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Exxon Mobil's 'Advanced' Technique for Recycling Plastic? Burning It (yahoo.com) 128

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Los Angeles Times: In recent years — as longstanding efforts to recycle plastics have faltered — Exxon Mobil has touted advanced recycling as a groundbreaking technology that will turn the tide on the plastic crisis. But despite its seemingly eco-friendly name, the attorney general's lawsuit denounced advanced recycling as a "public relations stunt" that largely involves superheating plastics to convert them into fuel.

At Exxon Mobil's only "advanced recycling" facility in Baytown, Texas, only 8% of plastic is remade into new material, while the remaining 92% is processed into fuel that is later burned. [California attorney general Rob] Bonta's lawsuit seeks a court order to prohibit the company from describing the practice as "advanced recycling," arguing the vast majority of plastic is destroyed. Many environmental advocates and policy experts lauded the legal action as a major step toward ending greenwashing by Exxon Mobil — the world's largest producer of single-use plastic polymer... Advanced recycling, which is also called chemical recycling, is an umbrella term that typically involves heating or dissolving plastic waste to create fuel, chemicals and waxes — a fraction of which can be used to remake plastic. The most common techniques yield only 1% to 14% of the plastic waste, according to a 2023 study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Exxon Mobil has largely used reclaimed plastic for fuel production while ramping up its virgin plastic production, according to Bonta.

The executive director of California Communities Against Toxics complains Exxon Mobil's "advanced" recycling is "the same technology we've had since the Industrial Revolution... a blast furnace." (The article also quotes her as asking "How is that better than coal?") And a UCLA researcher who studied the issue blames misperceptions about plastic recycling on "an industry-backed misinformation campaign." He agrees that the reality is "having to burn more oil to turn that plastic back into oil, which you then burn."

California's attorney general "alleges Exxon Mobil has had a patent for this technology since 1978, and the company is falsely rebranding it as 'new' and 'advanced'... It recently reemerged after the company learned that the term 'advanced recycling' resonated with members of the public..."
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Exxon Mobil's 'Advanced' Technique for Recycling Plastic? Burning It

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  • It's a Scam (Score:5, Insightful)

    by stooo ( 2202012 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @02:44AM (#64827721) Homepage

    Plastic recycling is 95% scan, 5% facade justification for the scam.

    • Re:It's a Scam (Score:5, Informative)

      by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @06:07AM (#64827933)

      It does not have to be. The key is reducing plastic variety and collection that makes sense. In many European countries, for example, PET beverage bottles actually get recycled and are actually turned into new PET bottles.

      • Re: It's a Scam (Score:5, Insightful)

        by guruevi ( 827432 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @06:39AM (#64827981)

        Again, no it isnâ(TM)t. The majority of plastics cannot be recycled. You need a stream of new plastic to put it in and it costs more energy overall. It IS better to burn it in a high heat environment and use the resulting energy in electricity production or other industrial processes. Plastics are just structured hydrocarbons (basically crystals) it is incredibly hard to restructure them.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by msauve ( 701917 )
          >The majority of plastics cannot be recycled.

          And yet, the article says that at that facility, 100% is:

          8% of plastic is remade into new material, while the remaining 92% is processed into fuel

          The author would like to claim that 92% isn't recycled, but it is. The US EPA says [epa.gov]: "Recycling is the process of collecting and processing materials that would otherwise be thrown away as trash and turning them into new products." It's hydrocarbons all the way through.

          What's processed into fuel displaces the ne

          • by Rujiel ( 1632063 )
            I think you missed the part about "processed into fuel *and destroyed*"
            • by msauve ( 701917 )
              LOL. The claim is "the vast majority of plastic is destroyed." It is not, it's recycled into fuel. And, of course, recycling and making further use of it is better than not destroying it by burying it in a landfill.
              • by Rujiel ( 1632063 )
                Is the fuel ultimately used for smething meaningful? If not, then the product is not really recycled. You can throw around LOLs but being pedantic does not help your case
                • by msauve ( 701917 )
                  The CA AG said in an interview that it's mostly turned into jet fuel. Have you ever flown in a plane?
            • Here in the Netherlands, where we hug trees for a living, we have to add gas to the furnaces burning household waste because it contains less plastic every year.

              So we are recycling plastic in order to do what, exactly? And what do people think happens eventually when it isn't burned?

              I hate ExxonMobil with a passion. They're pond scum. They paid a think tank to hire Rishi Sunak in order to increase sentences for environmental activists. The whole leadership is going to be hung from lampposts if the tables ev

          • Re: It's a Scam (Score:4, Insightful)

            by hey! ( 33014 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @03:20PM (#64829239) Homepage Journal

            Yes, that's the universal *political* definition of "recycling". But it's not what environemntalists mean by "recycling". The problem with the government definition is that it doesn't actually have any "cycle" in it -- i.e., there is no closed loop from which the matter in products never exit as pollution. Government and industry like the "turn into another product" definition because it allows them to greenwash questionable practices that don't affect the waste stream in a way you can say for sure is a good thing. Something qualifying "recycling" in the government sense says nothing about whether it's good or bad.

            The environmentalists'' word for what the government calls "recycling" is "downcycling". I'm not as dismissive as environmentalists are of downcycling, but you have to look at the details of the processes to determine if they're beneficial. You can't just call them "recycling" and say that's a win.

            Plastic-to-energy, either by converting it to fuel or simply burning it *as* fuel, is a good example. It's "recycling" in the government sense, and has two potential benefits: eliminating plastic waste and displacing carbon-emitting fossil fuels in energy production. The problem is, it actually generates slightly *more* CO2 than simply burning oil to generate the same amount of energy. And that's not a life-cycle analysis, that's just looking at what comes out of the smokestack. From a climate standpoint we're better of putting plastic in a landfill and burning oil instead, although in practical terms burning plastic *instead* of oil probably wouldn't increase our total emissions significantly. The elimination of plastic waste would unquestionably be a significant benefit.

            So plastic-to-energy *could* be somewhat beneficial if we could do it on a large scale, but that's the real question. It's just like existing plastic recycling; that theoretically *could* be beneficial, but as long as virgin plastic is cheaper than recycled it will have no real impact -- not like aluminum steel, or even paper recycling where economics means those things *do* get recycled in meaningful amounts. If petroleum is cheaper than plastic-derived fuels, then plastic-to-fuel will be just another benchtop process with no economic application.

            The thing that could certainly make a big difference right away without costing very much is simply to stop using so damned much plastic, especially in places where a functionally equivalent and environmentally superior alternative exists. Fifty years ago if you got take-out chinese food it came in a 100% recyclable, 99.9% biodegradable folding paper box with a steel wire handle. Today it comes in a non-recyclable plastic tray that will last a thousand years in a landfill, because that tray costs a nickel less than the paper box. Would you get upset paying twenty-five cents more on your $30 takeout order for containers you could chuck in the trash?

        • Re: It's a Scam (Score:5, Informative)

          by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @10:20AM (#64828437)

          Indeed. What Exxon-Mobil is doing is the most effective way to "recycle" plastic. Turning plastic into fuel and offsetting new fossil fuel production is just as effective as reusing the plastic and then pumping new fossil fuels.

          There are plenty of good reasons to hate Exxon-Mobil, but this isn't one of them.

          If you want to help the environment, stop buying so much plastic crap in the first place. "Recycling" isn't the answer.

          • I agree. In too many cases 'recyclable' really just means 'keep buying useless crap because you don't have to feel bad for overconsuming.'
          • Re: It's a Scam (Score:4, Informative)

            by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @11:37AM (#64828619)

            Indeed. What Exxon-Mobil is doing is the most effective way to "recycle" plastic. Turning plastic into fuel and offsetting new fossil fuel production is just as effective as reusing the plastic and then pumping new fossil fuels.

            There are plenty of good reasons to hate Exxon-Mobil, but this isn't one of them.

            If you want to help the environment, stop buying so much plastic crap in the first place. "Recycling" isn't the answer.

            Ok, then try to sell the public on that fact.

            Calling it "advanced recycling" is flat out false-advertising.

            Now, if they captured that carbon from burning and turned that back into plastic (you'd need an external energy source at that point) then that would be advanced recycling.

          • Its not even Exxon's fault to begin with, almost all the shit plastic in packaging comes overseas: See China. Aint no one make shit in the US.
      • Re:It's a Scam (Score:5, Interesting)

        by coofercat ( 719737 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @07:48AM (#64828063) Homepage Journal

        My personal favourite recycled product is "plastic wood". It's insanely expensive, maybe 4 times the cost of the equivalent wood product, but it's amazing stuff. It's a great way to create a damp proof course/membrane at the bottom of a wooden structure (which also is immune from woodworm) - in the olden days you might use a sacrificial bit of batten which you'd heavily treated, but now there's no need - a bit of plastic wood and you're good for decades. The stuff you buy is properly quality controlled and you can get it with structural ratings if you want too, so it's not "a cheapo shoddy product" by any means.

        Ultimately though, this is a chicken and egg problem. Plastic wood (IMHO) has its place in a lot of construction - and could replace a few uses of uPVC and the like (ie. stop making new plastic, and re-use some old stuff). However, the price needs to be much lower and the availability needs to be much better too (right now you can only buy it from a couple of specialists, so shipping is ruinously expensive). When it starts appearing in the average builders merchant, then it'll get used.

        Even if it is used in all construction though, it'll probably only still use up maybe 1% of all plastic waste :-(

        • I have landscape edging that is made out of recycled plastic. I also have some gym equipment made out of it.
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

        We recycle PET here in the USA too. And they do actually get turned into new bottles. At least Coca-Cola and Crystal Geyser are using the post-consumer bottles. You can ID them easily once empty because you can see they are slightly discolored towards black where the bottles are thick around the neck.

        Unfortunately a lot of idiots don't know that we've had the technology to recycle all plastics with fluid bed pyrolysis for decades, so they keep shouting about how it cannot be recycled, which is exactly what

        • by stooo ( 2202012 )

          >> so they keep shouting about how it cannot be recycled,
          Of course it can. In practice it just is not happening, because economics are bad.
          So, in economic terms, it cannot be recycled because it costs way too much.

  • by Pinky's Brain ( 1158667 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @02:49AM (#64827727)

    Apart from some specialty stuff like teflone and silicone, we'll just have to go back to lignin/cellulose based chemistry.

    • by Rei ( 128717 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @05:28AM (#64827875) Homepage

      That's nice to say, but you have to think about what the goal actually is with plastic products.

      Take food packaging, for example. Why does a box of cereal come packaged in thick plastic bags inside the cardboard box, or granola bars in aluminized plastic wrappers, or whatnot? The answer is gas permeability. How long your food lasts is directly proportional to how much access oxygen and water vapour have to them. The polymers (sometimes multilayered) that are used have *extremely* low permeability, and thus, allow food to last far longer without quality degradation. This prevents food waste on a massive scale and significantly lower costs and increase available options to consumers. Trying to come up with a biopolymer that matches these properties, maintains them through the point of sale, but then quickly breaks down as soon as you throw it in the landfill without any special treatment, is a really big ask. I'm not going to say "impossible", but it's certainly not something we have today.

      Okay, well, what about structural plastics? To this, I'd say, exactly what sort of structural plastics do you want breaking down on you? How is a buried plastic sewage pipe supposed to know the difference between "being in the ground and handling your sewage" and "being in a landfill"? Do you really want all of your plastic pipes, fittings, casings, etc breaking down due to warmth and moisture?

      There are certain categories of things, like grocery bags, that one can get away with having a polymer that steadily degrades upon exposure to moisture, etc. But this not most plastic uses.

      • Just because the feedstock is renewable doesn't mean the plastic is biodegradable. They make bakelite from lignin for instance.

        • by Rei ( 128717 )

          I presumed that that was your goal. What is even the point of taking a good non-biodegradable substance and replacing it with an inferior non-biodegradable substance?

          • It's more expensive, so inferior in that respect, but eventually you can replace all oil based chemistry with lignin/cellulose based chemistry ... it's all just hydrocarbons. Nature can recycle burned plastic to new trees on human timescales, but not to new oil.

            • by Rei ( 128717 )

              On one hand, it's more expensive. But on the other hand, the mechanical properties are also inferior. So it's hard to decide. ... wait.

              (And yes, this article is very much about making new oil. Oil is not difficult to make. Coal-to-liquids for example was a major producer of Axis aviation fuel in WWII, if you want to know how old the technology for turning carbon sources into oil is. But you do need a carbon source. And apart from (very expensive) atmospheric extraction, waste plastic is a great one. It

              • The mechanical properties will be identical. Bakelite, polyester and PVC are all straightforward, everything else possible. As I said, it's all just hydrocarbons.

      • Why can't we go back to lead pipes?
      • Glass jars have the added advantage that you can see what the product looks like inside before you buy it.
        • by Rei ( 128717 )

          And are also MASSIVELY more expensive and resource-intensive to produce than a couple gram plastic pouch.

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Khyber ( 864651 )

            And are massively less resource-intensive to resterilize and reuse, over, and over, and over again than a plastic pouch.

            • Yes if you sterilize and reuse the glass at home. If the bottles are sent back to manufacturer for reuse, then the fuel in the logistics is more than the oil needed to produce a plastic bottle.

            • by Rei ( 128717 )

              You're going to have to reuse it a lot.

              Almost nobody does that in the real world, anywhere near the energy and resource difference between the two products.

        • Glass is not great for everyday carrying of stuff. Think grocery shopping with glass containers. First pothole would shatter them all.

          • My great grandparents made it home OK with all their jars a hundred years ago, what are you talking about?
          • We actually get a lot of stuff in the store (Im a store manager) that's in glass bottles. Olive oil, most of the spicy sauces like Tobasco, the "fancy" Coke from Mexico, etc... I live in Alaska so between potholes and barges on rough seas I think glass bottles can work just fine.
      • by jbengt ( 874751 )

        Why does a box of cereal come packaged in thick plastic bags inside the cardboard box, or granola bars in aluminized plastic wrappers, or whatnot? The answer is gas permeability. How long your food lasts is directly proportional to how much access oxygen and water vapour have to them. The polymers (sometimes multilayered) that are used have *extremely* low permeability, and thus, allow food to last far longer without quality degradation. . . . Trying to come up with a biopolymer that matches these propertie

      • Yes, plastic makes processed foods cheaper than fresh foods. But is that really a good thing?

    • "Teflone"? Sorry, that's hilarious!

    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Global starvation because food logistics no longer function the way they do today.

      About three food poisonings per person per year with debilitation and death that comes with it.

      Massive amount of energy consumption on refrigerating things we don't need to refrigerate to date to desperately try to keep massive health risks from food poisoning from being even higher.

      This is just one of out countless problems with this idiocy. On the bright side, outside hyper-neurotic Westerners, the world is going the exact o

  • I've been recycling ABS and PLA since 2015ish when i bought a Filastruder. It's a mild pain in the neck to operate, but it works well. What's the big difficulty? Just make those in an industrial scale. I know that's not all plastic but these two are very common and would make a significant dent
    • Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)

      by DeathToBill ( 601486 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @03:18AM (#64827753) Journal

      That's fine for thermoplastics and it's fine so long as you don't care about eg what colour it is. Not all plastics respond to heat by melting (there are quite a wide variety of plastics that undergo polymerisation with heat, so heating them makes them more solid, not less), but the big problem of this kind of direct-use recycling is that it only works if you can first sort the plastic into all the different types and colours. There are only a middle-sized handful of basic plastic types, but there are a dizzying array of small variations for different purposes. If all you care about the material properties is that they can go through a 3D printer and make something that's solid enough when you overengineer it to a degree then that's fine; if you care about cutting every last penny from the cost of producing things and about making things that are "just right" then it's not going to cut it.

      You also need to be able to effectively remove all the labels and any residue of foodstuffs etc. That's easy enough to do on a small scale for your household recycling but it's labour intensive; it's quite difficult to do very cheaply and at a large scale. The advantage of the "advanced recycling" process is that it involves a refining step that removes all the contaminants.

    • by Rei ( 128717 )

      The difference is you're dealing with clean feedstock streams of specific, pure plastics with the exact composition you're looking for. That's not the real world. Plastics are immensely diverse (even within a given category, like ABS or PLA), with very impure feedstock streams, with many plastic products even containing multiple types of plastic on the same product.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        And that is a problem. It could be solved though. Just have a small set of easily separated plastics as common, and require markers and put taxes on anything else. Of course, that requires regulation and corporate greed is not ok with that.

        • by Rei ( 128717 )

          Plastics are diverse for a reason, not on a whim. And they're inherently going to get jumbled up. And they inherently degrade in usage. Recycling of plastics, as in "reuse", is just not realistic for the vast majority of plastic products.

          • For stuff like toys and beach chairs it doesn't really matter what they are made of (if anything, toys should be made out of PLA, which is food safe).
            • by Rei ( 128717 )

              Yeah, it really does. Colour, texture, tensile strength, compressive / flexural properties, machining properties, machining precision, ductility, and on and on varies hugely between product lines.

              I'm sorry, but plastics are not, cannot be, and never will be, one-size-fits all.

  • by DeathToBill ( 601486 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @03:10AM (#64827751) Journal

    Well, compared to making plastic and then dumping it, and compared to pulling fuel out of the ground and burning it, this is actually an improvement - the carbon is used twice, once as a plastic and then again as a fuel. It's not exactly a circular economy though.

    • by msauve ( 701917 )
      Yep. The article/summary is full of spin, and the suit is BS: "... 8% of plastic is remade into new material, while the remaining 92% is processed into fuel that is later burned ... the vast majority of plastic is destroyed."

      They want to argue that turning plastic into fuel isn't recycling. It is, and any fuel produced reduces the amount of new fuel needed. It's not "destroying" it, it's recycling it. As the US EPA says [epa.gov]: "Recycling is the process of collecting and processing materials that would otherwise
      • by Rujiel ( 1632063 )
        The "fuel" it is converted to only exists to be burnt. If it was used for something practical rather than just being converted to then be destroyed, you would have an argument
        • by msauve ( 701917 )
          Whoosh. By the same logic, recycling plastic grocery bags into park benches destroys the grocery bags, too. Not sure why you think fuel isn't practical.
  • by TheNameOfNick ( 7286618 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @03:54AM (#64827783)

    Drop the facade. Plastic is fuel with very useful extra steps. The amount of plastic that we produce is dwarfed by the amount of fossil fuels we turn into CO2 without that great intermediate form. Turning plastic waste into fuel is the right way to get rid of it.

    • by Rei ( 128717 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @05:14AM (#64827857) Homepage

      Agreed. I hate greenwashing, but getting mad at turning plastic into fuel is beyond stupid. And what exactly does the date of the patent have to do with anything, vs. the date at which you're technologically and economically able to make the first production-scale unit? Do they have this notion that patents are always issued just days before the product becomes viable at scale? That's not how the real-world works.

      Plastics are a feedstock that is immensely diverse, varying impure, and whose products have generally chemically degraded since their production. Depolymerizing them (and then using the product liquids and gases in whatever is most economically efficient at the time, whether that's new polymers, vehicle fuels, heating fuels, lubricants, etc etc) is usually going to be the best option. It is not the same thing as just burning plastic, where you recover only the thermal energy with no value-add, and with generally unclean combustion.

      Even if the ultimate product is something you're going to burn, first off, (A) it's a value add, as you're not going to be shoving plastic bottles into your gas tank; it's a far more useful product; and (B) you're going to get far cleaner combustion from shorter, simpler, contaminant-free fuels than you are from raw solid plastics (which also commonly contain things like chlorine that you really don't want in your combustion, not just hydrogen and carbon - PVC for example is over half chlorine by mass)

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Agreed. I hate greenwashing, but getting mad at turning plastic into fuel is beyond stupid.

        I hate plastic garbage, in fact if I could I would ban plastics except for a handful of limited applications. Burying it in a landfill still represents re-sequestering fossil carbon while truing the plastic into fuel and burning it means de-sequestering fossil carbon and making the problem of atmospheric CO2 levels worse so given the choice I'd prefer not to make the problem of atmospheric CO2 levels any worse than it already is.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        This is not about what they do. This is about how they sell it.

        At this time, burning plastic, with all the modern precautions, is probably the only thing that works reasonably well outside of some specialty uses like PET bottles.

        • by Rei ( 128717 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @07:15AM (#64828021) Homepage

          This is literally what they do. It's thermal decomposition. With traditional burning of plastic waste, you add air and get out a mixture of CO2, H2O, and a lot of pollutants (fly ash, nitrogen compounds, chlorinated compounds, etc). With thermal decomposition, you use little or no oxygen (depending on the process there may be other gases added, such as H2) and get what's predominantly a mix of oil, natural gas or syngas, and coke, with water vacuum-stripped; the goal is specifically to NOT oxidize the carbon, and to NOT get rid of the gas (although there is some oxygen present in the feedstocks themselves). At this point it is basically the same sort of mixtures that you find in fossil feedstocks, and are blended into existing fossil feedstocks. These then go through various refining / separation processes as usual to yield the desired mixtures for end products or feedstocks for new production processes. There is no ash, no nitrogen oxides, and chlorine for example forms HCl which reacts with caustic to form NaCl (salt). Industrial salt is often used in the chlor-alkalai industry, though if sufficiently purified it can also be used as road salt.

          • This sounds like a wonderful second use for plastics. Whether or not that is "recycling" I guess is the point of contention. But it seems like a great way to deal with the waste stream.
            • by gweihir ( 88907 )

              "Wonderful"? No. Wasteful and stupid? Yes. Better than sending it to the landfill? Yes again, but that is a _really_ low bar.

              • by Rei ( 128717 )

                Where does this standard of yours even come from? Do you apply this standard also to, say, paper and wood products, whose ultimate fate is to rot? Things rust, degrade, rot, shatter, chip, break, corrode, embrittle, and so forth across the board. Certain ones are more durable than others, but then again, those also usually tend to represent orders of magnitude more resource investment in their production.

                The fact that most products are not immortal should not be some shocking thing that people have diffi

    • 100%

      This was the obvious solution staring at us all in the face. How did EVERYONE miss it?

      Exxon/Esso should be hailed by the world for finally seeing this. Genius. The person who thought of it should be given keys to the world.

    • The public are not and never will be techies. Tech is magic to them. They require something like religion/superstition where they need only obey, not think, and this is because they and no one else sets conditions for their engagement.

      The beastmob require utterly cynical engagement. They cannot choose to be different. See who they elect to lead them. There is not something missing or broken they can change, they are what they are.

      They demand the facade so give them what works.

  • by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @04:03AM (#64827795)
    ExxonMobil has a very long track record of being untrustworthy. Believing anything they say would be foolish.

    Meanwhile, they're increasing plastics production as much as they can to increase profits.

    Here's a new improved, advanced technology idea, framed in a way that ExxonMobil can relate to:

    "In light of the pressing exigencies surrounding contemporary environmental stewardship and the overarching imperative to safeguard natural ecosystems for the collective benefit of present and future stakeholders, it is hereby proposed that the widespread utilization of polymer-based synthetic materials, colloquially referred to as "plastics," be subject to a comprehensive, preclusive legislative and regulatory framework that effectively mandates the cessation of their production, distribution, and usage within the jurisdiction. Such a framework, in its application and enforcement, would not only mitigate the deleterious environmental externalities historically associated with said materials but also serve as a pioneering, forward-thinking paradigm of eco-centric innovation, emblematic of a transformative shift toward sustainable resource utilization and waste minimization, thus heralding a new epoch in material science and environmental policy."
    • by leonbev ( 111395 )

      If someone decided to sue ExxonMobil over their lies about recycling, I hope that the settlement will be like the one they got for VW where they're forced to fund the electric car charging network. Something like requiring 2 fast DC car chargers at every Exxon station would be very helpful for the charging network.

  • i thought it was to save the environment
    • Interestingly, plastic bags were invented to help the environment. The eco-cost is a fraction of that of reusable bags or paper bags. Which would never make the reuse counts to make them better. Cotton reusable bags would require something like 10,000 uses to match up to plastic bags.

      Itâ(TM)s all emotion based. No logic or facts needed. Cradle to grave doesnâ(TM)t matter. Just like EV are sold on the basis of operating effects while new. Not considering power to recharge sources or manufacturing
      • So, does the lower cradle to grave energy cost of a plastic bag versus alternatives outweigh the environmental damage of plastic debris in the ecosystem? And given the environmental improvements of our energy grid and transportation system since the widespread adoption of plastic bags, does that lower energy cost still convey the same benefits as it used to?

        • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          So, does the lower cradle to grave energy cost of a plastic bag versus alternatives outweigh the environmental damage of plastic debris in the ecosystem?

          It's a tradeoff. Cleaner air, dirtier water. But it's a lot easier to put nets across the top foot of the mouth of every river and add a boat bypass than it is to take the CO2 out of the atmosphere, so probably, yes.

          And given the environmental improvements of our energy grid and transportation system since the widespread adoption of plastic bags, does that lower energy cost still convey the same benefits as it used to?

          Trucks are still diesel, and fewer things are shipped by train these days, so the benefit is probably greater now.

          • It's a tradeoff. Cleaner air, dirtier water. But it's a lot easier to put nets across the top foot of the mouth of every river and add a boat bypass than it is to take the CO2 out of the atmosphere, so probably, yes.

            Except that very few places are installing skimmers on their waterways to collect plastic pollution. And that does little to address plastic pollution on land. Meanwhile, there are strong efforts to reduce air pollution from transportation and power generation.

            Trucks are still diesel, and fewer things are shipped by train these days, so the benefit is probably greater now.

            Most stores receive deliveries from their distribution warehouses via truck, not train. That's been the case for a very long time. Bags are generally delivered alongside the rest of their merchandise in those trucks. But being a non-perishable go

            • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

              It's a tradeoff. Cleaner air, dirtier water. But it's a lot easier to put nets across the top foot of the mouth of every river and add a boat bypass than it is to take the CO2 out of the atmosphere, so probably, yes.

              Except that very few places are installing skimmers on their waterways to collect plastic pollution. And that does little to address plastic pollution on land. Meanwhile, there are strong efforts to reduce air pollution from transportation and power generation.

              Sure. And in twenty years, when a significant amount of transportation of goods is electric, that answer will change. Right now, though, EVs are pretty much only used for passenger vehicles, passenger buses, passenger trains, and very little else.

              Trucks are still diesel, and fewer things are shipped by train these days, so the benefit is probably greater now.

              Most stores receive deliveries from their distribution warehouses via truck, not train. That's been the case for a very long time. Bags are generally delivered alongside the rest of their merchandise in those trucks. But being a non-perishable good, bags are still more likely to be delivered via rail from manufacturing plants to those warehouses than truck since the longer delivery times aren't as critical.

              I'd be surprised, but it's possible. Still, approximately all non-passenger trains in the U.S. are still diesel-electric, not electric, so we're still looking out a couple of decades before the numbers are likely to change meaningfully.

      • I'm old enough to remember being guilt tripped into dumping paper bags or the forests would disappear, Old Fuds mad and demanding paper over those crappy plastic bags.
        I'm always startled when people wonder why we distrust authority. Because they're often WRONG, shockingly so, and pretend like they never were.
  • by penguinoid ( 724646 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @04:39AM (#64827817) Homepage Journal

    It's turned into a useful product instead of being dumped in a landfill or the ocean. If we ever stop burning fuel then we can worry about recycling it into non-fuel.

    • Re:Sounds good (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @05:17AM (#64827867) Homepage

      Yep. Once you depolymerize it, you're going to turn it into whatever is cheapest for those feedstocks at that point in time. In this era, we burn lots of fuel, so that's what they mostly become. If that changes, the product stream will change. It's really that simple.

      I'm really happy to finally see this technology being done at scale. It's taken a long time to get to this point, to get the process efficient enough to be practical.

  • Seems like win-win:

    1. we get rid of the plastic
    2. we get rid of carbon

    Long term it might be a problem as we may need carbon but short term it looks like some kind of a solution...

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Sure. If you can a) wait a few millennia and b) dig _really_ deep. Might be more feasible and eco-friendly to shoot it to the moon...

  • by Eunomion ( 8640039 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @05:56AM (#64827909)
    Every rock you turn over at Exxon Mobil has some kind of unbelievable fucked-uppery in it.
    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      My guess is that after deciding to lie about climate changes in the 1970, they lost all inhibitions and morality. Understandably, if you do something _this_ fundamentally evil, most other things you can do, including the one discussed in the story here, are small things.

      Ref: https://news.harvard.edu/gazet... [harvard.edu]

      • Seems like there's always been something fundamentally corrupt in the mentality of fossil fuel producers. They don't see a world that has to continue after they're gone, just their own personal little game of checkers. It's like there's an entire industry built in the likeness of a Dark Triad personality.
        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          It looks that way, yes. No idea what caused that. Too easy to get rich if you already have no morals?

  • ... it's more "advanced" than just having everyone feel all virtuous about putting it in special bins, and then just shipping it off to the third world to be dumped in a pile.
  • by fjo3 ( 1399739 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @06:35AM (#64827977)
    https://quillette.com/2024/06/... [quillette.com] Burning plastic is probably the best solution, bad as it is.
  • I've wondered about these companies that has so much plastic, what is wrong with setting up a gigawatt nuclear power plant near some coastal area, and using thermal depolymerization to boil all the waste stuff into mineral oil, which can be used for all kinds of things. Yes, this is energy intensive, but doing it this way gets it completely out of the environment, and once set up, nuclear is relatively inexpensive, or if that isn't feasible, solar/wind. At least this gets it out of the environment.

    • There are probably ways that involve fractional distillation and are no more energy intensive than the processing of petroleum.

  • EPA just revoked their permission to manufacture fuel from plastic after a journalist investigation found that the process creates several cancer causing chemicals.

  • Making something into fuel is not exactly "just burning it."

    • Yea, I'd draw a distinction between just burning a pile of trash, versu running an incinerator-generator and hydrocracking or other plastic-to-fuel chemistry. I think it's reasonable want to convert the significant amount of unrecycable plastic into energy. Skim all that ocean plastic and throw it into an incinerator, get a little energy to fund the project and start addressing a serious ecological problem. Medical waste is almost entirely plastic, and if you want to crack it into engine oil, then by all me

      • Synthetic lubricants and hydraulic fluids are hydrocarbons cracked from either crude oil or natural gas. They can be re-refined back into lubricant stock indefinitely, but the sludge that remains is more difficult to get anything useful from. It's got copper, iron, zinc, phosphorous, sulfur, but also all the other chemical modifiers that get added in to the motor oil blends. I have no idea what happens to that sludge. Some of the volatiles vacuumed out of the distilling phase are burned to heat the refinery

        • At the iron foundry I used to work at, we had to pack the slag and ship it to a dump. But we also would just clean the slash off gear with water and hoses and let it flow out to the pond (this was how things have been for the foundry for about 100 years). Which ended up getting picked up into the superfund project for clean up. Lots of nasty stuff in the left over crap. Everything from lead to strontium. It's nuts.

  • I don't recall the industry telling the truth about it, ever.
    And their copying of the recycling symbol numbering scheme was just that - a scheme, or a scam.
    Also why are we still using so much black plastic, which all goes straight to landfill?
    It's still used extensively for food containers, for restaurant & food court takeaway and for frozen meals.
    Again, why??

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