How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled (npr.org) 165
NPR and PBS Frontline spent months digging into internal industry documents and interviewing top former officials. We found that the industry sold the public on an idea it knew wouldn't work -- that the majority of plastic could be, and would be, recycled -- all while making billions of dollars selling the world new plastic. NPR: The industry's awareness that recycling wouldn't keep plastic out of landfills and the environment dates to the program's earliest days, we found. "There is serious doubt that [recycling plastic] can ever be made viable on an economic basis," one industry insider wrote in a 1974 speech. Yet the industry spent millions telling people to recycle, because, as one former top industry insider told NPR, selling recycling sold plastic, even if it wasn't true. "If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment," Larry Thomas, former president of the Society of the Plastics Industry, known today as the Plastics Industry Association and one of the industry's most powerful trade groups in Washington, D.C., told NPR.
In response, industry representative Steve Russell, until recently the vice president of plastics for the trade group the American Chemistry Council, said the industry has never intentionally misled the public about recycling and is committed to ensuring all plastic is recycled. [...] Here's the basic problem: All used plastic can be turned into new things, but picking it up, sorting it out and melting it down is expensive. Plastic also degrades each time it is reused, meaning it can't be reused more than once or twice. On the other hand, new plastic is cheap. It's made from oil and gas, and it's almost always less expensive and of better quality to just start fresh. All of these problems have existed for decades, no matter what new recycling technology or expensive machinery has been developed. In all that time, less than 10 percent of plastic has ever been recycled. But the public has known little about these difficulties.
In response, industry representative Steve Russell, until recently the vice president of plastics for the trade group the American Chemistry Council, said the industry has never intentionally misled the public about recycling and is committed to ensuring all plastic is recycled. [...] Here's the basic problem: All used plastic can be turned into new things, but picking it up, sorting it out and melting it down is expensive. Plastic also degrades each time it is reused, meaning it can't be reused more than once or twice. On the other hand, new plastic is cheap. It's made from oil and gas, and it's almost always less expensive and of better quality to just start fresh. All of these problems have existed for decades, no matter what new recycling technology or expensive machinery has been developed. In all that time, less than 10 percent of plastic has ever been recycled. But the public has known little about these difficulties.
Lies to all of us because we want to believe (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lies to all of us because we want to believe (Score:5, Insightful)
The oil industry was deeply involved in lying about this. But to a large extent, these are lies of the sort which were easy to believe because we wanted to believe. It involves far less of a change in any our basic behavior when we think that everything will just require small changes. However, this doesn't mean that all plastic recycling is bad. There are programs which are substantially more narrow. For example, number 5 plastics (yogurt cups being one of the most common 5s) can be sent to Preserve https://www.preserve.eco/pages/gimme5-overview [preserve.eco] who turns they into other things which you can also buy from them, including very nice storage containers and toothbrushes. In that case, one knows that they are recycling them because one can close the loop. My spouse and I store up our number 5s and every few months and send them to Preserve. But, this article and articles like it should remind people that of the three Rs, Reduce, Reuce, Recycle, recycle is the third one. The other two are a lot more important. Use less plastic. If you can, reuse the plastic items.
In the era we're talking about, the mid-70s, soda came in glass bottles and vending machines often had a place to drop off used bottles where they would be washed and reused again. There was a change in basic behavior that put us on coarse for using plastic.
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Yeah, but we switched to plastic bottles because the glass ones used too much oil and required a lot of CO2 emissions. Turns out, glass bottles are heavy. Also while people don't like discarded plastic bottles, they *really* don't like discarded, broken glass.
Re:Lies to all of us because we want to believe (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but we switched to plastic bottles because the glass ones used too much oil and required a lot of CO2 emissions.
You must have reached waaaayy up your ass for that one!
Plastic is used because is fucking cheap. It's light weight making shipping fucking cheaper. And plastic is much fucking cheaper to mold into any shape you want for fucking marketing purposes because we humans are easily manipulated fucking monkeys who like shiny things that are shaped to attract our attention.
And to solve this fucking problem, we need a fucking $1 deposit on ALL plastic containers. The money to be used to force recycling or proper disposal if need be.
Ideally, I think plastic containers and all single use plastic things should be banned. I remember when things came in glass that was picked up and re-used and cardboard - like milk STILL comes in. Also metal cans like beer STILL comes in.
Plastic packaging is causing a HUGE fucking environmental problem. Packaging == MARKETING. See, fucking evil!
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Your profanity aside.. You have hit on the primary problem here.. Economics.
The ISSUE here is purely economic. The Oil industry didn't lie about anything, the problem is the view of the future of plastics was largely wrong. The pure fact here is it's CHEAPER to throw plastic in a landfill than to recycle it. So recycling doesn't happen because it's not worth it, nobody can make a profit doing it and just manufacturing new stuff is cheaper (and allowed).
You may decry the environmental impact this has, b
Re: Lies to all of us because we want to believe (Score:2)
Politicians didn't build the infrastructure promised for recycling.
The best argument against the [Green] Left is never the views of the right (which have become their own racist, fascist shit show). It's guys like Harry Reid submitting to NIMBYs to block an already bought, built, paid for, and critical nuclear waste facility, OR in this case all the recycling capacity never developed, while you the dumb citizen are still sorting
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You realize it has a plastic bottle inside that actually holds the soda, right?
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Aye, marketing.
the classic case is lucozade bottles - made from an easily recyclable plastic. Yay! go whoever makes them.
But these bottles arte then wrapped in a thin film of plastic that's printed with all the marketing branding, and that is totally unrecyclable. Making the entire thing suitable only for landfill.
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Or just remove the label, along with the lid which can go to landfill while the bottle goes for recycling. Unless you have a physical disability removing the label takes a second of your time.
The problem is lazy dirty people.
Re:Lies to all of us because we want to believe (Score:5, Informative)
the classic case is lucozade bottles - made from an easily recyclable plastic.
You didn't read the article, did you?
Because you're spouting the same 50 year old lie that the oil companies have been feeding you. It's ingrained in your soul at this point.
That "easily recyclable plastic" is not. It's not recyclable. That's the entire point of this article.
The plastic polymers are recyclable all of one time, maybe two. But there's no practical way to separate out the old from the new, so you literally can't take a plastic bottle and turn it back into a plastic bottle. At best you can take a plastic bottle and make it into some degraded plastic product, which has all sorts of issues. And only 10% or so of plastic seems to even get this level of recycling.
It's all laid bare now that China won't take it, nor will Indonesia nor most of Africa.
Plastic isn't recyclable.
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Wow. So you're doubling down on being wrong? That's impressive.
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Those mean the same thing. Using more oil because glass is heavier, more expensive to transport, and requires more heat to form it. That produces CO2 emissions.
All of that can change with renewable electricity for heating+transporting.
Re:Beer does not come in a metal can (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry grandad, but your 1970s understanding of canning has been out of date for a good decade or two now.
Some of the best beer in the world now comes in cans. IPAs, stouts, fruited sours, belgians, you name it. And yes, you can even age your snooty craft beers in cans!
Even worse, the reason this is possible is because.....inside the cans is a fucking plastic bottle! They're lined with plastic, and will keep fresh and sealed for a good 5-10 years.
Even worse? All of the bottles ever have a plastic seal on the cap. And nobody has been pissing and moaning about bottle caps for the last 30+ years.
About the only way to be a purist is to solely go for bombers with corks and either wires or wax seals. And if those are the only beers you drink, I feel very sorry for you. You're missing 99.9% of the beer in the world.
Re:Beer does not come in a metal can (Score:5, Interesting)
Lookie here, youngster. In the 1950s, bottle caps were metal with a cork layer inside to provide a compliant seal. Other historical bottle sealing materials include wax and tar.
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>>> include wax and tar
Oh, that'll make the IPA taste better....
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But, this article and articles like it should remind people that of the three Rs, Reduce, Reuce, Recycle, recycle is the third one.
I think you mean, Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic [wikipedia.org]. :-)
[ Which is frelling stupid for an "education" phrase, but maybe that's just me. ]
There are more Rs (Score:5, Interesting)
Refuse (don't buy it at all)
Reduce (don't buy as much)
Replace (use a better alternative)
Reuse (use it again)
Repair (fix it so you or someone else can use it again)
Recycle (should always be the last alternative)
Re:There are more Rs (Score:4, Funny)
There...
Are...
THREE R's!
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why is repair so far down?
Shouldn't you be repairing your existing stuff before replacing it?
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"If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment,"
"Industry companies spent tens of millions of dollars on these ads and ran them for years, promoting the benefits of a product that, for the most part, was buried, was burned or, in some cases, wound up in the ocean"
So began the plastics industry's $50 million-a-year ad campaign promoting the benefits of plastic. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11... [npr.org]
Lies are easier to believe wit
Businesses ALWAYS lie. (Score:2, Troll)
There are no exceptions.
If the oil industry were truthful they would state: "Yeah, our activities and most products damage the environment and human health and we're a major contributor to global warming - which is a scientific fact but we've been publishing propaganda for decades to dispute that fact. We think that it's wonderful that so many people are dumb enough to believe our garbage.
But we're enriching a very very small minority of people and wit
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They're just following the example of politicians.
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Our local recycle center is very good about handling #1, #2, and #5 plastic. I never see #3, while #4 and #6 are held to be not-recyclable-at-all, which means it has to go into the garbage.
Now I can't promise you that all the plastic they DO take makes its way into post-consumer products, but as a general rule, the recycle center is profit-driven. If they can't make money pushing it into the open market, they don't take it. Period. That keeps the process relatively-honest.
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#6 plastic, polystyrene, is actually pretty recyclable if anyone would actually do it. The example is a lot of polystyrenes can be dissolved in and reprocessed from acetone (think of the "Anarchist Cookook"-style "napalms"). The difficulty is a lot of the stuff is in the form of polystyrene foams (Styrofoam-like materials), which are too bulky to be economical to recycle. Wikipedia describes this further,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Recycling is GOOD. There isn't much of it (Score:2)
> However, this doesn't mean that all plastic recycling is bad.
It's good. Around 9%-12% of plastic ia recycled and recycling it is a great thing. 90% isn't recycled - that's the bad thing.
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Big oil weren't the ones to lie to us about recycling. I clearly remember the school system and Greenpeace and every government organization since the 80s saying how plastic is better than glass and easier and cheaper to be recycled, then early 2000s it was, recycled when we sort, then later, recycled when we separate by plastic type (PET, HDPE, ...).
That is according to my memory, too.
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waste-to-energy (Score:5, Interesting)
Recycling plastic from household use is a sick joke, it's a pointless exercise that social pressure forces us to do. Household plastic belongs in an incinerator. And we need a few cents tax per kilogram to get people to stop buying so much of it.
Industrial use of plastic is another story. There are situations where it can be reused or recycles effectively. Each industry would need to have different requirements based on the practicalities of obtaining materials with little contamination. Drums coated in vegetable oil or other organic material, maybe you can crack them in a refinery, most likely they'll go to incinerator as well.
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Pretty much all plastic, other than PET from bottles, is useless. Food soiled plastic is completely useless. We should not package non-food and non-medical products in plastic. No need for scissors or screwdrivers to come in plastic cases. For food we could limit the allowed plastics to PET and PE, without any additives. Both PET and PE can be incinerated clanly and both are more than adequate for food safety.
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No need for scissors or screwdrivers to come in plastic cases
Sadly low-grade stainless steel will get spots when held in a shipping container from China for three weeks. If you pack it in an plastic baggy or shrink wrapped to cardstock that can minimize the damage and takes less plastic than the usual vacuum formed display packaging. We can use less plastic as a compromise to using zero plastic.
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Incinerators generally won;t take plastic as it has too high a calorific value - their business model works on taking waste for a fee, so the more waste they take, the more profit. They then burn it to reduce its mass, and generate a little electricity on the side.
What is interesting is the development of a new fuel type that uses plastic as a replacement for coal. This means old coal-fired powerr stations can be converted and but watse instead of coal. May not be 100% green, but one step at a time helps.
Th
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Municipal operator incinerators have different economics than commercial ones (we have a mix of private and public utilities in the US, with examples regulated utilities that have some qualities of both). And regions that have high energy costs also have an advantage of taking calorific material. Night time power pricing may be favorable once everyone is charging their electric cars at night, when the solar panels are dark and the wind turbines are operating sporadically.
Thermal depolymerization (Score:2)
TDP can turn it into oil, which in turn can be used to create more plastic. Also, the process is energy positive, meaning it can produce more energy than it consumes.
As for taxing plastics, I'm fine with this, but the producer needs to pay for it. There should be some reasonable tax on containers such that whatever "savings" from using plastics or single use non-returnable glass containers is zeroed out in the tax to encourage use of reusable and returnable containers.
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this. Pyrolysis should be high on our list of solutions.
Stop trying to sort it. We suck at it. Turn it back into oil.
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Not fully true : soda bottle (Score:3)
Only a problem now that China isn't buying (Score:5, Insightful)
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The existing steps taken toward recycling of plastic are only a starting point. Assuming plastic is here to stay, then further steps will be required. And some steps might be very expensive just to get the R&D sorted out. Anything else is just head-in-the-sand mentality.
It has always been up to governments to sort it out. Taxing of virgin fossil sources would be the way to pay for the R&D and also the subsequent build up of the infrastructure needed.
Maybe in 1989... (Score:5, Informative)
Disclaimer: I work in the recycling industry.
But... if the article was correct, I wouldn't have a job. This is NPR at their usual worst. They're quoting someone's recollection of 1989, and quite frankly, a lot has happened in 31 years. Today, we can use AI and various sensor types to identify plastics even without that little symbol. A large portion of consumer plastics are recyclable - PET, HDPE, and polypropylene are recovered for profit these days.
The other point the NPR article misses is that while recycling may not be viable in rural areas which produce relatively little waste, the largest sources of plastics pollution - by their sheer scale - make plastics recycling viable. Today, modern machines can separate plastics at the rate of tons per hour - the problem isn't that it can't be done, but that it can be done so well and so efficiently that you need a large urban area just to feed the facility!
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That's great news. I'll tell my county that they should stop paying to recycle our plastic and demand payments from the recyclers, instead!
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Today, we can use AI and various sensor types to identify plastics even without that little symbol. A large portion of consumer plastics are recyclable - PET, HDPE, and polypropylene are recovered for profit these days.
What? How do you filter out plastic with food particles on it?
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What? How do you filter out plastic with food particles on it?
Infrared sensors are used to sort plastic by type (PET, PE, PP, etc.); although they probably can't handle a container completely covered in mayonaise, I'd expect that they can handle small amounts of contamination, just like they can handle a bit of sugary water in PET bottles.
The various video clips on Youtube of recycling plants don't show the details of the reprocessing, probably because those are the trade secrets. If I had to design a reprocessing plant, I would start from pre-sorted batches of 'dirt
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You even said that the technology only makes financial sense in large urban areas. How many recycling companies out there are making decisions based on environmental concerns and not based on profit? How many recycling companies "recycled" by sending it over to Asia for "processing"?
The question isn't really "can we" but "are we" recycling.
Re:Maybe in 1989... (Score:4, Interesting)
I wouldn't be surprised if only 10% of the plastic created since 1970 has been recycled, because it has taken some time for the technology to mature.
But I would be very surprised if less than 10% of the plastic today is recycled. The recyclers can't increase the size of the input stream, only what they extract from it, so they are very interested in extracting as much as they can possibly sell - which drives the technology forward. China's recent increase in purity standards may temporarily reduce the amount of plastics recycling due to older, less precise equipment, but as that is replaced, we should see the amount increase.
Again, if we have a problem with plastics recycling, it's not that we can't recycle it, but that people can't be bothered.
Re:Maybe in 1989... (Score:5, Interesting)
But... if the article was correct, I wouldn't have a job.
No. The problem is that we need 100x more of you, and we need a way to pay for it. Only a small percentage of the recyclable plastic actually makes it to you.
But I would be very surprised if less than 10% of the plastic today is recycled.
Well be surprised then, because that's what the data shows. I keep seeing that "91% of plastic is not recycled" everywhere I look. That's from places like EPA.GOV, Yale University, and New Scientist. Sometimes you see something headlines like "25% of plastic bottles are recycled" in some locale but that is just recyclable plastic bottles not all plastic. And sometimes they mean "25% of the stuff people actually put into recycle bins" which isn't "all plastic bottles." Worse yet, "recycle" often means "turned into filler for cheap jackets that are discarded in a few years." People expect "recycle" means "returned to a cycle that continues forever" not "reused once then thrown out anyway." Even of the 9% recycled, almost none of it use recycled infinitely. I think there's a company that makes toothbrushes. And don't forget that those "recycled' plastic bottles are usually only 10% recycled plastic.
I live just outside a major city in the US, less than 5 miles from the county dump, which also serves as our recycling center. There is a pile of plastic the size of a small office building that has been growing for years. I asked them one time, and they explained that it is being stored until they can find a buyer for it. Plastic is produced and sent for recycling faster than it can be recycled, so it piles up for years on end. The good news is that last time I drove by one of the piles was gone, so maybe things are moving in the right direction again. Or maybe they just buried it in the on-site landfill?.
I also work for a Fortune 500 company, and while the manufacturing department recycles every single atom they possibly can, the offices in the same facility do not recycle. Why? Well, we have recycle bins everywhere, but starting about 3 years ago the facilities department started dumping them into the trash and throwing it out. Well-intentioned office workers complained. So the facilities department sent out an email telling everyone that while their heart is in the right place, nobody will buy our mixed recycling anymore. It was "too contaminated" which means both dirty with food, but also had too many non-recyclable things put in. The cafeteria switched to paper cartons for food, and they tried putting out bins for each type of thing: cardboard, paper, plastic - but every time it came back too contaminated and they just stopped accepting it. The result is that now discardable beverage containers are prohibited (except the ones from the vending machines) and new employees get a free mug.
Re:Maybe in 1989... (Score:5, Informative)
But... if the article was correct, I wouldn't have a job.
No. The problem is that we need 100x more of you, and we need a way to pay for it. Only a small percentage of the recyclable plastic actually makes it to you.
But I would be very surprised if less than 10% of the plastic today is recycled.
Well be surprised then, because that's what the data shows. I keep seeing that "91% of plastic is not recycled" everywhere I look. That's from places like EPA.GOV, Yale University, and New Scientist. []
Here is a press release from the German ministry of environment from January 2019:
https://www.bmu.de/meldung/das... [www.bmu.de]
It gives data fro 2017. Total plastic garbage in Germany that year: 6.15 Mt.53% were burnt directly. 46 % (2.8 Mt) were sent to recycling centers. After removing non-recyclable parts (other plastics, food contamination, etc), this resulted 1.9 Mt of plastics actually used in making new plastics products.
For context (not from the above press release, but from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]):
However, while the situation is apparently improving everywhere over time, the numbers still vary wildly by country - in the same year 2017, the US recycled only 8 % of its plastics, while Japan recycled 86 %. For 2016, the worldwide plastics recycling rate was 14%.
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For Germany, again for the year 2017, there is data from the German Federal Environment Agency:
https://www.umweltbundesamt.de... [umweltbundesamt.de]
Main uses: 41.9 % are used in construction materials, 22.6 % in packaging materials.
Interestingly, only 1.6 % are used in electronic devices, compared to 4.4% in vehicles.
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Where in the NPR story does it say we can't? Please cut and paste the text verbatim, if you can find it! Good luck!
In other words, it only makes financial sense in large urban areas.
Re:Maybe in 1989... (Score:5, Interesting)
The NPR article is pretty clearly about the 1970s and 80s and whether plastic was chosen because it worked as recyclable packaging or if that was an illusion created at the time. i.e. before the sunk cost we have today in terms of plastic-based packaging infrastructure. Even if the separation problem were solved, almost none of these plastics can be used to make the items that are being recycled. That is one of the major things that is deceptive about even the term "recyclable" when applied to plastic. If a plastic soda bottle can't be recycled into another plastic soda bottle, where is the "cycle"? Steel, aluminum, and glass can (at least mostly) genuinely be recycled -- which is where the term comes from as things were in the 1970s. The plastics industry basically rename material re-purposing into "recycling" and marketed hard to make it be perceived as the same thing. That has not changed. And it was even more deceptive in the 80s because there was almost no market for the re-purposed material.
A plastic re-purposing industry has been created to (partially) fulfill their promises, not the other way around. This is demonstrated by your comment -- you say the sheer scale of available material makes it worth something. But there was a decision point way back in the 80s about whether that scale was even a good idea to create in the first place, and it is worth discussing how that decision was made.
Is Recycling Plastic Necessary? (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't throwing away paper just sequestering carbon?
I understand some of the carbon in landfills gets converted to methane. But wouldn't our efforts be better spent investigating and controlling the methane production in landfills? That would make them are carbon sink.
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Going into a landfill is one of the best-case scenarios. Too much ends up in the ocean. On land, plastic litter discarded outside a landfill is a mess because it remains indefinitely. Burning plastic in an open fire is also very polluting for the air - if incinerated it needs to be done properly.
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In the 1980s, everyone was concerned with recycling. However, plastics are carbon chains that came from deep within the earth. Isn't throwing them in a landfill just returning them to where they came from?
The problem is that plastics don't biodegrade. An item made out of ABS plastic can stay around for thousands of years, with degradation caused by purely mechanical weathering and by the UV radiation. So anything that does NOT get into the landfill will stay around, causing problems for wildlife (and humans).
Then there are microplastics. It turns out that degrading ABS and other plastics produce particles that now permeate everything. And they are also not going away any time soon (large surface area helps
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I understand some of the carbon in landfills gets converted to methane. But wouldn't our efforts be better spent investigating and controlling the methane production in landfills? That would make them are carbon sink.
Many landfills collect the methane and burn it to make electricity. You can see which plants are doing this in EIA form 923 [eia.gov] schedule 2, page 1, sorting by Reported Fuel Type Code "LFG". There are a bunch.
OK so it is all Big Oils fault? (Score:2)
Just looks to me like the left is choosing the next target for their lawyers to hit up to fund themselves. Cash anyone?
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What evidence do you have that anybody other than the oil industry was "hiding" this fact?
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That's really a smart argument.
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It was obvious to anyone who look into it (Score:3)
It was obvious to anyone who had the time to look into it. There are too many types of plastic. Thermoset plastic cannot be recycled. Thermoplastics degrade when reprocessed. The way to go about is as follows:
1) Ban all non-biopolymer plastic (i.e. other than cellophane and PLA) from packaging of non-food and non-medical products non-ESD sensitive products. No reason toilet paper should come wrapped in plastic. Pretty much everything can be wrapped either in paper or in cellophane. Scissors, knives, contact switches, screwdrivers, car parts, light bulbs can come in paper or cardboard wrapping. Allow limited use of plastic for tamper proof seals.
2) Limit the types of plastic in food packaging to two types - PET and PE, preferably use compostable biopolymers.
3) Disposable utensils from compostable biopolymers only.
Removing plastics from industrial products will be more difficult, because e.g. electrical components, construction material or car parts need to first and foremost safe.
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Removing plastics from industrial products will be more difficult, because e.g. electrical components, construction material or car parts need to first and foremost safe.
Wire insulation is going to be tough to replace, because it's exactly the thing that you DON'T want to biodegrade. But there are companies that are working on biodegradable tires, this would help a lot with road dust which is NOT healthy at all. And when we switch to EVs the regenerative braking will help to eliminate the brake dust as well.
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We will need non-biodegradable plastic and I don't think that it is reasonable to ban it - wire insulation being prime example.
However, a lot of plastic comes from packaging and this is where a lot can be done quite easily. Just reducing the number of plastics used in packaging to two types easiest to recycle would be great. The only place were we really need plastic packaging is perishable foods, and here PE and PET does just fine. We can easily get rid of PP, PVC and PS in food packaging. We can get rid o
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Stuff that requires long shelf life generally can go into glass or metal containers. Stuff like meat and diary will generally degrade faster than say cellophane or PLA. Also, it is enough to limit the types of plastic in food packaging to PET and PE. We can get rid of PP, PE and PVC, relegating them to non-disposable uses.
Problem is, how do you tell someone who has just built a brand new PP packaging production line? If a ban is introduced then the cost of changing over to PE or PET should be covered by the
Seems there are so many ways to reuse- (Score:2)
In 200 years our industry will be mining landfills for plastic to make things like structural bricks and such. It's cheaper to make new plastic RIGHT NOW, but plastics long lifespan means it's going to sit there waiting for the economics to make it viable again.
No intentional misleading? (Score:2)
said the industry has never intentionally misled the public about recycling and is committed to ensuring all plastic is recycled.
Riiiiiiiight. Because the oil industry that digs up the plastic's raw material has never lied [wikipedia.org] about the harm their products can do [smithsonianmag.com].
It'd be better if we had MOST plastics that broke down in nature within a few. Why do we need "Sorry!" game pieces that last forever?
So, telling people to recycle is bad? (Score:2)
The article says they spent millions telling people to recycle. Is this a bad thing?
Sure, not everything is recyclable, but that's irrelevant. The goal is to get people in the habit, improve the technology, and find new ways to use recycled materials.
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It is a bad thing when the reality is that without such propaganda, many people wouldn't have accepted plastic in the first place
I think this is a big assumption with no evidence to support it. Plastic offers a lot of benefits over the materials it replaces, and there are many products you simply can't make without plastics.
Try eliminating all plastics from your world for a day.
Video clips of recycling plants (Score:5, Informative)
I posted this a few days ago in another discussion where the NPR article came up:
I'm not sure about all the differences between US and EU regarding plastic recycling, but here in the Netherlands it doesn't look so dark. Here is a video on a sorting facility for a mixture of plastic, cans, and beverage cartons: https://youtu.be/WB0nMz8pgdY [youtu.be] . The commentary is on Dutch, but summarizing, they separate the mixture into aluminum, steel, cartons, and various types of plastic (PP, PET, PE, etc.) using eddy currents (aluminum), magnets (steel), image recognition (cartons), mechanical size selection, and IR spectroscopy (plastic types).
Here is another company reworking plastics into granules: https://youtu.be/zOr7cfFSmvk [youtu.be] .
Now, these are promotional videos and I'm sure they skip over the fact that a part of the plastic stream cannot be identified or is too much contaminated and ends up being burned. Also, most plastic packaging cannot be recycled into food containers for safety reasons, and whatever they recycle it into (plastic crates, toys) won't be recycled again, so you could argue whether it can be called "recycling" rather than lifecycle extension.
I think the EU requires that consumer plastic waste is processed within the EU; it cannot be shipped to Asia or Africa for "recycling".
This isn't the oil industries fault (Score:5, Insightful)
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Paper doesn't get a big old' giant government paycheck for growing and harvest lumber like the oil people do for mining oil.
They do [propublica.org]. Next time do a Google search before commenting, your post will be more informed.
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Well the problem of why the masses in the US want cheap cheap cheap is probably twofold.
1. They don't make enough money. Companies don't pay more than they have to in most places.
2. They are taught to want to consume, taught to consume stupidly, and basically see everybody else consuming... so they follow suit.
#1 is tricky because, well capitalistic society or whatever stage we are in here in the USA. I'm guessing government has to do something about this. ... to me seems less tricky, since it is educatio
#2
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Why? It will just be offset a dozen times over by someone rolling coal to own the libs.
it's all fine (Score:2)
ten percent of petroleum gets turns to plastic, just burn the stuff as fuel, it really won't make much difference. Someday when we get all our energy from renewables or nuke we can still burn it, nature can sink that much extra CO2.
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Most the stuff in the recycle bin is just hydrogen and carbon though. PVC can be recycled, or incinerated with chloride capture.
Okay, stet; What do we do to fix this? (Score:2)
1. What do we do to fix the existing plastic problem?
2. What do we do to prevent the perpetuation of this problem?
Blame-assigning is done. Let's work on solutions.
Recycling plastic is very difficult (Score:2)
Just melt it down like metals, right?
Well no. There are goodness knows how many types of plastic, and when you melt mixed plastics together, you generally end up with a horrible mess. Plastic also degrades when reheated. I think plastics can be ground up for use as fillers in concrete, but this just delays the blasted stuff getting into the environment.
Pretty obvious actually (Score:2)
This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Just think about how much plastic you purchase is recycled. Virtually none. Now think about how much you "recycle." Where is it going, who is buying it?
Aside from the occasional item, nothing we buy has been recycled.
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You know you're making a completely moot point nobody really gives a shit about right?
Are they? (Score:2)
> You know you're making a completely moot point
Are they making a point, moot or otherwise?
Pretty much appeared to be random sentences to me.
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long after we're goners it'll become part of the earth again.
Well, that's perfectly all right then.
The microplastics in the air and water will eventually return to Mother Earth so let's keep on using single-use plastic containers for everything.
Re:Plastic didn't just appear from a vorpal bag (Score:4, Interesting)
last time I checked we're not importing it from other planets
Technically, Earth annually receives something like 100k tonnes of solid mass from outer space, but that's obviously peanuts.
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And take out much of marine life before it becomes the Earth again. Blessed are the obtuse, for they have no empathy.
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Which is why our refuse, all of it, should be collected and the mined and refined. Not hand picked for recycling, that shite is obviously just part of that PR=B$ scam. Collected and sent to a facility, where it is treated like raw material, with various elements to be refined out of the pile. With nothing left over but safe fertiliser. It really does reflect a high concentration of desirable minable resources. The only problem, energy costs. Which is why you use safe backup nuclear power, which you need to
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Actually, the earth is getting new material all the time. There are literally thousands of meteorites that strike the planet on a yearly basis ( https://cosmosmagazine.com/spa... [cosmosmagazine.com] ). So we may not be importing from other planets (although some of those meteorites may have originated on other planets) but we are still importing material each year.
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Literally the only thing wrong with paper going into the regular waste stream is that more trees need cut down to supply our paper needs. Paper isn't recyclable very many times and that's known - the recoverable fibers are smaller each time. Paper and wood products biodegrade safely and without any real harm.
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Depleting soil is harmful. We are consuming resources in generational timeframes which currently can only be recycled on geological timeframes.
Peak fucking everything will do lots of harm, unless we find some way to destroy ourselves before it becomes relevant.
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