
We asked three companies to recycle plastic and only one did - alex_young
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/marketplace-recycling-trackers-b-c-blue-box-1.5299176
======
arcticbull
There's a good case to be made that we shouldn't be recycling (all) plastics
but instead sequestering much of it in well-run landfill operations. The
energy required to recycle it combined with the inferior product that results
make it a net-loss operation. Especially when taking into account the high
levels of contamination and processing that must be done to prepare it.
Reduce, re-use (and ban single-use), then sequester. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Aluminum? Definitely. Steel? Sure. Glass? probably. Paper? Cool. Plastic?
_shrug_.

[1]
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/17/plastic-...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/17/plastic-
recycling-myth-what-really-happens-your-rubbish)

[2] [https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/07/plastic-
prod...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/07/plastic-produced-
recycling-waste-ocean-trash-debris-environment/)

[3] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/amywestervelt/2012/04/25/can-
re...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/amywestervelt/2012/04/25/can-recycling-be-
bad-for-the-environment/#71f06e63bec5)

[4]
[https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a3752/4...](https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a3752/4291566/)

~~~
nashashmi
I once talked to a guy who worked in a landfill for a county in Florida and I
asked him his opinion of recycling. He said you can either recycle it now or
recycle it later, or in other words, dig up a landfill and figure out what you
can reuse. This is already being done in some places with very old landfills.

So he was not concerned about recycling at all.

~~~
spullara
For things that can be landfilled safely, I believe this is the best option.
Technology for recycling will improve over time and demand for the materials
will increase until it makes total sense to recycle it rather than forcing it
now.

~~~
nashashmi
Some items cannot be landfilled resourcefully, like metals. They need to be
recycled now or they rust.

~~~
benj111
Does the recycling process not get rid of oxides? Aluminum oxidises quickly,
and it's not as if many metals come out of the ground oxide free.

------
spodek
I hope everyone concludes that the top level strategy everyone can implement
is to reduce plastic use and demand at every level -- government, corporate,
and, yes, individual.

Recycling is a tactic. Without a strategy, a tactic often won't work and can
even be counterproductive.

Reducing production is a strategy. We should always focus first on the
strategy, then tactics.

I recorded a podcast episode on reducing being strategic and efficiency being
tactical [https://shows.pippa.io/leadership-and-the-
environment/episod...](https://shows.pippa.io/leadership-and-the-
environment/episodes/183-reusing-and-recycling-are-tactical-reducing-is-
strategic).

~~~
lotsofpulp
Recycling was a way to get people to feel better about their consumption, and
for certain politicians to tout they “did” something.

It’s never made sense since day 1. As a kid, I couldn’t figure out how the
hell recycling was working because everywhere I saw, all the recycling
“policies” were being violated, and unless there was a massive team at the
recycling center re-sorting it all, it made no sense why we had to sort it in
the first place.

Turns out, it was just getting dumped in China. Reducing consumption is the
only solution.

~~~
daxfohl
How did you learn about recycling policies and their violations as a kid?
Given the article, none of this is easy to obtain knowledge.

~~~
lotsofpulp
I meant watching people throw the wrong type of recyclables in the wrong bins,
and ignoring all the numbers.

------
ChuckMcM
Ah the realities of the difficulty involved in recycling like for like come to
the fore.

In some ways I think this situation has been exacerbated by proponents of
plastic who have marketed it as "infinitely recyclable" for many years. That
statement is technically true, in that there exists a process by which you can
take post consumer plastic and reduce it back to its component parts for re-
use. At the same time it ignores the reality that 'original' plastic, as the
end product of a chemical process, is quite pure.

Thus when you build a system that uses plastic to create products, if you
build it to assume the purity levels of pre-consumer plastic, then the onus is
on the recycler to create the same level of purity. Estimates on the cost of
doing that range from 10x to 100x the cost of creating plastic out of raw pre-
cursor chemicals. The reality is that there isn't a market for $20 coffee cups
over $2 coffee cups because they are "100% post consumer".

I think getting the discussion on to a more realistic footing is a good one.
It is much easier to make policy when you have a shot at working with markets
rather than against them.

To that end, incinerating plastic to generate energy makes a lot of policy
sense in a 'peaker' plant. It isn't "reused" in the sense of making more
product but it does give additional benefit to the consumer.

I am also a proponent of structural re-use of post consumer plastics. It has
good insulation value, especially when foamed, and building engineered walls
with the post-consumer plastic providing a better than air insulation layer
has a durable long term effect of reducing baseline energy load which goes to
environmental control (heating/cooling) in buildings.

It violates the stories that people have been told that their shopping bags
will be infinitely recycled into new shopping bags, but it feels to me as a
much more authentic way to represent recycling.

~~~
kardos
> I am also a proponent of structural re-use of post consumer plastics.

Wouldn't the flammability of plastic make this a non-starter?

~~~
ChuckMcM
Adding fire retardant to plastic is straight forward [1,2]. One of the things
about the NIST presentation [2] that is also relevant is that it discusses the
additives that are added to plastics for one reason or another. Those
additives add additional difficulty in processing post consumer plastic into
precursors for new things.

[1] [https://sciencing.com/burn-potassium-
nitrate-7708552.html](https://sciencing.com/burn-potassium-
nitrate-7708552.html)

[2]
[https://www.nist.gov/sites/default/files/documents/el/fire_r...](https://www.nist.gov/sites/default/files/documents/el/fire_research/2-Reilly.pdf)

------
jrockway
My understanding of the situation is that recycled plastic is an inferior
product, so there isn't much demand for it. NileRed did an interesting
demonstration of recycling bottles here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLftqtsiFBs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLftqtsiFBs)
and he goes into some of the details about the resulting product that the
recycling process creates.

I think the solution is to be careful about what we make from plastic, and
what kinds of plastics we use in that case. If we don't waste in the first
place, there is no need to recycle anything. And if we do need to make
something disposable, we can use something that is economic to recycle, like
aluminum or glass. It's really just plastic that's the problem, glass bottles
are easy to reuse and aluminum cans can be melted down into aluminum that's
just as good as non-recycled aluminum. (Maybe the energy cost of all that
melting is high, but I think we are making strides towards more and more
renewable electricity, so we might be better off using electricity instead of
plastic.)

~~~
frosted-flakes
The energy cost of recycling aluminum might be high, but it's much lower (and
cheaper) than refining new aluminum.

~~~
pfdietz
However, recycled aluminum will come contaminated with possibly unpredictable
amounts of alloying elements (magnesium, silicon, copper, zinc, manganese).

------
dan-robertson
Summary: one company recycled, one incinerated (which creates a small amount
of hazardous waste), and one company sent the bales to landfill.

In the U.K. (at least a few years ago) councils (ie local authorities) are
supposed to try to meet targets for recycling. These come in various kinds:

1\. Targets for the percentage of their waste that is recycleable

2\. Targets for the percentage of the waste that is recycled

3\. Targets for the total quantity of kinds of unrecycleable waste

Part 1 generally means trying to reduce the amount of non-recycleable waste
that is produced. Partly this can be done by reducing waste in general, and
partly by ensuring that waste is better categorised (in the EU there is a
complicated categorisation scheme of waste, so eg hardcore is treated
differently to various plastics which are different from food or batteries.
Some categories are hazardous and have to be treated differently and may only
be sent to certain facilities)

Part 2 generally means trying to increase the available facilities to recycle
that waste (and decrease the capacity for recycleable waste [1])

Part 3 is generally about trying to guess how much waste will be produced (eg
population/large construction predictions)

[1] in the eu waste is typically handled by companies where one must pay a fee
(or sell—the fee may be negative) for another company to handle the waste. By
reducing the supply of landfill (or by giving incentives for recycling), the
price for recycling can become low enough that it is preferable. If the price
decreases sufficiently then further sorting of mixed waste may become
profitable. In general the main method for trying to control recycling is
trying to change market conditions (ie prices) rather than trying to impose
and distribute quotas. There are various arguments among economists about
which method is better (and whether the methods are actually different).
Success is measured by trying to estimate how much of the waste in a local
authority is recycled (by asking various waste disposal facilities, assuming
no illegal disposal, and somehow figuring out what waste was sourced/handled
outside the local authority)

In the UK, incineration (aka Energy from Waste or EfW) is generally considered
a “good” kind of waste disposal but slightly less good than recycling.

------
nostromo
I don't get what the big deal about putting plastic in the ground is.

It's _literally oil_. It belongs in the ground.

Or we can burn it for energy, and then do carbon sequestration, in which case
it'll need to end up back in the ground.

~~~
saagarjha
You're going to have to explain why plastic is "literally oil" in this
context, because this is not as obvious as you think it might be. It's a lot
harder to convert plastic to something I can put in my car, for example, and
there isn't a big oil patch in the Pacific.

~~~
garmaine
Plastic is oil molecules, sorted and rearranged.

~~~
saagarjha
I know, but that means very little. Paper is quite different from glucose,
even though cellulose is just a polymer of it.

------
nashashmi
Research find: I came across this video.
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I_fUpP-
hq3A](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I_fUpP-hq3A)

It says most plastics end up in incineration.

It also says plastics are separated using infrared technology.

I wonder if it is far from imagination to regulate the types of plastics
available for use. What if all plastics for all single use purposes were
restricted to a single kind of plastic.

~~~
mjevans
Limiting the types is probably easier. Different types of plastic are
desirable based on material properties.

------
calvinbhai
At times I feel, if there's no recycling programs, people will automatically
buy cheap products with plastic because it'll guilt trip them into using less
plastic.

When a country like India is taking steps to ban single use plastics (I think
from October 2019), why cant more developed countries / rich economies do the
same?

Cities that implement 10 cent bag fee have succeeded in reducing the use of
plastic carry bags.

Similarly bans on single use plastics will go a long way.

But the more such articles I read, I feel like an idiot when I segregate
recyclables and trash

------
itsmenow
related video for those interested:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8aVYb-a7Uw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8aVYb-a7Uw)

------
golemiprague
There is nothing wrong with landfill or incineration. Unlike metals, recycling
plastic is not economic. So converting it to energy by incineration is a
pretty good option. In the future if the oil supplies will dwindle it might be
economically viable to recycle plastic and then people (or maybe robots) will
excavate those landfills for material. It is us taking care of the future
generations. Isn't it what all those Gertas of the world want?

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Incineration means needlessly releasing greenhouse gasses.

~~~
adambard
The incinerators used in this case (claim to) recapture the emissions from the
incineration. However, they do leave some amount of toxic ash, which requires
special disposal.

~~~
jcampbell1
They don't do CO2 capture. They don't have some magic technology that doesn't
exist. They capture toxic particulates.

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u6eexrtxjjxjexr
[https://i.cbc.ca/1.5299276.1569615441!/fileImage/httpImage/i...](https://i.cbc.ca/1.5299276.1569615441!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/original_780/basel-
action-network.jpg)

Not sure what's going on in this picture. Can I hazard a guess - the "tracking
device" is a cheap smartphone?

~~~
endorphone
They're wedging the bale to insert a tracker in it. The trackers look
something like -

[https://images2.opb.org/c_limit%2Ch_1000%2Cq_90%2Cw_640/news...](https://images2.opb.org/c_limit%2Ch_1000%2Cq_90%2Cw_640/news_tracker_close_up_-1_g00ceo.jpg)

~~~
oh_sigh
I hope that tracker was recyclable.

