the messing with them wasn't worth the trouble. I put them out on the street for collection by the city now.

              One morning I was woken up by the sound of a truck running and the sound of glass being jostled. At first l thought it was just the city collection trucks coming early that day. But the sound continued longer than the usual time it took to lift the bucket and dump i

          • The "Mining sand" problem in the article refers to concrete-sand. This is completely different from, as well as scarcer than, glass sand.

        • From an ecological and energy cost perspective recycling glass makes complete sense. Financially it's a loss because said raw materials are currently quite cheap. That and we stopped just steam cleaning and filling them back up again.
        • You can mine sand, make a bottle, clean it, and fill it cheaper than just taking a bottle cleaning it and filling it?

          And before you say the glass gets damaged let me ask you what kind of crappy glass recycling system so you have where you don't return bottles perfectly intact?

      • by Anonymous Coward

        The main problem there is that there aren't universal standards across the US about what is and isn't recyclable. Such a product marking would receive a huge fight from the manufacturing industry because they wouldn't be able to mark it in a way that would apply across all those municipalities.

        I wish we would go back to the system where you looked to see what number was on the plastic and then recycled it or not based upon the number. That at least gave some assurance that we were properly sorting things. A

      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Anything that is approved for single stream recycling gets to put a giant green recycling stripe around it's product package.

        The problem is, there is nothing that is approved for recycling universally. It varies by state, or even county, or even city. Some places can take all plastics 1 through 7, others can take a subset. Some can take mixed paper, others cannot, It's really a big mess.

        But it can be better. First off, there are some things that are universally non-recyclable - mylar, or metal coated plast

    • by w0mprat ( 1317953 ) on Saturday June 22, 2019 @02:22PM (#58805382)

      Not only does excessive packaging was plastic and fill landfills, it also affects transportation. You don't need to put a small flash memory card in package that's bigger than a mousepad. You don't need to put metal foil on a toothpaste box. You don't need to put a power supply or a bottle of booze in a velvet bag. And do you know what? We don't need to buy things that have excessive packaging. You vote for plastic waste with your money.

      We need something a simple as restricting the amount of packaging based on a formula. Ever noticed how that box of cereal is only half full by volume, and is also far from the optimal shape to save material. It's designed to look as big and eye catching as possible on a shelf because.... every other box of cereal is like that. A simple regulation about packaging surface area vs volume and shelf front presentation maximum size and suddenly you have wiped out about half the packaging in a supermarket.

      • Ever noticed how that box of cereal is only half full by volume, and is also far from the optimal shape to save material.

        So we can look forward to spherical cereal boxes rolling around the breakfast table and replacing our pantry shelves with basketball cages?

    • Not only does excessive packaging was plastic and fill landfills, it also affects transportation. You don't need to put a small flash memory card in package that's bigger than a mousepad. You don't need to put metal foil on a toothpaste box. You don't need to put a power supply or a bottle of booze in a velvet bag. And do you know what? We don't need to buy things that have excessive packaging. You vote for plastic waste with your money.

      What would all the YouTube unboxers do without excessive packaging?

    • Not only does excessive packaging was plastic and fill landfills, it also affects transportation. You don't need to put a small flash memory card in package that's bigger than a mousepad. You don't need to put metal foil on a toothpaste box. You don't need to put a power supply or a bottle of booze in a velvet bag. And do you know what? We don't need to buy things that have excessive packaging. You vote for plastic waste with your money.

      See, that sounds really good in theory. I've been voting in favor of

    • What's a mousepad? Some kind of vermin control device?

    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      You don't need to put a small flash memory card in package that's bigger than a mousepad.

      That only works for online stores - standard retailers prefer the large box because it curtails shoplifting. A small box is easily pocketable, something as large as a half a sheet of letter-sized paper isn't, And those plastic Alpha cases (the hard plastic boxes that they sometimes use on small items) get nasty and opaque quickly making it hard to see the product inside.

      And smaller packages aren't a panacea because onli

    • We don't need to buy things that have excessive packaging. You vote for plastic waste with your money.

      I'm sorry to rain on your parade but the last 20 years of watching "the market", I've been apalled at the idea that human beings have any free will or responsibility at all. I'll use the example of the videogame industry.

      In the late 90's and early 2000's the videogame industry was plotting to remove game ownership from customers PC's via using mmo's as an in to take control of the software out of customers hands. People fell for it of course buying everquest, Wow and guild wars, that lead to the rise of s

  • the only correct answer is to consume less... generate less waste
  • by Dallas May ( 4891515 ) on Saturday June 22, 2019 @12:45PM (#58805030)

    I wish companies would switch to using aluminum in packaging. It's cheap, light, durable, shapeable, contains no toxic leaching chemicals, and is virtually infinitely recyclable. It's a great packaging material.

    • aluminum is attacked by acidic foods and there are open questions about the toxicity

      • Re:Use aluminum (Score:5, Informative)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Saturday June 22, 2019 @01:56PM (#58805290)

        aluminum is attacked by acidic foods and there are open questions about the toxicity

        Also, aluminum is recycled at a rate of barely over 50%. So half of it goes to landfills on each cycle ... and that is mostly cans. If aluminum was used more in pouches and packets, the recycling rate would fall even lower.

        Expanding the use of aluminum in packaging would be wasteful and foolish.

        Aluminum can recycling falls significantly [resource-recycling.com]

        • Given the current crisis in plastics, it might be possible to convince people to be better about aluminum recycling. But honestly, it would still be better to send aluminum to the landfill than plastic. We do not have to worry about the same level of environmental pollution from aluminum. And at least aluminum is in principle recyclable, which apparently many plastics are not.

          • it might be possible to convince people to be better about aluminum recycling.

            Good luck with that.

            Recycling rates, at least in the 1st world, are going DOWN, not up.

            Walk around your office and look in the recycling bin. Then look in the trash bins. See if you notice any difference in the contents. If your coworkers are typical, about half will try to recycle, and the other half will use the two types of bins interchangeably, contaminating the recyclable materials with trash and obviating the efforts of the first half.

            Any "solution" that requires anonymous cooperation from millions

            • The rate of sorting in the office here is pretty good. Most of the contamination that I see is of people unsure of whether something is recyclable or not. Like, disposable coffee cups in the recycling. But that's understandable; nearly everyone I talk to is surprised to find out that they're NOT recyclable. But at the very least cans go into the right bin. It's marked 'cans and bottles', which is nice and clear. I can't remember the last time I saw a can or bottle NOT in that bin, or something that wasn't a

        • Any aluminum sent to a landfill could be reclaimed at anytime in the future.

          • Any aluminum sent to a landfill could be reclaimed at anytime in the future.

            You could say the same about plastic.

            The big difference, is that plastic requires far less energy to produce.

            So we are wasting fewer resources, and producing fewer emissions now.

    • Re:Use aluminum (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DesScorp ( 410532 ) on Saturday June 22, 2019 @01:39PM (#58805226) Journal

      I'm betraying my age here, but we still had a Milkman when I was a boy. Leaving bottles out in the evening so the Milkman could come early in the morning and take the old bottles, leaving fresh milk on you step was part of my daily routine. Also, soda was still in glass bottles, and the price of the bottle was baked into the cost of the soda. The incentive to return the bottles was that you got a nickle per bottle at any store that sold soda (and in the days when comic books were 35 cents, this was no small incentive for a boy to scour the streets for bottles to exchange for the latest issue of of your favorite title).

      I realize costs would be greater, and there's always going to be that guy that doesn't give a rip and smashes his bottle on the pavement for funsies... but in my advancing years, I've began to miss that way of doing things. Like everyone else, I love the convenience of "disposable", but I also realize that disposable comes with costs of its own. I'm not a greenie by any means, but the older I get, the more I dislike waste and piles of plastic. I've switched to a safety razor, and am using metal and glass objects more and more. I think I prefer the slightly higher costs in the short run to the costs of the piles of plastic in the long run.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Aluminium manufacturing and recycling is however overly energy intensive. It does however make sense to go this route of you can ween yourselves off coal.

  • It is no secret that most recycle programs are failures or failing to live up anywhere close to what their objectives are. Our regulatory landscape and big business sees very little gain in recycling because well... the regulations required to do it make doing it hard, not to mention the lack of funding for research on how to recycle things. It's a serious problem very few folks actually care about.

    Most people don't care, they just say they do and they all get to feeling better when they think government

    • The answer is actually much simpler than you seem to think. Just quit allowing corporations to make obscene profits while leaving the cost of cleaning up the mess they make to taxpayers. It's not that the regulations are hard...it's that the regulations are a fucking joke.

      • by AxeTheMax ( 1163705 ) on Saturday June 22, 2019 @01:26PM (#58805186)
        There needs be some way of making every producer and supplier of anything physical take responsibility for its entire lifecycle. I know, easier to say than to do, but first at least acknowledge and consider the problem.
        • There needs be some way of making every producer and supplier of anything physical take responsibility for its entire lifecycle. I know, easier to say than to do, but first at least acknowledge and consider the problem.

          Okay, considered.

          So, do YOU want to be held legally liable for something you had control of three months ago, but haven't seen since?

          If not, why?

          Because that's what you're doing by making "every producer and supplier of anything physical take responsibility for its entire lifecycle". Such

          • If I produced cyanide say and sold it to you, then I certainly would have a responsibility for making sure that you were not the sort of person that would dump it into a reservoir. I'm sure the laws already exist for this, because the connection between my producing this dangerous product and the harm it could do if provided to someone who could dump it in the wrong place is clear and obvious.

            There are many more situations where the connection is not so easy to make, and there are numerous people and comp

          • Actually the solution is to put taxes on packaging. The less packaging material used the lower the tax; the more recyclable the packaging the lower the tax...

        • That approach has been adopted with considerable success in Europe, along with, to some extent, the precautionary principle.

          North America, sadly, has chosen a different path. Corporations are allowed to "externalize costs", and routinely get away with the most egregious abuses.

    • Part of the problem with recycling fatigue is the notion that we should recycle everything. Remember the big push for buying paper and pencils from recycled stock? It made no sense. Recycling paper and other wood products uses more energy and water, and in the end you get a more expensive yet less refined product.

      Perhaps recycling programs would be more effective and popular if we concentrated on things that it makes sense to recycle... metals and glass... and admitted to the public that most of the plastic

      • Actually, I vastly preferred the composite recycled pencils to woodcase. They were much quieter in pencil sharpeners than wood, and when you're a geek and everyone's just itching for an excuse to hate on you making noise - any noise - during a test is trouble.
      • If you take the naptha produced by the natural gas industry, and you turn it into packaging before you burn it for energy, instead of burning it for energy immediately, that's recycling.

  • People outside the UK may not know that the Manchester Guardian (AKA: 'Guardian') is an anti-establishment newspaper. No less respectable in a free press, but ordinary citizens have learned to discount its 'stories'.
    • So are you suggesting discounting anything it says that does not fit an established view or practice? That it prints 'fake news'?
    • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday June 22, 2019 @01:45PM (#58805256)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Burning all plastic waste in plants with proper scrubbers and filters makes negligible contribution to carbon load of Earth compared to fossil fuel

    Europe and China are already doing this, time for the USA to get on board

    • While just burning linked to good air scrubbing would dispose of the waste you could instead run it through a plasma arc incinerator. This not only destroys the waste, but it produces a usable gas that's pretty analogous to natural gas. That said, there are some caveats to that plan. High initial start up cost, efficacy problems if the trash is wet, and high maintenance costs. But that said, they're still probably a better solution that just open burning it or burring it in a land fill and an infinitely
      • by amorsen ( 7485 )

        The main use of natural gas is burning it. If you are going to burn it, what is the point of saving it from being burned in the first place?

        It is almost as useless an idea as the recently announced breakthrough to make diesel from plastic. What The Actual Fuck are those people thinking.

        • not useless for plastics that can't be recycled. the people are thinking of doing something useful with a waste product. it's good.

  • "Vast Quantities' of Recycled Plastics Are Actually Burned Or Dumped In Landfills"

    Shouldn't that say "Recyclable Plastics" because they aren't actually recycled?

  • Never kept secret (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FeelGood314 ( 2516288 ) on Saturday June 22, 2019 @01:34PM (#58805212)
    Our municipal politicians have known for years most of the things that went into the recycle bins were not being recycled. It was never kept secret. But you honestly can't reason with most "environmentalists". They want perfection. They won't accept the idea of throwing the things they think should be recycled directly into the trash. So now we end up with low a quality mix of plastics and trash in our recycling system that makes it expensive to run. These are the same people who protested nuclear, brought coal back from extinction in the 60s and kept coal alive for 50 years. No municipal politician is going to stand up to these idiots because they will be voted out.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      But you honestly can't reason with most "environmentalists".

      Right! It's all the fault of those damn "environmentalists" which is pretty ironic given that today is the 50th anniversary of the Cuyahoga River catching fire [businessinsider.com].

    • by Ichijo ( 607641 )

      most "environmentalists"...are the same people who protested nuclear, brought coal back from extinction in the 60s...

      Most of today's environmentalists were alive and politically active in the 1960s? Did you just make that up?

  • Wrong word (Score:5, Funny)

    by religionofpeas ( 4511805 ) on Saturday June 22, 2019 @01:35PM (#58805214)

    Dumping in landfills ?

    Surely, you mean "carbon sequestration"

  • by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Saturday June 22, 2019 @02:29PM (#58805406) Journal
    China NEEDs to have their ships filled BOTH WAYS to make dumping their goods on the west feasible. So, for the trip back, they buy clean food, resources such as minerals, and our recyclables. By stopping the recyclables, we are making it harder for China to dump goods on us. THis will make manufacturing locally easier.
    Now, what is needed is to do a cleaner job of separating trash and recycling here, OR change how we make things here.

    In the meantime, yes, keep putting plastic in dumps or burning it. The dumps will allow us to save it for future use, while burning is how much of Europe gets rid of their plastic.
    • by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

      China NEEDs to have their ships filled BOTH WAYS to make dumping their goods on the west feasible. So, for the trip back, they buy clean food, resources such as minerals, and our recyclables. By stopping the recyclables, we are making it harder for China to dump goods on us. THis will make manufacturing locally easier.

      There's only one problem with that theory. China is the one stopping the recyclables from being shipped to their country [npr.org] from anywhere [nytimes.com], and the U.S. is the one scrambling to find other market [cnn.com]

      • actually no. Not a theory. The only thing banned was plastics.
        China continues to import trash from all over, esp. the US. WM still sends LOADS of 'garbage' to CHina. Difference is that NOW China is selective. Have you seen GOT JUNK? THat company is selective in what they get and work closely with Chinese government to send them metals, known plastics, etc. There are multiple companies that do the same.

        And actually no, most of America is doing fine with our plastics and trash. It will be an issue down t
        • by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

          actually no. Not a theory. The only thing banned was plastics.

          Wrong person is boringly wrong [minipakr.com].

          Not only did plastic and paper waste need an overhaul -- China later changed its standards for other items as well. For products such as cardboard and metal, China set a contamination level of 0.5% -- an extremely low threshold that required U.S. and other recyclers to change technology and sorting techniques to meet the new standards.

          After banning 24 varieties of solid waste in 2017, effective January 2018, China e

    • You do realise that they use completely different kinds of ships to transport containers [wikipedia.org] from China to America, and for transporting minerals and bulk goods [wikipedia.org] back the other way.

      China NEEDs to have their ships filled BOTH WAYS to make dumping their goods on the west feasible.

      Clearly they do not. They just need to charge enough to be profitable. It's common sense. It would be more profitable to be full both ways, but it's not the same as a NEED.

    • Cool story, but China are the ones no longer accepting the West's trash.

  • by couchslug ( 175151 ) on Saturday June 22, 2019 @03:06PM (#58805556)

    The complaining is silly. Prepare more landfills, bury the waste, then process it in the future when technology catches up.
    The imaginary need to act immediately netted bad results. Land isn't rare or precious everywhere and transportation is cheap.

  • 20,000 tons of plastic to its waste-to-energy incinerator Well, that is better than just burying it.
  • There is a series of TV programmes on the BBC called - War on Plastics which showed that a fair bit of so-called recycled plastic in England actually gets sent aboard and then a third of it gets illegally dumped.

    I asked my own Scottish council and they said Biffa don't export it. But then, so did the English Council....

  • by Anonymous Coward

    For years, Pai and her family generated almost no trash. She carefully washed, sorted and bagged hard-to-recycle items and drove them two towns over from her home in Berkeley, California, to the area’s best recycling center.

    Errr.. So she burned up gasoline to dispose of the demon plastic items in some sort of extra-perfect manner that even Berkeley didn't attain? Jesus lady, it'd make a LOT more sense to just burn the shit along with your other garbage and generate electricity. But most municipalit

  • >"The issue is with a popular class of plastics that people have traditionally been told to put into their recycling bins -- a hodgepodge of items such as clamshell-style food packaging, black plastic trays, take-out containers and cold drink cups"

    I don't know where that is. Here, we have NEVER been told those are acceptable (and those are typically #5). Only #1 and #2 plastics are accepted here. Anything else is garbage, and it has been that way for as long as recycling (25 years?).

    Now, they have tot

    • I don't know where that is. Here, we have NEVER been told those are acceptable

      Penn and Teller did a fun stunt where they went to San Francisco and intentionally tried to come up with the most convoluted and hard to follow recycling rules, then tried to be as obnoxious as possible when "testing" the procedure with some eager volunteers. Including blowing an air horn (BLAAT!) when you got something wrong. This [youtube.com] is a short segment.

      The saddest point was when they interviewed the "subjects" afterwards and they all, eager to please and be accepted, and with careful editing, seemed to think

  • Two years ago my city said don't bother sorting stuff out anymore.

    I figured it was because they would do it, or the recycler now could efficiently.

    But no! "Let God sort it out!"

  • Oh come on, it's always been a con and we knew it and said it 10-20 years ago.

    The sheer fact that my local council now have THREE teams of people, coming to collect three separate bins, into three separate lorries, running all around the city burning three different tanks of diesel tells you all you need to know.

    It's not anything to do with saving the planet. It's to subsidise a company that's making a pittance out of recycling a tiny proportion of waste, at taxpayer's expense. Buying "green" credentials

There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.

Working...