
Industry spent millions selling recycling, to sell more plastic - ctack
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/822597631/plastic-wars-three-takeaways-from-the-fight-over-the-future-of-plastics
======
lukifer
Plastics in general make me nervous. I watched a talk from an endocrinologist
that many plastics and their byproducts can bind to chemical receptors,
throwing off the production and ratios of various hormones and
neurotransmitters. We made a big push against BPA-free plastic years ago, but
there may be other varieties that are just as harmful:
[https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/03/tritan-
certi...](https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/03/tritan-certichem-
eastman-bpa-free-plastic-safe/)

(I'm also very nervous about "biodegradable" plastic which appears to break
down granularly, but persists microscopically in the environment.)

As much as I applaud the effort to use cloth bags at the grocery store, the
vast majority of the products we place in them are still wrapped in _huge_
quantities of single-use plastic. While metal cans and glass jars are at least
somewhat more recyclable/reusable, I'm not even sure we _have_ a good
replacement for the necessary evil of food-safe containers.

If someone more knowledgable than myself had suggestions on how to look for
safer/greener plastic varieties, or general strategies to reduce their use,
I'd love to hear them.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Metal cans are lined with plastic. You're basically limited to glass and wax
paper.

~~~
nervousvarun
Ouch. Even the classic aluminum coke/beer can? Or tuna/sardine can etc?

Always just assumed that was the only practical recyclable container.
Apparently even those have plastic? Wow.

~~~
BostonEnginerd
They use a thin plastic liner to prevent reaction with the Aluminum. These
will burn off when the Al is melted for recycling.

Great video here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQHFQoFoxvQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQHFQoFoxvQ)

------
dpix
Even if we had 100% recycling, most if not all forms of recyclable plastic can
only be recycled once into the "Made from recycled materials" type of plastic
which cannot be recycled again.

So the Oil industry will still have massive demand for new plastics if every
piece of existing plastic got recycled only once. For recycling to work, we
need a solution that makes it easy to re-use many many times.

This is why recycling really isn't the answer to solving the plastics crisis
anyway

~~~
pestaa
It's a bit more complicated I believe, because with each cycle the material
loses some degree of quality, but there are several categories to begin with.

So the thin water bottles (PET) might be reused only once, but advanced
plastic required by medicine containers, infant food packaging, or even
thicker bottles, may get recycled multiple times.

------
baron816
I’ve heard a sentiment from people that it’s ok to drink lots of bottle water,
use plastic utensils, etc. because they can be recycled. Plastic won. Try to
tell people that they’re wasting their time trying to recycle and they’ll
freak out.

~~~
bagacrap
the same is true of compost. It's been shown people will use more disposable
utensils if they're told they're compostable (like those corn ones).

"Reduce" comes before "recycle" in the old marketing adage, but unfortunately
it seems they're genuinely at odds.

~~~
lotsofpulp
"Reduce" is at odds with people's desire to consume. Unfortunately, due to the
way evolution optimized humans to select mating partners, it's going to be
nigh impossible to address the cause of the problem.

~~~
DangitBobby
There may be some evolutionary aspects, but mostly it's a consequence of our
culture. When disposable one-use items and containers did not exist, society
was fine (for the most part). We would be fine if they largely disappeared as
well. What ultimately allowed the shift to occur was that the externalities of
disposables were never correctly priced into their production and usage. We
can certainly fix that.

------
daxfohl
I feel like there is another side too, of "plastic replacement" industry that
also doesn't particularly have our interests at heart either. Do I really
think reusable aluminum drinking straws are the answer to humanity's next
crisis? Are plastic straws even in a top 1000 list of humanity's problems? Is
the change even a net positive if the average person uses an aluminum one
three times and throws it out? Or is it just someone (maybe even well
intentioned) looking to make a quick dollar?

~~~
capableweb
> Is the change even a net positive if the average person uses one three times
> and throws it out?

Well, the point of the aluminum drinking straws is that you don't throw them.
What's the point if you're gonna throw them in the end anyways? Just wash it,
like the rest of utensils that you use.

Anyways, I think we can all survive without straws. McDonals where I live has
started just not giving you straws at all, and the cup has a message that if
you want straws, ask the people working there for one. Looking around me when
eating there, most people seems to be able to drink their sodas just fine
without straws.

~~~
pestaa
No straws??? What are they planning to do next, taking away our lids?!

~~~
capableweb
Yeah, the same McDonalds are obviously not using the lids as the lids are only
there for putting a straw in and you cannot drink from the cup with the lid
on, so they are also served without lids.

Guess the next step is to replace the paper/plastic (not sure what material it
is, guessing a mix) cups with actual glasses that gets washed instead of
thrown.

------
Afforess
We need to ban most consumer uses of plastic. Plastic is much like nuclear
waste, it's harmful to life, and takes thousands to millions of years to
degrade. Outside of uses like medical devices or smaller electronic devices,
plastic is just wasteful. At the supermarket, I just cringe when I see a
single banana or apple wrapped in plastic wrap. And I shudder to imagine the
future health effects all the microplastic beads in the water supply are doing
to us.

~~~
nitrogen
The plastic-wrapped fruit lasts longer so there is less food waste (and less
carbon wasted on shipping wasted fruit).

~~~
limomium
There would also be less food waste if the stores just, you know, gave away
the products about to spoil to people who, you know, aren't rich enough to be
picky about their bananas.

~~~
nitrogen
That does happen with bread at least. I grew up in a place where shopping at
the "canned food store" and "bread store" was common. These were places that
sold food that had expired off the shelves of other stores at steep discounts.
Sometimes the food was just given away by grocery stores, too.

------
pmiller2
Yep, industry promotes recycling to sell more plastic, and they also
discouraged littering to reduce their responsibility to make biodegradable
packaging. See [https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-
perspec...](https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-
indian-crying-environment-ads-pollution-1123-20171113-story.html)

------
lucisferre
As everyone in the media wakes up to the fraud that is recycling I'm reminded
that Penn and Teller looked into this in 2004.

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0771119/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0771119/)

~~~
hristov
Penn and Teller are full of it as usual. Glass/metals recycling is perfectly
beneficial. Paper recycling is generally beneficial if you can get people to
recycle the correct paper. But in situations where paper waste is relatively
uniform (such as printer paper in offices, schools, etc.) paper recycling can
be very efficient and profitable.

It turns out that plastics recycling (at least at the consumer level) is not
that beneficial and probably just an elaborate marketing campaign. If Penn and
Teller dug in and did their research and outed plastics recycling as a
marketing campaign I would say they are great public intellectuals and forward
thinking visionaries. Instead they just recycled (get it?) some long refuted
right wing lies about all recycling and thus ensured nobody would take them
seriously. And if part of their argument was correct that was completely
coincidental.

~~~
lucisferre
Did you actually watch it? They point out that at the very least aluminum
recycling make sense. At the time glass and paper recycling seemed to have
some questions around profitability. They mostly spent the episode dedicated
to plastics.

They also admitted that despite their findings they found it very difficult to
personally give up on recycling. That's what makes the lie so effective. We
want to believe we are helping, that we are doing something effective that
makes up for our wastefulness and excess consumption. We aren't.

------
DubiousPusher
Something I've wondered about for a while is if we just decreased the variety
of things we allow to be put into combined recycling if that would help.

For example, if we eliminate paper and glass entirely from recycling programs
and all recycling was plastic and metal. Would this help?

I know a some amount of paper is carbon neutral at this point because planting
is required which offsets use.

And a deposit could be charged for glass which would help that.

If we focused on metal, which is profitable and plastic which seems to be most
problematic would we be better off?

~~~
_delirium
Some single-stream systems have stopped taking glass. Paper/cardboard seems to
be cost-effective so there isn't a real pressure to remove that. If anything
it's one of the few things (along with metal) that the recycling systems
actually get decent recovery rates from.

The reasons for removing glass in particular seem to be: 1) it's the heaviest
component, so removing it decreases transportation/processing costs, 2) after
China stopped accepting exported glass, there's a lack of processors who will
take it, and 3) broken glass shards contaminate more valuable things in the
stream, plus damage machinery.

Plastic isn't really cost-effective either and has low recovery rates, but
it's at least lighter than glass and doesn't break into shards as easily, so a
lot of places still take it, if only to make people feel good.

Links: [https://wamu.org/story/19/04/26/arlington-ends-curbside-
glas...](https://wamu.org/story/19/04/26/arlington-ends-curbside-glass-
recycling/), [https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/news2/glass-containers-no-
long...](https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/news2/glass-containers-no-longer-
required-in-curbside-recycling-program/),
[https://www.recyclingtoday.com/article/recycling-programs-
ph...](https://www.recyclingtoday.com/article/recycling-programs-phase-out-
glass-2018/)

~~~
DubiousPusher
I was thinking paper not because it's not cost effective in itself, I just
kind of assumed wet or soiled paper was a source of contamination for other
things.

I think plastic should be a priority because it seems to be the most
disasterous of recyclables when it comes to environmental contamination.
Taxing plastic packaging to include externalities would probably fix this.

~~~
ip26
office paper & corrugated cardboard are some of the higher value recycled
materials.

------
lnsru
I am afraid, that environmental topics will drown in current pandemic. There
will be millions units of medical safety equipment disposed in coming months.
Probably this will be incinerated since contaminated. It’s basically all sorts
of plastic. Maybe this will push forward recycling industry to deal with large
amount of plastic waste. Maybe not.

I can speculate, that more and more products in the stores will be wrapped to
create safety feeling for the buyers. “Buy here, our food is well packed and
clean!”

~~~
Retric
Environmental issues always come down to scale. Disposing of excess medical
equipment is a tiny issue relative to shutting down the economy.

~~~
colechristensen
Shutting down the economy and reduced pollution that resulted will far far
outweigh increased medical supply disposal. Just go look at the skies in India
and China.

------
darepublic
"Reducing" takes discipline, "Recycling" maybe just delusions.

~~~
Iwan-Zotow
Nonsense.

"Reducing" requires proper pricing, that is it

------
29athrowaway
From the initial 3Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle, people have opted for recycling
because it's the only one that does not actually require you to do much.

But the 3Rs are hierarchical, with the first one being the most important:
reduce your waste output. Then: buy used instead of new, avoid single-use
items.

You can start with a reusable shopping bag, mug, water bottle, bowl, utensils,
cloth napkin.

~~~
redis_mlc
That's is good, constructive advice.

Just to drive the point home, recycling bins are largely land-filled in the
USA. They're only recycled if the municipality can strike a deal with private
recycling contractors. Often they just say no, or ask to be paid to handle it.
So off to the landfill.

The bins sure make people feel good, though.

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AgentOrange1234
This kind of dishonest dealing seems to be just absolutely everywhere. It is
really depressing. How do you even fight it. It probably is all legal, but it
is corrupt as hell and condemns everyone else to pay hugely for a small
group’s gain. Maybe we can support 7bn people on this earth, but not this way.

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Iwan-Zotow
If it is 100% recyclable+degradable, I don't care how much they sell

