
Why Recycling Doesn't Work - pseudolus
https://thewalrus.ca/why-recycling-doesnt-work/
======
Animats
Modern recycling separation plants work pretty well. The problem is what to do
with the low-value outputs.

Aluminum recycling is the big win. That sometimes pays for the rest of the
operation.

You have to separate the aluminum from the ferrous metals, so pulling out the
ferrous stuff with magnets doesn't add cost. Scrap steel isn't that valuable,
but there's no problem selling it. Steel mills will take it all.

Pulling out glass and making it into cullet is common, but there's more glass
cullet than glassmakers need. Sorting by color is possible, but adds cost.
Works fine, though. There are uses for low-value mixed cullet, mostly as fill
in construction, so it usually doesn't go to the landfill.

There are advanced sorters that can separate the major categories of plastics,
but they're still rare. Plastic bottles can be recycled all the way back to
plastic pellets for new bottles, and a huge plant near Los Angeles does this
for most of Southern California. Not clear that this pays without subsidies.

Paper recycling from post-consumer waste is tough. It's mostly low quality
packaging material, which can at best be recycled into lower-quality packaging
material. The fibers get shorter each time around. Recycling paper from
offices, and recycling newspapers, used to be a thing, but those sources are
in decline.

The US recycling industry is currently struggling because China will no longer
take the unsorted paper/plastic mess that used to be sent there in empty
shipping containers going back. That will probably get worked out.

~~~
kwanbix
But recycling is not a value problem, but a survival problem. It might not be
cost effective to eat, but if you don't spend X amount of your salary in it,
you die, so you do it. This is the same IMHO.

~~~
dbrgn
Recycling is a economic-cost vs environmental-value optimization problem.

The university I studied at also has a department that analyzes renewable
energies and recycling. They developed a system that does this cost-vs-value-
analysis for recycling. In the end, you get a number of environmental points
for every dollar you invest into recycling.

The core idea is that we have a certain budget to improve our environment. If
a dollar invested in plastic recycling is 20 times less efficient than a
dollar invested in glass recycling, then we should stop recycling plastic.

The results (for Switzerland): Glass and aluminum recycling works great.
Battery recycling is OK, but because today's batteries contain way less toxic
chemicals (like Cadmium) than they did in the 80s, it's largely an artifact
from the past. They consider battery recycling good enough to keep, but
wouldn't start recycling them if the infrastructure wouldn't exist right now.

Mixed plastic recycling is being hyped right now. There are companies that
offer subsidized plastic bags where you can throw in all kinds of plastic.
According to the study, the environmental value of recycling such mixed
plastics in Switzerland is really low and should not be done, we are basically
wasting our money which would be better spent on other projects that have
higher value. Their summary was basically that instead of recycling plastic
and burning fuel in combustion engines, we should convert oil to plastic
products and then - once they have reached the end of the lifecycle - burn
those in modern incineration plants. The energy gained from that can then be
used to heat buildings and to power electrical cars. This way, the energy is
re-used, first in a product, then in mobility.

Of course that only works if you have modern, clean incineration plants. If
you burn the plastics on a pile, then the environmental value of plastic
recycling skyrockets.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>. Their summary was basically that instead of recycling plastic and burning
fuel in combustion engines, we should convert oil to plastic products and then
- once they have reached the end of the lifecycle - burn those in modern
incineration plants. The energy gained from that can then be used to heat
buildings and to power electrical cars. This way, the energy is re-used, first
in a product, then in mobility.

Note that this solution is so obvious what every high school chemistry student
proposes as soon as they learn that plastics are made from oil and have
similiar molecular structure. We just don't do it because I don't know why.

~~~
wool_gather
> this solution is so obvious what every high school chemistry student
> proposes...

At the risk of sounding flippant, _" For every complex problem, there is a
solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong"_. There's no guarantees that the
energy arithmetic works out here. Even without the logistics of collection and
transport, is cleanly burning plastic waste efficient enough to be worthwhile
(cf. why it's almost unheard of to use wood to generate power)?

~~~
NullPrefix
>cf. why it's almost unheard of to use wood to generate power

It's heard of plenty. People use wood to generate heating power for homes.

------
ordinaryperson
The NYT has had several decent articles on this over the years:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/climate/recycling-
landfil...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/climate/recycling-landfills-
plastic-papers.html)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/business/local-
recycling-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/business/local-recycling-
costs.html)

[https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/30/magazine/recycling-is-
gar...](https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/30/magazine/recycling-is-garbage.html)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-
reign-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-of-
recycling.html)

Ask yourself: how does recycling help the environment? It doesn't. Recycling
arose out of 1980s landfill anxiety but we have plenty of space, what we don't
have are plenty of climates. All the money wasted on making us feel better by
recycling could be far better spent reducing carbon emissions.

What a waste of tax dollars, especially now that most cities and counties just
throw out recycling anyway.

~~~
dahart
John Tierney’s writing was roundly, soundly debunked 20 years ago. It’s
amazing to me that it continues to do damage.

[https://www.heartland.org/_template-
assets/documents/publica...](https://www.heartland.org/_template-
assets/documents/publications/4030.pdf)

[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/400100/recycling-is-
not-g...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/400100/recycling-is-not-garbage/)

> Recycling arose out of 1980’s landfill anxiety

That’s the first anti-recycling myth addressed above. It sure seems like this
argument is being recycled.

> we have plenty of space,

Anti-recycling myth #3...

> What a waste of tax dollars

Garbage disposal is also funded by taxes. Whatever, fewer dollars are spent on
both garbage and recycling combined than are lost in the margins of military
spending. If you really cared about taxes at all, you’d know recycling is
irrelevant.

~~~
landon32
The first link you posted an article from over 25 years ago from an
organization that denies human caused climate change and prioritizes science
that makes their donors happy. I would take it with a grain of salt.

~~~
dahart
> an article from over 25 years ago

It’s a direct response to an even older article the parent comment posted that
preceded it. BTW, May 2019 - June 1996 is just less than 23 years.

> from an organization that denies humans caused climate change

The Environmental Defense Fund denies human factors? I think you’re mistaken.
Can you please provide a source for that claim? Or are you talking about
Heartland... did you confuse the hosting web site with the authors?

~~~
lupire
EDF was founded to ban DDT, widely but controversially regarded as one of the
worst mistakes of environmentalism.

~~~
dahart
> EDF was founded to bad DDT

Right, thanks, yes EDF was founded on the very idea of human factors. I guess
@landon32’s comment mistook the URL I used for the source of the information.
I can’t find the full article on the EDF site, just a shortened version. Or
maybe that comment was intentionally trying to cast doubt by association?

Is the history of DDT relevant to the recycling debate, or are you hoping to
cast doubt by association?

> widely but controversially regarded as one of the worst mistakes of
> environmentalism.

“the United States ban on DDT is a major factor in the comeback of the bald
eagle (the national bird of the United States) and the peregrine falcon from
near-extinction in the contiguous United States.”

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT)

I like bald eagles. And I don’t want DDT used on my food. Do you??

I’d never heard the idea that banning DDT is a mistake. I’m trying to find
some reputable sources for the claim that this is widely believed. The
Wikipedia article doesn’t exactly back up that claim, so do you want to
provide some?

“A few people and groups have argued that limitations on DDT use for public
health purposes have caused unnecessary morbidity and mortality from vector-
borne diseases”

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Criticism_of_restriction...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Criticism_of_restrictions_on_DDT_use)

------
mehrdadn
> In the end, according to Saxe’s report, the blue box diverts only 8 percent
> of Ontario’s material from landfills.

Is 8 percent something to be scoffed at? I mean, I do wish it was more,
obviously, but on the face of it it seems ridiculous to suggest it's low
enough that we should stop recycling... am I missing something?

> Most people who’ve spent their careers in waste management continue to
> encourage recycling—it’s better than nothing.

So isn't "it doesn't work" quite a dangerously misleading title? Shouldn't it
instead be "isn't enough"? Which hardly anybody suggested in the first
place...

~~~
youngtaff
8% certainly isn't to be scoffed at, but when councils in England can get 50%+
recycling, and compost rates, I wonder why Ontario's rate is so low

Top ten recycling authorities in England 2017/18
[https://www.letsrecycle.com/councils/league-
tables/](https://www.letsrecycle.com/councils/league-tables/)

Rank Local Authority Recycling, Reuse and Composting Rates

    
    
      64.50% - East Riding of Yorkshire Council   
      63.00% - Rochford District Council  
      63.00% - South Oxfordshire District Council  
      62.40% - Three Rivers District Council  
      61.40% - Surrey Heath Borough Council  
      61.20% - Stroud District Council  
      60.50% - South Northamptonshire District Council  
      60.40% - Vale of White Horse District Council  
      60.30% - Derbyshire Dales District Council  
      60.30% - Stratford-on-Avon District Council

~~~
mehrdadn
Is this the percentage of residents' wastes that are placed into recycle bins,
or is this the percentage of waste that would've gone into a landfill that
ends up actually processed for recycling? I thought part of the problem was
that not everything residents send for recycling actually ends up being
recycled. Your page sounds like it's in the former category but I understood
the 8% figure was in the latter... though I can't say either page is clear on
this...

~~~
youngtaff
Not entirely sure TBH but I suspect it's somewhere between the two - for
example looking at some of the other data set 40%+ of what's collected is
going for composting / bio gas generation.

Looking at the recycling rates in a bit more depth there's also the issue of
how much waste people generate in the first place for example East Riding
generates just under 500Kg of waste per person, whereas Stroud generates under
300Kg waste per person

------
jhrmnn
Germany deals with most of its waste internally. Most paper is recycled for
second-rate paper products. Metal is recycled. Some plastic is recycled. The
rest (general waste, organic, most of plastic) is incinerated under
corresponding conditions. Incinerating organic is already quite optimal–left
in nature, things would rot and produce methane. Incinerating plastic is like
burning gas or oil that was originally used to produce it. It has similar
calorific value as coal and in Germany is largely used to substitute some part
of it in coal power plants. I’m not sure about general waste, but I’d guess
after subtracting methane production in landfills, incinerating it is still a
net positive.

EDIT: Most glass bottles are in the deposit system and are collected by
stores, washed, and reused.

~~~
DoctorOetker
Instead of burning the plastic, wouldn't it make more sense to use techniques
like pyrolysis and eventually return the plastics to non-polymer hydrocarbons,
to make whatever new plastic from it?

~~~
becomingknown
Yes we can but we are constrained by the power/energy/money consumption in
this whole recycling process.

------
dade_
I moved into a building that has composting. I've come to believe that
recycling was a terrible place to begin environmental efforts, that we should
have started with composting programs in the 1st place. Instead of trying to
recycle plastic bags and containers, just make bags and containers compostable
when practical. Focus on glass and plastic containers should be on reuse and
aluminum doesn't seem to be a problem. Reduce, Reuse, compost, then recycle.

~~~
barry-cotter
The energy cost and usable life of plastic bags versus long life ones like
jute or cotton are decisively in favour of plastic on an environmental basis.
Long life plastic bags are better than single use are better than
cotton/jute/hemp/linen. The problem with single use bags is litter which just
disappears with nominal taxes. They’re ugly as hell but paper and cotton use
much more energy and water to produce a usable bag.

Glass and plastic containers reuse is a solved problem. Put a big deposit on
containers and they’ll be reused.

~~~
dahart
> The energy cost ...

This is a specious argument right from the start. Recycling isn’t about energy
cost at all. Energy isn’t about to run out, we have solar, hydro and wind in
the future. You can make backward facing arguments about coal use, if you
want, but a strong argument would consider what’s already happening and what
today’s trends imply for the future.

> paper and cotton use much more energy and water

Why worry about the two things we can renew, while ignoring plastic’s use of
limited non-renewable petroleum, or the fact that plastic production produces
carcinogenic pollution and poisonous byproducts?

> Glass and plastic containers reuse is a solved problem. Put a big deposit on
> containers and they’ll be reused.

So you mean it _could_ be a solved problem, right? I’m in favor of requiring
deposits! If only we actually did that everywhere instead of passing out free
single use plastics...

~~~
barry-cotter
>> The energy cost ... > This is a specious argument right from the start.
Recycling isn’t about energy cost at all. Energy isn’t about to run out, we
have solar, hydro and wind in the future. You can make backward facing
arguments about coal use, if you want, but a strong argument would consider
what’s already happening and what today’s trends imply for the future.

If we use plastic bags instead of paper or cotton ones we’ll use tens to
hundreds of times more energy. Whether you think it’s backwards facing or not,
in the present huge amounts of that energy comes from burning fossil fuels and
the energy that doesn’t come from fossil fuels needs resources to be produced,
it doesn’t appear _ex nihilo_. Solar requires minerals to be mined and hydro
requires land be flooded and dams built. Everything requires resources, which
costs are real, not fictitious, whether denominated in dollars or kilojoules.

>> paper and cotton use much more energy and water >Why worry about the two
things we can renew, while ignoring plastic’s use of limited non-renewable
petroleum, or the fact that plastic production produces carcinogenic pollution
and poisonous byproducts?

Because energy isn’t free any more than the land for growing cotton or trees
is, or water pumped from aquifers is. Paper and cotton production is also not
without its own chemical waste and uses far, far more water than making
plastic bags does.

>> Glass and plastic containers reuse is a solved problem. Put a big deposit
on containers and they’ll be reused. >So you mean it could be a solved
problem, right? I’m in favor of requiring deposits! If only we actually did
that everywhere instead of passing out free single use plastics...

Yeah, if there was political will to do so it could be done in months not
years. When things don’t happen because voters don’t want them that’s
democracy.

~~~
dahart
> in the present huge amounts of that energy comes from burning fossil fuels

That is true, and unfortunate, in the US. At least fossil energy is declining
and wind is on the rise. Brazil and Canada are more than 50% hydro. We can, if
we choose, reduce and eliminate fossil energy. Choosing is the hard part.

> Everything requires resources, which costs are real

Of course that’s true as a generalization. But, you’ve just compared burning
some coal for every single watt to building a windmill or dam once and letting
the watts generate themselves for years and years. There is a _massive_
difference in the resources needed to produce energy with fossil fuels vs
wind, solar, and hydro, so please don’t imply it’s some kind of equivalence.

> When things don’t happen because voters don’t want them that’s democracy.

This is cute sounding, but not very helpful or even particularly true. The
majority of US voters have never voted on whether Evian bottles should have
deposits or whether grocery stores should use plastic bags. Now that some
cities are voting on bags, they’re starting to vote them down.

Other reasons things don’t happen are not knowing what’s possible, lacking
imagination, inability to work together and/or pool resources, fear and
misinformation, fear of regulation & taxes, etc.

------
jopsen
I think it depends on the recycling system.. In the US and Canada I've found
that you often mix all recyclables. The article mentions blue boxes collected
from each household.

In Denmark I dump paper and glass into a separate containers, these are
typically present around apartment buildings, or spread throughout residential
areas. The containers are large and rarely emptied.

Collecting from each household sounds very expensive. As does sorting the
recyclables (in particularly any manual sorting).

~~~
dgudkov
If you read the article, the problem remains regardless of whether garbage is
sorted manually (Denmark) or automatically (Canada). The problem is that the
sorted recyclables are subject to market supply/demand laws and are frequently
cheaper to send to landfill than to sell (and deliver) to manufacturers. In
other words, we produce too much garbage and there simply isn't that many
manufacturers that are interested in buying and processing recyclables.

~~~
geewee
That's not necesarily an unsolvable problem. I know several companies in
Denmark who produce fresh plastic from recyclable plastic, and they can't meet
market demand for their product - primarily due to them not being able to get
enough "clean" or uncontaminated plastic. So the reality is much more nuanced
than that.

(I have a startup in the danish waste industry)

~~~
dgudkov
I'm sure it is. All in all, it looks like the idea of recycling doesn't work
as it was advertised and is perceived by the average citizen.

------
zmmmmm
I often catch myself thinking "it's ok to buy this massively overpackaged item
because the packaging is recyclable". I have a feeling that if recycling
doesn't work, it's far from neutral. There will be a large number of people
that rationalise producing far, far more waste than they would otherwise
because they falsely think it isn't harmful.

~~~
nerdponx
_There will be a large number of people that rationalise producing far, far
more waste than they would otherwise because they falsely think it isn 't
harmful._

This, of course, is by design.

~~~
skybrian
Why "of course"? No design is needed since this sort of thing could easily
happen by evolution.

Marketing is empirical and competitive. Some companies could have discovered
that recyclable products sell more without necessarily understanding consumer
behavior all that well, and the rest can copy them. They aren't likely to
question it if it works.

Which isn't to say it can't be by design, but that's a matter of knowing the
history behind it.

------
Drdrdrq
The real solution is both very simple and incredibly complex at the same time:
producers should be obligated (and incentivized) to take care of the waste
from their products. Every other solution simply won't work.

How to do that? No idea. :)

~~~
riffraff
> How to do that? No idea. :)

tax wasteful products. If single use forks or bottles become more expensive,
people will choose reusable options.

~~~
Drdrdrq
This is not what I had in mind. Whoever produces something should get rid of
it. I don't care if it's single use if producer is able to get it back and
recycle it.

------
hairytrog
There are ways to recycle trash indiscriminately. Basically, you have a
graphite electrode plasma arc that turns the trash into plasma. Most trash is
carbon bond stuff that will combust, so you get energy out of it - and not
negligible amounts of energy (maybe 1-5% of per capita energy use for 1000kg
/person/year). What remains is a kind of black slurry that solidifies into
bricks or black wool that you can use for construction/insulation etc. If you
have enough energy, you can continue to ionize the trash and accelerate the
charged plasma through a magnetic separator (like a mass spec) to separate the
trash atoms based on charge to mass ratio. The second part would consume way
too much energy.

~~~
qiqitori
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification)
Probably this? Interesting.

------
bamboozled
How about this for a more reasonable title: Current Efforts to Recycle
Domestic Waste Should be Improved ?

Really, it's good to outline inefficiencies with current systems, but really,
recycling does not work?

~~~
icelancer
Because that would be editoralizing, which is what we are supposed to avoid on
Hacker News.

~~~
bamboozled
I’m not suggesting we change the title, I’m suggesting the author could’ve
done a little better.

------
jdavis703
Recycling rules are very location specific. I’ve had to educate people in our
Oakland office that certain things that are recyclable in next-door San
Francisco aren’t recyclable here. Before deciding that recycling won’t work
for you, check in with your local recycling agency or company.

~~~
e9
Can you talk more about this? What was the example? What is actually
achievable and worth recycling?

------
gorpy7
a few of you have new and interesting takes on the issue for me to consider.
but what about the millions of tons of plastic that have worked its way into
the oceans? and if landfill space isn’t an issue why are we shipping it off to
foreign countries? seems like recycling is a very loose loop but if we keep at
it, it could become tighter. i think it would be cool if various resources,
some day, could be recycled on a household level- like water foremost and
eventually plastics, organics

~~~
ekianjo
How do you recycle plastics? What you call "plastics" fall in thousands of
different polymers or mixes of polymers that have vastly different properties
and characteristics. There is no way you will be able to recycle any of that
easily, or even less at home.

~~~
gorpy7
i was thinking 1-3 different types, 1 for sporks, one for t-shirts, jackets,
and another for toys/lawn furniture. i readily admit i don’t know enough about
plastics processing. i was further imagining broken, worn, stained, fallen out
of fashion could be ground down and reformed by some advanced 3d printer. but
i can constrain my own thoughts, i can see impediments- technical or
behavior(desire to purchase). dream with me anyway.

------
noufalibrahim
This business of single use stuff is seen as a symbol of progress in many 3rd
world countries. Many restaurants offer bottled water and sachets of
condiments rather than taking them out of a container. Many shops offer paper
bags that are very flimsy but "biodegradable". I imagine that given the
production costs of the paper, it's an overall loss.

Heavy consumerism does help the economy grow doesn't it? Which probably means
that the incentives are misaligned and this whole mess is just going to
increase.

~~~
rootusrootus
In developing countries, the bottled water is also about sanitation. When I go
to India, I am very careful to never let tap water or anything that might be
tap water near my mouth. That means lots and lots of bottled water, sealed
until it gets to my hands.

And I still get sick periodically. :/

~~~
noufalibrahim
This is a valid concern if you're a foreigner. Two counterpoints though if
you're Indian

1\. This is not much of a concern if you're Indian. I regularly drink from
restaurants and other places when I travel and I don't get sick. 2\. I carry a
bottle which I fill regularly when I eat and use that instead of buying
bottles.

~~~
rootusrootus
My Indian experience is quite limited (I almost never go anywhere but
Hyderabad), but I was under the impression that locals mostly don't drink the
water either? Something like 20% do, if I remember correctly (which is
questionable). Certainly none of the developers in our office there admit to
it. For whatever that's worth, which ain't much. The limited research I've
seen from Indian sources suggests that, at least in Hyderabad, it remains a
problem. Some of the contamination is related to human feces, but some of it
is non-biological and probably not something you can really develop a
tolerance for. May not make you immediately ill, but not something to drink if
you don't have to.

------
djakjxnanjak
Way more thoughtful than the GPT-2 model’s take on the question:
[https://openai.com/blog/better-language-
models/#sample8](https://openai.com/blog/better-language-models/#sample8)

------
sverige
> Of the three Rs drilled into our heads in school—reduce, reuse,
> recycle—recycling is the only one that most of us regularly practise.

This is the most salient point of these discussions, I think. I've found it
much easier to reduce and sometimes to reuse. For one, it's just not hard for
me to tell myself that 'I don't need that' \-- whatever 'that' happens to be
at the moment. For another, replacing plastic bottles with reusable containers
involves some effort initially, but once you figure it out, it's actually
easy.

I lived in Seattle when the recycling nazis first started up their garbage
patrols. What a waste of effort. Spend the energy on providing accessible and
clean drinking fountains or spigots, or spend some influencer money on making
reusing stuff cool. Yes, I understand that many consumer products are made in
such a way as to shorten their useful life, and there's a lot of economic
reasons behind that. So spend some effort on changing that and it will still
be more beneficial than fining people for putting their trash in the wrong
bin.

------
Bedon292
My county recently changes up the rules on recycling. And it was a bit eye
opening. They now will only take #1 and #2 plastic, paper, and aluminum only
in the main recycling. Nothing else. They have nowhere they can send any other
kinds of plastic to, at least for an affordable amount, because the entire
region has nowhere processing it.

As for glass, they no longer take it for recycling either. They will accept it
at the land fill, rather than in normal collection, to be crushed and used in
concrete.

They also mentioned that food contamination is a huge problem, and can end up
in entire batches of recycling ending up in the landfill instead. Because it
is not cost efficient to sort it all out. Like most people think about
cardboard pizza boxes as recyclable, however they tend not to be due to the
grease.

------
dgudkov
I'm not sure the problem has a technology solution. I would rather prefer
policymakers to impose an obligation that any importer of packaged goods must
collect an equivalent amount of similar packaging garbage and utilize it at
their own cost.

The problem of packaging garbage should be offset to [offshore] producers (who
have no skin in the game), rather than citizens (who we know are eager to help
the environment).

When China stopped accepting recyclables, the good answer would be to demand
Chinese producers to take back an equivalent amount of similar packaging
garbage in exchange for allowing them to import goods to Canada.

------
orev
1\. Reduce

2\. Reuse

3\. Recycle

In that order

~~~
Scoundreller
For reduce...

Would be nice if all manufacturers were required to sell spare parts. Or at
least label each part with a part-number so others could part their units out
for parts.

Or if you don't want to sell spare parts, or want to stop selling them, then
you must release the plans.

~~~
orev
Reducing waste via repair is indeed a valid goal, but at the level of consumer
volume, really a very tiny thing to be worried about. The quantity of plastic
bags, bottles, boxes, and other packaging is staggering compared to what one
might generate once every few years when buying a new phone.

------
jokoon
I guess we should sit down and try to make trash easier to deal with, like
maybe restricting the most problematic type of packaging there are out there?
I'm sure engineers know what type of packaging are the easiest to deal with,
or maybe they could work with the engineers who work with trash?

Wouldn't a solution would be re-usable, standardized packaging?

It would increase the consumer price, but until we realize trash is an
externality we cannot deal with anymore, I'm sure we are headed there and
that's the best solution. Not an easy one, but it's the best.

------
gridlockd
Just dump all the sorted garbage into sorted landfills in the middle of
nowhere. In the future, AI-powered garbage bots will be able to make sense of
it all and perhaps turn it into upcycled iPhone cases.

Or maybe global warming has killed us all by then, in which case having dealt
with all the garbage of the present would've been a total waste of time.

The same goes for nuclear waste. People debating how to safely store nuclear
waste for hundreds of thousands of years don't realize that the hazard
material of today might be valuable tomorrow.

I'm dead serious.

------
jl6
This article suggests recycling is a mixture of economically ineffective and
actively environmentally harmful but I wasn’t left with a clear understanding
of which types of recycling are which.

Certainly aluminum recycling seems to make both economic and environmental
sense.

But for glass, paper, and plastic, is there a point where I would be doing the
environment a service by throwing it in the landfill box instead of the
recycling box?

~~~
michaelt
The workers at the recycling plant will gladly throw plastic in the landfill
if it's not usefully recyclable.

The message I took away from the article, though, is we shouldn't kid
ourselves that having a recycling bin suddenly makes waste environmentally
friendly.

------
geggam
Its really interesting to me when I look around places like Germany. The
majority of beverages are served in glass bottles, carry a bottle opener btw.

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oldpond
What about grinding it up into soil? They have developed techniques in British
Columbia to grow fully mature forests in 10 years by laying down a mixture of
soil and nutrients 6 feet deep and then planting seedlings very close
together. The close competition causes the seedlings to grow faster.

Grind it up, soak it with nutrients and plant forests on it.

~~~
therealdrag0
Grinding things up would be pretty energy expensive, which kinda defeats the
purpose. Also That's kinda what landfills are: dig hole, fill it up until it's
a mound, cover with dirt and grass.

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pfdietz
In the post fossil fuel age, garbage could become an easily stored fuel, to be
incinerated when there's a lull in wind and not enough sun. Its plastic and
other reduced organic contents will be derived from non-fossil sources, and it
will be recycled by oxidation back to the CO2 and water it came from.

~~~
firethief
Fossil fuels burn cleaner and if we run out of those we'll be dead. There is
way more available carbon than we could release without having much bigger
problems than finding more.

~~~
bamboozled
I believe if you burn garbage (including plastics) at high enough
temperatures, most harmful gasses are also incinerated?

Tokyo burns a lot of rubbish in super high temperature furnaces and uses the
waste heat for other purposes, from what I understand these incineration plans
don’t release any significant harmful pollution (excerpt Co2 of course)

~~~
firethief
That sounds like a silver bullet. The Wikipedia article on incineration isn't
so rosy, but it doesn't have much on Japan specifically

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JudgeWapner
what I think should be done is require waste management companies to sort the
plastics, glass, and metal in different locations in the landfill. however
they do this is up to them (obviously it's ripe for automation). Then, at a
future date, if it makes sense to recycle plastic, someone could dig up the
landfill where thousands of tons of plastic is stored. same for glass, etc.
this would not require a second set of trucks to drive down the street and
release CO2 so we can all do the job that should be the responsibility of a
corporation whose service we're paying for.

as a bonus, if enough of the organic material was in one place, it may be
easier to harvest the methane given off (which they already do, but would be
more concentrated if a considerable portion of non-biomass were separated).

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HillaryBriss
Most of these problems have solutions. For example, the US could print its
money, in the form of 1 cent notes, on paper made from recycled pizza boxes.
Then we use that currency to pay China for manufactured goods.

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srg0
I wonder how TetraPak recycling works (and if it works at all). It's a very
common packaging material, but it's a composite of aluminium, plastic and
paper. Can they be separated?

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11235813213455
I feel like the most effective garbage triage would be to separate food wastes
from packaging and the rest. Everyone should do composting at a local level

~~~
tonyedgecombe
We have had our food waste collected for years now (UK), it gets composted
centrally. Once a year we get to collect free compost.

We used to do it at home but had to deal with rodents and fruit flies as well
as not being able to add meat byproducts to the pile.

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cotelletta
In my experience recycling doesn't work because people throw their waxed half-
drunk Starbucks into the paper waste and call themselves green.

Is there any info on how this works when the rules are actually followed?

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coolgoose
Imho the main thing recycling does at a home level is bring awareness to the
actual issue regarding garbage.

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dillonmckay
I recommend 2 older books on the topic:

 _Cradle to Cradle_

 _Natural Capitalism_

Appreciate other recommendations.

