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Earth Science

Plastic Recycling Doesn't Work (theatlantic.com) 242

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Judith Enck, a former EPA regional administrator, the president of Beyond Plastics, and a visiting professor at Bennington College, and Jan Dell, a chemical engineer and the founder of the Last Beach Cleanup, write in a piece: Americans support recycling. We do too. But although some materials can be effectively recycled and safely made from recycled content, plastics cannot. Plastic recycling does not work and will never work. The United States in 2021 had a dismal recycling rate of about 5 percent for post-consumer plastic waste, down from a high of 9.5 percent in 2014, when the U.S. exported millions of tons of plastic waste to China and counted it as recycled -- even though much of it wasn't. Recycling in general can be an effective way to reclaim natural material resources. The U.S.'s high recycling rate of paper, 68 percent, proves this point. The problem with recycling plastic lies not with the concept or process but with the material itself. The first problem is that there are thousands of different plastics, each with its own composition and characteristics. They all include different chemical additives and colorants that cannot be recycled together, making it impossible to sort the trillions of pieces of plastics into separate types for processing.

For example, polyethylene terephthalate (PET#1) bottles cannot be recycled with PET#1 clamshells, which are a different PET#1 material, and green PET#1 bottles cannot be recycled with clear PET#1 bottles (which is why South Korea has outlawed colored PET#1 bottles.) High-density polyethylene (HDPE#2), polyvinyl chloride (PVC#3), low-density polyethylene (LDPE#4), polypropylene (PP#5), and polystyrene (PS#6) all must be separated for recycling. Just one fast-food meal can involve many different types of single-use plastic, including PET#1, HDPE#2, LDPE#4, PP#5, and PS#6 cups, lids, clamshells, trays, bags, and cutlery, which cannot be recycled together. This is one of several reasons why plastic fast-food service items cannot be legitimately claimed as recyclable in the U.S. Another problem is that the reprocessing of plastic waste -- when possible at all -- is wasteful. Plastic is flammable, and the risk of fires at plastic-recycling facilities affects neighboring communities -- many of which are located in low-income communities or communities of color. Unlike metal and glass, plastics are not inert. Plastic products can include toxic additives and absorb chemicals, and are generally collected in curbside bins filled with possibly dangerous materials such as plastic pesticide containers. According to a report published by the Canadian government, toxicity risks in recycled plastic prohibit "the vast majority of plastic products and packaging produced" from being recycled into food-grade packaging.
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Plastic Recycling Doesn't Work More

Plastic Recycling Doesn't Work

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  • Ya know... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Kokuyo ( 549451 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2022 @08:23AM (#62579394) Journal

    ...I remember vividly, quite a few years ago, when I said this exact thing and was shouted down as a science denier for it.

    Ever since then, the claim of an idea being scientific holds very little value to me. Most people haven't the foggiest how science is supposed to work, what actually happens in real life (which is an non-ideal approximation of the scientific method) or how to make back of the envelope calculations to even see whether a concept has a ballpark chance of working out.

    And yet, when someone in a lab coat (figuratively speaking) tells them it's science, don't you dare speak up!

    I don't know if it was better when I was a kid but I get the distinct feeling virtue signalling has become a basic necessity for human existence.

    • Re:Ya know... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2022 @08:49AM (#62579504) Journal

      ...I remember vividly, quite a few years ago, when I said this exact thing and was shouted down as a science denier for it.

      Well it's good to see you didn't let a single, stupid argument on the internet probably decades ago entirely affect your attitude.

    • Ever since then, the claim of an idea being scientific holds very little value to me.

      The claim itself should hold little value. Each idea has to be considered on its own merits. Anything else is a probable case of Ad Hominem.

      I don't know if it was better when I was a kid but I get the distinct feeling virtue signalling has become a basic necessity for human existence.

      I don't know if it was better around you when you were a kid either, maybe it just didn't affect you as much. Virtue signaling has been a thing throughout history. Cancel culture is nothing compared to the inquisition. There are all kinds of cultural expressions about the risk of being unusual, like the one about the nail that sticks up getting hammered down. But I susp

      • When people complain about virtue signalling, I often think of this one

        https://www.smbc-comics.com/co... [smbc-comics.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by vlad30 ( 44644 )
        The difference now is the reach it can be worldwide in minutes and the sheeple effect involved, people will follow a leader on the internet even if the leader is wrong . Want to get modded down on slashdot or any other forum say trump was right about something (occasionally he was) e.g. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/w... [pbs.org] an article from 2018.

        The problem is people get the idea that something is good or bad and don't listen to all the arguments/evidence that shows that there are other "truths" and you need to

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Junta ( 36770 )

      I doubt anyone accused you of being a science denier for skepticism about plastic recycling, this has been a widespread concept pretty much since the onset, that plastic recycling is so problematic

      Or if they did, they weren't speaking with any sort of awareness of scientific consensus on that front (though the viability of recycling for a material seems a bit more specifically an engineering discipline).

      The straw man about society blindly acceding to anyone figuratively wearing lab coats is simply not true.

    • Science Reporting targeting towards the average person, is often extremely poorly presented.

      We have some people who will push X is true, because of Science! Because they saw it in the Science News a few months ago. However X was only a hypothesis where after some more experiments had found X to not be true.
      Then you have the other person who See X being True then False using this as an argument the Science is just a load of BS. Because what was stated as an absolute truth one day is a lie the next day. So

    • If you can't make the difference between a payed shill in a lab coat and a peer reviewed scientific study, then you're part of the problem.

    • All online communities include idiots. They compensate for ignorance with volume. They mod you troll if your post challenges their beliefs, no matter how well-written, well-supported, and respectful it was. Some of them are paid to do this, and others do it for free.

      So, the ones shouting you down aren't representative of the majority. They just make a lot of noise to create that illusion.

    • Science isn't to blame (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Comboman ( 895500 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2022 @11:03AM (#62580066)

      I remember vividly, quite a few years ago, when I said this exact thing and was shouted down as a science denier for it.
      Ever since then, the claim of an idea being scientific holds very little value to me.

      The fact that plastic can be recycled is a scientific fact. The fact that it is in many cases not practical to do so is a logistics/economics fact. Both things are true. Using this "contradiction" to justify rejecting other scientific facts makes you an idiot.

    • Re:Ya know... (Score:5, Informative)

      by gillbates ( 106458 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2022 @11:32AM (#62580228) Homepage Journal

      Disclaimer: I work in the recycling industry.

      They all include different chemical additives and colorants that cannot be recycled together, making it impossible to sort the trillions of pieces of plastics into separate types for processing.

      This is not true. I should know, because the machines I build, and my company sells, do just that. We make sorters that can separate different kinds of plastics at the rate of tons per hour. The author of the article is clearly not aware of what is going on in the recycling industry right now, nor of the fact that we're using AI and other techniques to do what he claims impossible.

      The sorters I help build can in fact separate containers not only by their plastic type - PET, HDPE, PP, etc.. but also differentiate between different colored containers of the same plastic type. Furthermore, we can recognize the form - we can separate plastics in a film form from those in a container form. AI has achieved remarkable success in being able to quickly identify object types simply by looking at them.

      It is a bit disappointing to see someone as well credentialed as the author so unaware of the progress in recycling that has happened in the past 20 years, particularly with respect to advances in computer vision and AI.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's not a science issue. The summary explains it - there are different types of plastics and they need to be separated to recycle them effectively.

      If we leant on manufacturers to only use one type of plastic, like say clear PET for bottles, no green PET, and the cap has to be the same stuff too, we could make this work. In fact, that's what they have done in Japan. The bottles are all made of the same stuff, with a label that is designed to come away easily. That makes it much easier to re-use the bottles,

  • Hopefully this can be done with few if any nasty byproducts.

  • Solutions (Score:5, Informative)

    by TonyJohn ( 69266 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2022 @08:30AM (#62579428) Homepage
    The quote here on Slashdot seems rather negative, but if you RTFA, the authors do get on to making some comments about solutions at the bottom of the article. The message isn't "plastic recycling doesn't work so don't do it" but rather "plastic recycling doesn't work, so do something different".

    • Waste-to-energy is a solution to plastic waste I didn't see in the article. Sure, it's essentially fossil grid power where the fuel gets used as a bottle or food container first, but it's better than filling up landfills and ocean garbage patches with the stuff. Maybe a CCS system could be attached to it too?

      • Better than filling up landfills? Says who? Where is the science?

      • Waste-to-energy is a solution to plastic waste I didn't see in the article.

        If you look at their website you will see they are against more waste incinerators

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jsonn ( 792303 )
        Burning plastic has a nice euphemism in the industry: it's called thermal recycling. But it ignores the core issues: single use plastic products should be banned in the current form as a major waste of resources. Especially for products that existing alternatives from renewable materials.

  • Not too surprising. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by keithdowsett ( 260998 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2022 @08:35AM (#62579444) Homepage

    a) Consumers don't recognise most of the common polymers well enough to sort them effectively. They're all just "plastic"

    b) Even sorted polymers contain fillers, colours, and other impurities which make them difficult to reuse. EPS is difficult to recycle anyway.

    c) It's even more difficult to make money recycling plastics. Most manufacturing processes are designed to work with 'virgin' polymers not impure recycled materials. So the recovered plastics do not attract a high price

    As long as 'virgin' oil derived plastics are only one or two dollars per pound (https://www.plasticportal.eu/en/cenove-reporty?year=2022&week=15) it's going to be really difficult to make recycling work. There's just not enough money in it.

  • Mostly yes, but also some no (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Tuesday May 31, 2022 @08:44AM (#62579474) Homepage Journal

    although some materials can be effectively recycled and safely made from recycled content, plastics cannot. Plastic recycling does not work and will never work

    This is really not accurate. There are some plastics which can be "effectively recycled and safely made from recycled content" and some which cannot. I'm not fundamentally against eventually replacing all plastic packaging, but it's false to say that no plastics can successfully be recycled.

    With that said, I think we ought to ban all the ones we can't reasonably recycle from being used as packaging, and soon.

    And with that said, I want to point out that numerous organizations have claimed that they can recycle 100% of all plastics through fluidized bed pyrolysis. Some have even said they can do it without bleeding money. Nobody has said that they can make it profitable AFAIK, but that's not necessary, is it? Just charge anyone who wants to make stuff out of plastics that can't reasonably be recycled any other way enough to have them recycled in this fashion. If some other solution is cheaper, then they will use it.

    • Re:Mostly yes, but also some no (Score:4, Funny)

      by pr0t0 ( 216378 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2022 @09:15AM (#62579590)

      Just charge anyone who wants to make stuff out of plastics that can't reasonably be recycled any other way enough to have them recycled in this fashion. If some other solution is cheaper, then they will use it.

      This. 100%. While informing people that plastic recycling does not work is not devoid of merit, nothing will change without a real alternative. The good news is that consumers do not have to find that alternative for manufacturers, they can and will do that all on their own when the cost to use non-recyclable/non-compostable materials is too high. You want to sell your product made of or contained within plastic, you'll need to pay for it's impact on our planet. It's also highly probable that large manufacturers already have greener alternatives waiting to be trotted out when those costs come.

      Most people are unaware that the whole concept of recycling plastic came from the plastic industry. They knew it didn't work for all but a few plastics and pushed the concept anyway. They stole the 3-arrow recycling symbol and slapped it on all plastics regardless of their recyclability knowing people wouldn't think to look at that tiny little number in the center to make sure it was a 1 or a 2.

      Now we all have plastic in our lungs. For money? You did this for money? Thanks, assholes.

  • ...in the US (Score:3)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Tuesday May 31, 2022 @08:55AM (#62579524)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    South-Korea leads the list with 56.5%, Germany is on place 3.

    Israel is last with 5.8%.

    The US didn't make the list.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jsonn ( 792303 )
      Speaking for Germany at least, much of plastic products ends up in the "burn it" category, which is a major waste. One of the biggest dick move of Coca Cola in the last two decades was replacing almost all reusable plastic bottles with single use plastic bottles. Single use plastic bottles are at least 70% new material. Compare that with glass bottles: they are on-average used for 50+ cycles before getting remelted, and new bottles are typically made from recycled material by 60-80%.

      • Glass Coke bottles have always been heavy.

        There are companies working on lighter glass bottles -- at this point they have 1/2 weight bottles for the same capacity.

        Perhaps it might make economic sense for Coke to move back?

  • The theory of recyclable plastics has made, and continues to make, billions of dollars for the petro-chemical industy. All praise to ExxonMobile, Aramco, Dow and all the other petroleum producers who sold the "recycle" lie. They followed the same recipe as the tobacco industry, with even more toxic results. Profit today, let tomorrow's consumers take care of themselves.

    I'm in a particularly crotchety mood today.

    • Perhaps some simple legislation this year which says all containers need a manufacturer mark on them.

      Then a new law in two years which says all used containers should be returned to them.
      To stack up. And smell.

      Maybe we'd at least get to see a lot more reuse, as opposed to recycling.

  • "Plastic recycling doesn't work" may be true, but arguing that plastics have to be separated first and somehow that's impossible is a bad reason for saying it doesn't work.

  • Plastic recycling can be made to work (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2022 @09:00AM (#62579542)

    Plastic recycling can work in certain cultures, where high degree of consensus coupled with high agreeability and trust in authority that is returned in high respect of people by the authority. I.e. authority must be largely incorruptible and highly culturally primed to hear concerns of the people and people must be highly culturally primed to respect authority and obey the instructions provided, but also have a path to inform authority of problems with instructions. I.e. authority must have direct path and constant drive to improve even though it really doesn't need to.

    This is simply a no-go in Anglo countries. This sort of relationship between the people and the authority is antithetical to Anglo cultures. And other places also have significant problems with trying something like this, either because of corruption or because of lack of mutual trust between people and authority or both.

    The only places where this can realistically be made to work is Nordics, Japan and South Korea. And maybe to some extent Netherlands. The countries where you already have systems in place to do some of that recycling. The countries where you can trust people to do their own sorting exactly as instructed with extremely high reliability. I.e. no shoving things in a wrong bin by even one out of a hundred, spoiling the whole batch. No people who didn't read the instructions or didn't comprehend them properly and just put unwashed or wrong color plastic into the bin.

    This is a problem with no technical solution in sight. It has to be human side solution. People need to care for real and not just because they want to mine social status among their peers. Social status miners are the people who'll post on their social media how great they are at sorting once a week, and then dump it where ever when no one is looking and they're just too tired, too stressed or in too much of a hurry that day.

    • The solution is to make it appear profitable for the consumer. Pay you for recycling your items, even if it comes from taxes. Or put another way, those that recycle get their taxes back.

      Right now it is doubling our local trash pickup fees. Which is a bad look.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jsonn ( 792303 )
      Asking consumers to sort plastic is futile, they don't have any idea about the different materials etc. It works reasonable well for glass bottles, and even for those, color filters are used to ensure that there is no contamination. This is especially important for white glass, where pieces of the wrong color must be much less than 1% by mass.

    • Plastic recycling can work in certain cultures,[...]This is simply a no-go in Anglo countries. [...] The only places where this can realistically be made to work is Nordics, Japan and South Korea. And maybe to some extent Netherlands.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      The UK is lower middle of the pack, but not far off Finland and much better than Japan I think your assertion may be wrong.

  • It's not that plastic recycling doesn't work. It works. We have the technology to do it. It's really that people don't want to be bothered to do it. The author lost me at the mention of "low-income communities or communities of color" and made everything else he said suspect. His viewpoint is no more realistic than the non-hydrocarbon energy crowd that refuses to consider nuclear power.

    • The problem is there's no downstream market for the recycled product. You can take some plastics and make them into other things, like carpets or playground mats. Ultimately if you make a "recyclable" product and label it as such, it should have some downstream use to create a market that isn't a landfill.

    • > The author lost me at the mention of "low-income communities

      Can't you see how there might be more trash fires in low-income communities

      > or communities of color"

      Oh.

      Why are we reading this?

  • Reuse. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pz ( 113803 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2022 @09:01AM (#62579550) Journal

    I've been saying this idea for years. Of the standard Reduce, Reuse, Recycle mantra, the one that has the highest impact is the middle option: Reuse.

    Reusing a bottle, bag, container, whathaveyou only ONE TIME cuts the total consumption of that item by 50%. That's huge. Almost all bottles, bags, containers, whathaveyous can be reused once. Many can be reused more times. If you can reuse it three times total, then consumption of that item is now 1/4 of what it was.

    For conservationists, that's wet-dream levels of reduction, and in many cases it comes with almost zero effort.

    Recycling is good, and has its place (although with obvious difficulties for things like plastics; aluminum, steel, glass, and paper are the winners, here), but reusing is far more powerful.

    Let's look at it in the other direction: take your favorite t-shirt. You get to wear it many dozens of times before it is no longer in good shape. Now imagine needing to buy a new version every time you wore it. Where would you find the time to do that much shopping? Where would you even put all the extra copies you'd need to store between shopping trips? How would you deal with all the waste you'd generate on a near daily basis? Reuse is the key to lower levels of consumption across the board.

    • This thinking resulted in the banning of 'disposable' plastic shopping bags, resulting in thicker plastic shopping bags you have to pay 5 cents for. Now just from writing that, I have a bad feeling that "studies show" people discard them anyways so the thicker bags result in additional waste rather than re-use. However, it's a cultural thing, getting used to keeping the bags, and putting them where you will want them next time you need them, requires time and new habits. It could work. I was bummed when

    • Let's look at it in the other direction: take your favorite t-shirt. You get to wear it many dozens of times before it is no longer in good shape.

      My favorite T-shirt is polyester fast fashion from H&M, you insensitive clod!

      Just a few short years ago I could still reliably get 100% cotton tees under $5 each, in multi-packs. Now it's hard to find even a poly one for that price. Peak cotton, baby!

  • "Renewlogy" - right (Score:3)

    by BeerMilkshake ( 699747 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2022 @09:03AM (#62579556)

    C'mon Dow - pyrolysis has been around a long time and is used many places in the world already. The challenges are known.

    The trouble with plastic bags (plastic films) is they snarl the presorting equipment and prevent it from removing trapped air, thus making the chamber less economically efficient.

    The trouble with mixing plastic types resulting in mixed output is well known too. I don't undertand what the big problem with mixed heavy oil is - it has to be further refined to be useful as diesel anyway. Mixed or not, all that hhe heavy oil can be burnt in a heavy-oil generator to generate electricity - such generators already exist. The heavy oil can be further refined to diesel, and it may be used directly for chemical/industrial purposes.

  • Sorting is work. So we won't do it. We don't do work here unless someone is bribing us to. That we could make a better future for those who come after we're gone isn't conceivable.
  • I agree that kerbside recycling of plastic is problematic. I would never say it can never be made to work, but we would either need some new process to break all plastics down to common components or some highly automated sensor/sorter.

    However there are some cases where you can get a large amount of one place plastic in one. The office I worked in had a receptacle near the coffee machine specifically for the coffee cups the vending machine used. Recycling large items like car dashboards could be made to w

    • Recycling large items like car dashboards could be made to work by giving breakers sufficient incentives.

      Most car dashboards are made of multiple materials bonded together with adhesives, so they're impractical to recycle. The automakers have to also be encouraged to make them more recyclable. That, or we have to just use pyrolysis and give up onj recycling them any other way.

  • Yes, plastic waste is a problem. The author forgets that the reason more plastics are being used, mostly in containers, is because manufacturers and consumers wanted more convenience. I grew up with glass bottles everywhere but they would be discarded, not recycled left broken in a street or alley for some innocent person to shred a tire in his car or a kid on a bike. Plastics are cheap, too cheap but even Aluminum isn't recycled as much as it should be. Plastics also give us a feeling of security by wrappi

    • Put a higher tax on bottles and cans and use the money for recycling, but when this is tried manufacturers balk. So you'd have to get a big grassroots movement going before there will be change.

  • All you need is a well balanced pyrolysis process. Works for all types of plastics. It is not very difficult and it is already being done at some scale by several startups. More about this: https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Delgul ( 515042 )

      Separating the plastics from other garbage by people may be a problem but can be done fully automated. Putting it in the hands of individuals at the source is utter madness, as many start to realize.

  • My local trash is required to support recycling, to do so some companies send a second truck to every residence each week. The fuel surcharges are starting over inflate the bill for the little recycling that actually happens, plus more exhaust in the air and wear to the roadways.

    Can we stop requiring recycling where it doesn't make any sense? Please?

  • scam (Score:3)

    by blackomegax ( 807080 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2022 @09:43AM (#62579682) Journal
    Recycling is a scam.
    My local trash companies offer the bins, but chuck them in to the same trash truck as the trash.
    My uni had bins but the "trash" and "recycling" holes went INTO THE SAME BAG.
    Performative nonsense.

    • Thank you for enlightening us with your evidence based on a sample size of one.

    • Not ALL recycling is a scam. Usually, a corrupt system produces corrupt results, not just in recycling, but in everything.

      Here's an example: My apartment building is owned by a huge corporation that owns dozens of other apartment complexes in my city. It has sacrificed several reserved/paid parking spaces (which would otherwise generate revenue) for recycling (containers and fibres) and organic (stinky stuff) bins. In return, the city picks up the dumpster used for regular, unsorted garbage for free. S

  • The major issue isn't with the consumer, but with the waste management systems, the people making and selling the products. Why should we rely on the end consumer to sort their materials, down to the plastic types, and make the distinction between what's garbage and what's recyclable? I've had this argument with my partner many times, that the stupid little number doesn't belong in recycling because our system doesn't support it, and while that might be true, why isn't that system doing the sorting and processing?

    Garbage and recycling should be combined and processed at the waste management facilities, they should do the sorting, because ultimately there's no way for an average end consumer to do the job properly, with all the rules. This idea that we should blame consumers who are not trying hard enough, or not putting forth enough effort is stupid at best, and insane in most cases. It shouldn't be my job to know what plastics can go in the recycling bin, or to even know what plastic material my drink bottle, cleaner bottle, or cutlery is made from.

    This problem should not entirely rely on waste management facilities, governments and producers (including companies like Walmart, and Amazon), play a big part of the blame. Why do we allow plastic, except in certain circumstances, that can't be recycled? If you can't mix green bottle plastic, and clear bottle plastic, then pick one and stop using the other. If a take out meal has N plastics involved, then decide on one or two, and standardize them. If I buy a product from Amazon, don't use shipping materials that can't be recycled, and don't ship my product in a box that's 10x the size it needs to be.

    Another major problem is that different counties don't accept the same bleeping plastics or materials, making this entire topic more absurd. I'm at my parents right now, and their system accepts different plastic, then where my house is located, and that information is not easily available or in a format for easy ingestion, yet none of the provincial candidates are talking about standardizing the systems.

    The concept of recycling has been design to fail, it's been designed to not work, and cause problems. When a system is this cluster bleeped then it's the systems job to sort it out. When my garbage is picked up, then it should be sorted, because well I can try to the job correctly, the chances I mess it up is nearly 100%. It's time we stop making recycling the end consumers job, and put the effort, under government mandate, at the source and destination of the problem. Recycling can work when it's done properly, but since no end consumer can stand a chance of doing it properly, because of the bleeped up system, then stop asking us to make it work and give the extra effort.

  • Simple solution (Score:3)

    by kbg ( 241421 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2022 @10:28AM (#62579854)

    Most of these problems can be traced back to private companies not giving a shit, since they don't have to deal with the problem. If private companies had to pay tax as percentage of revenue based on how what type and plastic they used for their products, you would instantly solve this problem.

  • Should never have been Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Plastic recycling has always been an industry tool of making people more comfortable with single use plastics, and blaming individual consumers when plastics inevitably pile up in the environment (you littered! you didn't recycle! you bad consumer, you.)

    When it comes to plastics, it's reduce, reuse. Period. Even for other materials, "recycle" is a distant third. "Use it then throw it away" was always a bad model.

  • Why doesn't someone use AI to sort these plastics, they should be detectable with different wavelengths of light? It seems like an achievable thing. There is probably no market for used plastics. We need to create a market for used plastics.

  • "Plastic recycling does not work and will never work. "
    People should be careful with words like never - forever is a long time. Someday robots will likely automate the tasks necessary for recycling plastics in a economically viable way. It could even be a century but eventually it will likely happen.

  • Is there any reason why we can't just ban single use plastics for things like bottled water, sodas, etc?

    'Boomer' here, but in my day beverages were in glass bottles with a deposit or aluminum cans. I understand the expense in transporting heavy bottles back and forth, as well as cleaning and sanitizing them, but why not aluminum cans?

    I'm by no means up to date on the aluminum recycling process, but from what I understand it is far cheaper to recycle aluminum than to manufacture new aluminum. What is the r

    • Ban everything!

    • Coca-Cola provided a bit more insight, saying through a spokesperson that âoeWe source our aluminum can sheet from various suppliers, many of whom offer can sheet that includes recycled content. Use of the Novelis âEvercanâ(TM) requires the Company to restrict our supply to only Novelis materialâ.

      https://www.theguardian.com/su... [theguardian.com]

      I say increase the deposit until it's unaffordable to not recycle the cans into cans.

  • Too many plastics to recycle? Then restrict them. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by eepok ( 545733 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2022 @10:54AM (#62580004) Homepage

    PET#1 bottles cannot be recycled with PET#1 clamshells... and green PET#1 bottles cannot be recycled with clear PET#1 bottles (which is why South Korea has outlawed colored PET#1 bottles.) ... (HDPE#2), polyvinyl chloride (PVC#3), low-density polyethylene (LDPE#4), polypropylene (PP#5), and polystyrene (PS#6) all must be separated for recycling. Just one fast-food meal can involve many different types of single-use plastic, including PET#1, HDPE#2, LDPE#4, PP#5, and PS#6 cups, lids, clamshells, trays, bags, and cutlery, which cannot be recycled together.

    which is why South Korea has outlawed colored PET#1 bottles.

    So, what I'm seeing is that we use a bunch of different plastics for a bunch of different reasons. Let's just focus on food, though-

    1. Choose ONE plastic for ALL beverage bottles (soda, water, whatever)
    2. Choose ONE plastic for foods requiring semi-rigid plastics (containers/clamshells, trays, utensils, and straws)
    3. Choose ONE plastic for hot food (containers)
    4. User paper wherever possible (cups, straws)
    5. Stop selling plastic grocery bags except at a price that then subsidizes plastic cleanup.

    Is that wrong? Can we not simply mandate that specific plastics be used with specific sold food products? If we can, let's do so, make all plastics of certain types of the same color, and require LARGE LEGIBLE stamping of the designation for easy sorting.

    1. Beverage bottles: Clear
    2. Semi-Rigid: Blue
    3. Pliable for hot food: Red

  • Do we really need 100+ types of plastics? Maybe narrow it down to a dozen via standardization and related markings, then sorting would be simplified.

  • Plastic recycling involves vast amounts of labor. It is absurd.

    It should be done in a continuous industrial process. Plastics should be dissolved in solvents and fractionally distilled into their various monomers, much like how petroleum is distilled. The only problem is that that requires energy, but we have infinite energy available for almost free from renewables, so not a problem.

  • Just stop using plastics all over the place for single-use and short-term-use items, then. Only use plastics for 'durable', long-term-use items. For everything else, go back to glass and metals, and milk carton-like packaging. I really believe that the only reason we don't do that is companies are lazy and don't want to be bothered.

  • British Columbia has some very successful recycling stewardship programs, including plastic recycling. For example, over 71% of plastic beverage containers were recovered and processed for recycling in 2020. (Source: https://ar.return-it.ca/ar2020/environmental-impact.php [return-it.ca] )

  • Back when I was in high school in the early 90s, I had to write a research paper for a science class. Mine was entitled "Why we should be burning Paper and Plastic instead of recycling it".

    It pretty much stated that plastic recycling was an end sum game, since most plastics (and paper at the time) could not be recycled past 25-50% in the 90s and eventually all of the plastic made today (IE: the 90s) would eventually end up in a landfill (IE: Now), it would just take longer to get there. The solution given i

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