Amazon Packages Burn in India, Final Stop in Broken Recycling System (bloomberg.com) 56
Plastic wrappers and parcels that start off in Americans' recycling bins end up at illegal dumpsites and industrial furnaces -- and inside the lungs of people in Muzaffarnagar. From a report: Muzaffarnagar, a city about 80 miles north of New Delhi, is famous in India for two things: colonial-era freedom fighters who helped drive out the British and the production of jaggery, a cane sugar product boiled into goo at some 1,500 small sugar mills in the area. Less likely to feature in tourism guides is Muzaffarnagar's new status as the final destination for tons of supposedly recycled American plastic. On a November afternoon, mosquitoes swarmed above plastic trash piled 6 feet high off one of the city's main roads. A few children picked through the mounds, looking for discarded toys while unmasked waste pickers sifted for metal cans or intact plastic bottles that could be sold.
Although much of it was sodden or shredded, labels hinted at how far these items had traveled: Kirkland-brand almonds from Costco, Nestle's Purina-brand dog food containers, the wrapping for Trader Joe's mangoes. Most ubiquitous of all were Amazon.com shipping envelopes thrown out by US and Canadian consumers some 7,000 miles away. An up-close look at the piles also turned up countless examples of the three arrows that form the recycling logo, while some plastic packages had messages such as "Recycle Me" written across them. Plastic that enters the recycling system in North America isn't supposed to end up in India, which has since 2019 banned almost all imports of plastic waste. So how did Muzaffarnagar become a dumping ground for foreign plastic?
To answer that question, Bloomberg Green retraced a trail back from the industrial belt of northern India, through the brokers who ship refuse around the world, to the municipal waste companies in the US that look for takers of their lowest-value recycling. Finally, the search arrived at the point of origin: American consumers who thought -- wrongly, as it turns out -- that they were recycling their trash. It's a system that's supposed to cut pollution, spare landfills and give valuable materials a second life. But in Muzaffarnagar the failures are hard to miss. The region's other major industry is paper production, with more than 30 mills dotted among the furnaces for making jaggery. Paper factories in India often rely on imported waste paper, which is cheaper than wood pulp. The nation's paper makers need to import around 6 million tons annually to meet demand, and most of it comes from North America. This could be a recycling success story -- were it not for all the plastic that comes mixed into all the waste paper.
Although much of it was sodden or shredded, labels hinted at how far these items had traveled: Kirkland-brand almonds from Costco, Nestle's Purina-brand dog food containers, the wrapping for Trader Joe's mangoes. Most ubiquitous of all were Amazon.com shipping envelopes thrown out by US and Canadian consumers some 7,000 miles away. An up-close look at the piles also turned up countless examples of the three arrows that form the recycling logo, while some plastic packages had messages such as "Recycle Me" written across them. Plastic that enters the recycling system in North America isn't supposed to end up in India, which has since 2019 banned almost all imports of plastic waste. So how did Muzaffarnagar become a dumping ground for foreign plastic?
To answer that question, Bloomberg Green retraced a trail back from the industrial belt of northern India, through the brokers who ship refuse around the world, to the municipal waste companies in the US that look for takers of their lowest-value recycling. Finally, the search arrived at the point of origin: American consumers who thought -- wrongly, as it turns out -- that they were recycling their trash. It's a system that's supposed to cut pollution, spare landfills and give valuable materials a second life. But in Muzaffarnagar the failures are hard to miss. The region's other major industry is paper production, with more than 30 mills dotted among the furnaces for making jaggery. Paper factories in India often rely on imported waste paper, which is cheaper than wood pulp. The nation's paper makers need to import around 6 million tons annually to meet demand, and most of it comes from North America. This could be a recycling success story -- were it not for all the plastic that comes mixed into all the waste paper.
We pay them to take our trash. (Score:5, Insightful)
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If it's burned properly at a high temperature the byproducts are CO2 and water.
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The most economical way will probably be the way that extracts the most energy. Which, by the way, means the byproducts are CO2 and water.
Re:We pay them to take our trash. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's actually the plastics industry who created, sponsored and OWN this scam. While the government has been lobbied to by industry to turn a blind eye to avoid regulation, their day of reckoning is coming, much like the tobacco industry finally had their day. Sugar and plastics industries will be in the cross hairs in the near (5-20 year) future too.
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Have you seen tobacco packaging lately, at least in Canada? Also, still having huge profits does not mean their industry is not in decline. I'm 50 and I don't know anyone my age or below that uses tobacco.
Re: We pay them to take our trash. (Score:2)
Re: We pay them to take our trash. (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps you should learn to research things before you spout nonsense, Philip-Morrisâ(TM) revenue went from 700M in the 1970s to a 150B in the last few years (and rising).
Making cigarettes really expensive with government regulation and driving out the competition masks price and profit increases at the source.
People think e-cigs are new when vaping and clean chemical delivery of nicotine was invented in the 1930s, marketed in the 60s, revived in the 90s and once again revived in the last few years and
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Nope, but close.
You, directly, are PAYING for those recycling levys.
How much gets recycled? Not much.
Metal is easy to separate and sort, just run a magnet over the recycling and you get all the iron and steel. That is what is "most" valuable from metal scrap. Copper and Aluminum? Nope. That has to be sorted.
Glass is also "relatively" easy to separate from other trash because it sinks in water. Unfortunately glass is all but entirely worthless, and mostly ends up in concrete and fiberglass. Not a big market,
Re:We pay them to take our trash. (Score:5, Informative)
Your anger is justified, but misplaced. Trash companies recycle what they can, but the fact is that many things with the recycling symbol are not actually able to be recycled. Every trash company will tell you what they can recycle and what they can't, as they don't want to have to pull things out of the recycling and put it in the trash. But people think anything with 3 arrows means it can be recycled, which is a lie. Unfortunately, recycling is a scam from the manufacturers to pass the buck. IF they can convince people recycling is the solution, they don't have to do anything to fix the problem like use less packaging or sustainable packaging.
Re: We pay them to take our trash. (Score:5, Informative)
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Since you seem pretty knowledgeable around the subject...
I own a few 3D printers. Some prints fail, others require supports which are discarded. I keep all leftover material, grind it and melt it into silicone molds, recycling nearly 100% of PLA, PETG, ABS, ASA, TPU, etc.
Can't the same process be industrially applied to "non-recyclable" plastics? Melt it in a slag, then pour it into molds, sell the objects again? Is it cost-prohibitive (energy-wise)? Does it pose a health risk (fumes, etc)?
Re: We pay them to take our trash. (Score:3)
Depending on the polyner and the hardening agent used the results of recycled plastic will differ. What is common is for a manufacturer to find a good ratio of new and recycled plastic that yields quantifable results. This can be anything from 0% to 100% recycled with 95% often optimal. What gets dicey is I am bot talking about post-consumer waste but industry taking scraps, sprue, etc and running it through an industrial chipper to add to other pelletized plastic. Where this fails is it is easy to run out
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I believe one of the big problems with waste plastic/cardboard is that it's generally dirty / contaminated...
Re: We pay them to take our trash. (Score:3)
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With plastics specifically, the real problem is how much we drive and fly. No, seriously. If we drill for crude oil, and refine it for diesel or gasoline or jet fuel, a certain amount is made into PET as a byproduct (or HDPE)... The key is, we will not really up the refinery output to get more resin and throw away the fuels. The fuels are the primary product
While I don't disagree with your premise, the fundamental concept of fractional distillation has many complex interdependencies. Some people say the demand for gasoline will disappear and it will become expensive as we adopt EVs, but as long as we are refining diesel and jet fuel there will still be gasoline as fundamental byproduct as well. The same applies to the resins for plastics, lubricating oils, heavy oils for asphalt and light hydrocarbons like propane and butane and all the other myriad petroleu
Re: We pay them to take our trash. (Score:2)
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But people think anything with 3 arrows means it can be recycled, which is a lie.
It's worse than that. I live in a condo complex with a shared recycling dumpster and I regularly see items with absolutely zero indication of recyclability on them. Some times it's plastic items that are not at all recyclable (like giant children playsets) but other times it will be organic debris because somehow idiot neighbors of mine think that belongs in recycling
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Oh, I suspect most people don't bother to read, or know how to read english, or know what the symbol is. I see food waste and other trash in the recycling dumpsters all time, and sometimes the recycling truck refuses to take it. Last week I saw someone sitting n the side of the dumpster pulling out bag after bag of garbage that someone dumped in. Maybe too much work for someone to walk the extra ten feet to the real garbage spot.
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> They lie to us, saying it is headed for a recycling plant, and someone in the middle is getting rich receiving the trash and dumping it.
By someone do you mean the American broker ?
'That Can Be Recycled!' For triple the damages. (Score:5, Interesting)
Hell we could just burn it right here in the US - oh wait 30 years ago they tried to install a trash to steam plant right down the road - it was voted down so bad no one has ever tried that again since.
Just admit it doesn't work so that we can stop wasting over double the fuel trying to push around something no one wants.
re: recycling trucks (Score:4, Insightful)
You'd be correct, except at this point? Most people I know welcome the once every other week recycling pickup from your large blue bin, simply because it gives you one more container to throw your discarded stuff into for pickup.
Especially when I was first moving out of my old place and into my new one? I was filling the roll-away trash can to the top every single week, just cleaning up the junk the previous owner left behind, plus building materials from projects getting done to fix the places up. Having that second bin was a life-saver.
It really doesn't work though, if you're talking about it "saving the planet". At best, it's just a way for municipalities to potentially make a small annual profit from it if people put enough aluminum in the recycling bins (which is pretty much the only material you get a net positive profit from recycling).
Yay globalism (Score:1)
Not much else to say there.
Propaganda (Score:2)
In fact we have such a waste control problem that any solution that involves disposal is going to fail. That is why the first part of the solution has always been to reduce. Because there is no way to deal with cubic meters of trash the average person throws away every day
Then there is the realization that not all recycled item are. Out local paper did a story where a few truck were
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I've said it before, and undoubtedly, I'll say it again. The mantra should be REUSE, reduce, recycle.
Reuse an item just once, and you've reduced your consumption of that product by 50%. We have good history in the US demonstrating that even under the tightest of situations (e.g., the 1973 oil crisis) our ability to reduce consumption through conservation, meaning, getting by with using less, is pathetic. As a country, we barely managed a 30% reduction with draconian rules that were hammered into our psych
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Recycling takes work... (Score:5, Interesting)
I know, the old mantra: Reduce Reuse Recycle, with "Dump" being last on the list.
But I used to live in Alaska. A lot of our recycling efforts vanished when people finally did a study and found that shipping(for example) plastic bottles to a recycling location would consume more oil than it would take to just make a new one.
Making landfilling the bottles over recycling them the more responsible ecological decision. There's a limit to how much we can reduce our bottle use, after all. It might work better if there was some sort of magic reuse system, where the bottles could be cheaply sorted, washed, and reused. So that, for example, my shampoo bottle is recognized, given a wash, and refilled with more shampoo(of that brand and type, even). But like I said - currently magic, so not worth it.
That being said, there is a hidden recycling opportunity - accept that you're not recycling the plastic into more plastic, but plastic into energy(electricity) is still possible. We can burn the plastic at the local coal power plant, which actually reduces emissions at the coal plant by displacing coal use. The only problem we've had there is that the shredding/burning annex of the coal plant keeps catching fire.
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If you're shipping plastic refuse all the way over to India for "recycling", the same math applies.
The Alaska example was reusing shipping containers, using rail to get the stuff to port, and only shipping it to Washington(the state), not across most of the world.
Basically, each step was the most generous take for that step of the journey, and it still only took ~2k miles to make it totally counterproductive.
Cargo ships meanwhile, burn some of the nastiest fuel remaining on the planet, bunker oil.
Generally
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Standardization might help. Do all of these bottles need to be such snowflakes ?
When I was a kid I could see the empty beer bottles stacked outside bars, they were made from thick glass that could stand up to being washed and reused many times. They were a good size for selling many products.
Milk bottles too were collected washed and re-used, now the only option to do that is at high end grocery stores and boutique dairies.
Mason jars seem pretty standard and as a result get reused may times in our house and
Re: Propaganda (Score:1)
Perhaps you should review why people replaced glass with plastics - turns out burning oil to move glass vast distances with limited recyclability is worse than making plastics. Plastics are a hydrocarbon and should be treated as such, with modern filtering systems they are perfectly capable of being burned cleanly.
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A good deal of that cost reduction came came from the lack of breakage with plastic. Another part was the reduction in shipping costs ( fuel use) because plastic containers were lighter.
As for recycling glass, remelting it is not cheap, nor is using the detergents and very hot water, then rinse water, followed by hot air drying to sterilize them for reuse.
Glass is not a panacea either. Yes, the Kerr canning jar I've used every year for 20 years is better than plastic, but I'm hand washing and processing the
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- turns out burning oil to move glass vast distances with limited recyclability is worse than making plastics
Vast distances? The glass milk bottles would be returned to the dairy depot for washing and refilling from a bulk tanker, and most places in a city were within about two miles of a depot. Moreover, in the UK where I am the full bottles would be delivered from and empties returned to the depot in electric vehicles called milk floats.
The reason for replacement with plastic here seemed to do with the rise of vandalism, where smashing milk bottles (full or empty) became a national pastime for certain age
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In fact we have such a waste control problem that any solution that involves disposal is going to fail.
How do you figure that? We're not some tiny Island nation, we have an absolutely enormous amount of space for landfill. Even if we kept all of our garbage here in this country it would take us centuries to even reach inconvenience levels.
I'm all for reducing use of various product as a means of stopping the atmospheric pollution associated with production but the whole landfill angle doesnt hold water for me.
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The biggest proponents of recycling have been corporations since it made them look virtuous at no cost to them.
Same as with Diversity, Inclusion, "Equity" (DIE).
Don't Recycle (Score:3)
I donâ(TM)t even want my trash crossing state (Score:2)
A nearby, less populous, less affluent state is balking at taking our trash. I agree with them. We should all be responsible for our own trash, at least regionally in a state. If that means burning or landfills, so be it. If you donâ(TM)t like it, find a *legitimate* way to deal with it that is provably worthwhile Right now, thereâ(TM)s a lot of lying and virtue signaling going on. Iâ(TM)d really rather not be responsible for trash showing up in India or Indonesia.
No longer bother with recycling plastic now... (Score:2)
I'm in the UK, generally speaking, we have similar "trash can" types across regions.
In total, I have five bins (trash cans) - general household waste, food waste, green waste, glass & carboard/plastic.
I've reached the point, after all the stories that have come out - like tracing so much of our plastic waste, half-way across the globe, that I now just chuck plastic waste into the regular non-recyclable "general household waste".
It's often impossible to tell what type it is - so, I guess, no logo = can't
Pass the cost to consumers (Score:2)
Companies claim they have to use plastics. But it's not because of a limitation of their products, it's an economic thing. Plastic is cheap. We could package goods in other kinds of packaging, and we can indeed recycle some plastics. But we could also reuse plastics.
Because it's an economic issue, not technological, we should start charging people to pay for their packaging. You pay more for plastic, less for reusable plastics, and even less for non-plastic containers. The cost is included in your product p
So? (Score:2)
They wanted it. It's not our right to interfere in what they do with it.
Shred and mold? (Score:1)
Can't they just take all the waste plastic that isn't recycled, shred it, put it in to a mold with a binding agent and make stuff from it? Or mix it in with things like asphalt or concrete? They already do that with things like composite deck lumber, etc...