
National Sword - danso
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/national-sword/
======
cdolan
As many comments here point out - you are seen as a heretic for going against
the 'recycling gods' in many parts of the world. That is certainly true in
parts of American industry as well.

U.S. kids have been conditioned since the 90's to believe everything is
recyclable, and you commit a public disservice if you throw things away.
Slowly people are realizing that 'single stream' recycling just results in a
lot of contaminants and ends up being thrown away anyways.

Up until 6 months ago, one of my party tricks was to explain to people that
glass is not commonly recycled, but actually ground up and used as 'daily
cover' on a landfill (2-3" of material to help keep down odors, start the
decomposition process, and provide long term stability to the pile of trash).
The reactions ranged from "ha, I figured..." to jaw dropping denials.

People are finally starting to realize that, hey... Maybe a bunch of
'recycled' (read: shattered) beer bottles of mixed colors (green, brown,
clear) present much as much of an OSHA workplace hazard as they do an
'environmental benefit'.

~~~
quadrangle
I'm one of those recycling-zealots of some sort, or was. I believed in it but
never naively, always actually thinking about consumption and waste. And the
first day my town announced single-stream recycling, I was immediately
skeptical. In every way it, it seemed like an absolutely awful idea.

There was all this focus on pure weight of recycling, as though consuming
_more_ stuff to then recycle more of it was a good thing.

And _I_ bothered keeping all my stuff cleaning, pulling plastic windows out of
spaghetti boxes to put in the trash, so the box was just paper. It's trivially
easy to do this stuff. Separating the stuff after it gets dumped in a truck in
one big mix?? ABSURD

I feel like single-stream as a whole concept was a complete destruction of
actual recycling efforts and progress up to that point.

~~~
Animats
_Separating the stuff after it gets dumped in a truck in one big mix??
ABSURD._

Nope. Routine.[1] There are shakers, screens, magnets, blowers, crushers, and
optical sorters. It's not that complicated. Mixed recycling goes in, and
aluminum, ferrous metal, glass cullet sorted by color, paper, and trash come
out. Separation is working fine. The problem is that the markets for waste
paper, glass cullet, and plastic are weak, even when fully sorted.

Waste paper, especially. Paper mills in North America have been closing for
years.

Plastic bottle recycling is coming along well. CarbonLite has a huge plant
near LA, and plants in Denver and Pennsylvania. Recycled plastic bottles go
in, and plastic pellets ready for injection molding into new bottles come out.
This is the area where things are getting better.

Glass cullet is in trouble. Fewer manufacturers are using glass containers and
there's a cullet glut.

All this is at best marginally profitable and tends to need subsidies.
Aluminum is the only real moneymaker.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIVKmwzWSuc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIVKmwzWSuc)

[2] [https://www.kcet.org/shows/socal-connected/carbonlite-
inside...](https://www.kcet.org/shows/socal-connected/carbonlite-inside-the-
worlds-largest-plastic-bottle-recycling-plant-0)

~~~
quadrangle
I'm not actually claiming that all mixing is bad, but the general "just dump
it all into one bin" style of appeal to consumers' convenience is the problem.
Along with the mixing, we saw widespread advocacy that people just recycle
thoughtlessly.

Encouraging such carelessness gives a false impression about the whole system,
encourages ignorance…

It's one thing for single-stream to be feasible in terms of a mix of clean
paper, plastic containers, and metal. It's another thing to discourage
consumer thoughtfulness and end up with all manner of plastics, strange mixes
of rules in different municipalities, and tons of problematic contamination —
all of which could have been avoided if we didn't aim to make recycling a
mindless activity.

Obviously the real problem is the externalizing of the whole waste cost from
the manufacturers. If we could make all manufacturers pay for all the
recycling and environmental costs, they'd change their products to be more
recyclable and less wasteful.

------
sandworm101
>>> Consumers can make a difference by buying less, or buying products that
can more easily be reused or recycled, but that’s only part of the equation.
Countries, states and cities need to press producers to design more
sustainable products and packaging, and develop more recycling infrastructure.

What? No mention of corporations, of the many corporate interests that this
material serves. I don't want plastic wrapping on everything. So long as the
product gets where it needs to be nor does the manufacture really care. It is
the middle men, the retail stores, that insist on the extra packaging. Lots of
packaging is there for purely commercial interests such as to prevent easy
theft or as space for advertising.

I recently ordered some flashlights from china. They were made of aluminum and
came in simple cardboard boxes. Nearly all of the order was recyclable. No
inky labels, no bubble wrap, no silly nylon lanyards, no plastic beyond a tiny
piece of tape to hold the box closed. Nothing was in those boxes except for
the exact product I ordered. That's the progress we need.

~~~
macintux
When I was young, there were still "true" generic items in grocery stores. Not
store brands, but white packaging with a simple food label.

Unsurprisingly, they weren't very popular. Customers have brand preferences,
rational or not, and the word "generic" has strongly negative connotations.

(Speaking for myself, I can say that real Pop Tarts taste much better than the
store brand alternatives I've tried, which were edible but rather unpleasant.)

For physical retail I don't think packaging is going to go anywhere, and I
suspect manufacturers would rather package everything the same, whether it's
going to physical stores or being sold online.

~~~
0xcde4c3db
> When I was young, there were still "true" generic items in grocery stores.
> Not store brands, but white packaging with a simple food label.

I remember seeing this style of packaging in the '90s, but as far as I saw it
was really more like stealth branding because it was all from the same company
(Valu Time). This company allegedly operated like a store brand supplier
behind the scenes despite the store's name not appearing on the packaging.

~~~
barbecue_sauce
Most store brand suppliers a.k.a. private label co-packers (Cott,Ralcorp,etc.)
also have their own (lesser-known) brands that they distribute to ultra-price-
sensitive retail channels that don't want to incur the overhead of developing
their own brand packaging or don't have the resources. These are called white-
label products, though most of the time they don't actually have white-labels.
This terminology actually carries over into the software world, as well, where
companies will brand their generic software for your business to resell.

Source: Former subscriber to the trade magazine PLBuyer.

------
ChuckMcM
Lately I've become frustrated with the focus on recycling as a profit center.
In particular, only recycling material that can be turned around into a
product that consumers will buy.

One of the things that I believe plastic waste would be good for would be
large (say 3'(1m) x 3'(1m) x 6'(2m)) bricks, designed with three holes in them
and a tongue and groove design such that they could be stacked on to recycled
metal rods that had been pounded into the ground to form barriers. Not a
bullet proof as concrete but certainly functional for things such as levy re-
inforcement, keep out zones, and wind shelters.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Might be a non-problem compared to benefits, but I wonder if such bricks
shouldn't be coated with something, to prevent weathering (wind, grit, UV)
turning them into microplastics emitters?

~~~
ChuckMcM
Yes, coating them is recommended. The 'design' of the brick that I did for
this has 4" wide 2" deep grooves horizontally (one) and vertically (2) on the
outer surface.

The thought was that lumber could be screwed into the brick and then off the
shelf siding or drywall could be attached to the lumber. The grooves also
provide channels for in wall services (power, water, communications).

Some specialty ones for window casements and door casements.

The original concept was to set up a processing center in the California high
desert near a rail line and provide employment and shelter for anyone who was
willing to work at the plant to process the recyclables into stable building
materials. Sort of a community that is both saving the world and providing
homes, work, and community for those less fortunate.

------
skybrian
Or maybe put more things in the trash? It seems like recycling being good is
such an article of faith now that we lost track of why properly-run landfills
are bad.

Edit: to be clear, I'm asking this because I'm actually curious about the
answer. A quick Google search doesn't find anything particularly convincing.

~~~
ravedave5
I can't speak to other materials but aluminum recycling is incredibly less
energy intensive than refining from ore. It takes an incredible amount of
energy to convert aluminum oxide into aluminum and not much to melt aluminum
once it's in that state.

~~~
skybrian
Sure, yes, clean glass and aluminum are often easy cases. I don't think there
is that much trouble with compost either?

The problem seems to be with many of the other things that are allegedly
recyclable. Just because someone somewhere can recycle it doesn't mean your
local recycling facility can do anything with it.

~~~
henrikschroder
Another insanity is that companies that produce certain waste are required to
offer to recycle it. That's fair in most circumstances, in others, not so
much.

I live in Hawaii, and I usually buy local eggs. They come in a polystyrene
container, and polystyrene is something that shouldn't end up in landfills. So
the company graciously offers to recycle the container for me, the only thing
I have to do is mail it to Washington State. From Hawaii.

(Thankfully, Hawaii incinerates most trash, so that goes straight in the
trash!)

~~~
jpatokal
Out of curiosity, why _do_ your eggs come in polystyrene containers? Most of
world uses cardboard.

~~~
henrikschroder
The polystyrene containers are clearly in the minority of the brands that I
can buy here, it's just that the ones I prefer come in it. If you buy eggs
that come in cardboard at my local Safeway they're usually mainland eggs.

It would be interesting to know if the environmental impact of the plastic
containers for the local eggs offset the environmental impact of transporting
mainland eggs to Hawaii.

Hawaii has a high percentage of oil-powered electricity, and it burns all
trash, so me throwing the plastic container in the trash should offset some
oil, which drastically reduces the impact of the plastic container per se. So
the polystyrene containers might be the better option.

Figuring out the actual best environmental option is really really hard. And
the exercise above is just for god damn egg cartons.

Then again, there's plenty of low-hanging fruit to solve before my choice of
eggs start to count. If you live in a place that has landfills, that should be
the number one priority to fix. Landfills are terrible, burn the trash
instead, it allows you to recover a lot of energy.

------
jihadjihad
Interesting story, I did not know about that documentary. A nice companion
piece with lots of good info is this article here [0]. There needs to be more
public education on recycling, as there are many local differences and
frequently people think something is recyclable when it will actually end up
in a landfill.

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

------
blaze33
Eventually, every product will need to be designed as easily and efficiently
recyclable.

Humanity modern history was essentially focused around growth. Now for any
long-term survivability, I guess we better start using our immense
capabilities to ensure some sustainability to our societies.

Just look at the billion years of evolution and natural selection we stand on:
everything works in cycles. Earth only gets sunlight in and heat out, entropy
rules, that's all we have. Now, you can't build a new car out of pure
sunlight, nor can you dispose of the old one as infrared light into space. Yet
life flourished on our space rock. All past and present species who did well
relied on cycles. Those who ate everything and shat all over the place? Died
quickly. The current world economy is an unfinished work: produce > use >
dispose, a perfectly linear system. Recycling closes the loop. I get we happen
to prefer making, buying and using new things, inputs, over dealing with
garbage. I recall instagram was once filled with food plates, not so much with
whatever happens on the toilet 8 hours later.

As much as we love to play elaborate games on who does/gets what/how much/how
long, there's still no way to cheat the laws of physics to keep playing
forever.

If not now or not here, the universe doesn't care very much, see you on the
next episode on that other planet to see how long an intelligent life can
survive with limited ressources ;)

~~~
sonnyblarney
"every product will need to be designed as easily and efficiently recyclable"

Yes, this is it. With some planning, regulation and 'sustainable' thinking
around product design, it seems possible to me this could work.

We currently put 0 effort into how packaging 'deconstructs' into something
recyclable. Some work there could yield tremendous difference. Maybe even
totally painless on the part of the consumer, i.e. 'it just works'.

------
keerthiko
The best first step is definitely to minimize waste, by not ordering multiple
small online shipments, individually wrapped foods, too much groceries that
then go bad, etc and instead trying to buy more refill packs, bring your own
bags to shop, etc etc. The next best form of "recycling" is in-home reuse, and
if you do enough of it it's perfectly justifiable to just throw it into trash
(aka recycling) after you're done.

Re-use grocery store produce bags to portion food in the freezer or as
lunch/sandwich bags (like zip loc bags), and later as kitchen trash
containment to limit odors and fluid leakage in your trash. I also use them as
trash bags in smaller bins around the house (bathrooms, bedroom, etc) instead
of buying various sizes of trash bags.

Use the backs of letter-sized mail and physical spam as scratch paper and for
note-taking before discarding/recycling.

Rip the flaps off cardboard boxes and use the boxes to sort items in your
closets and pantries (and the flaps can be used as dividers too). I even use
smaller delivery boxes to sort items in the fridge because it's easier to
clean (by throwing out) than wiping fridge spills.

I feel like most of these sorts of things are no-brainers, but the typical
western consumerist household freely generates tons of trash and just buys
even more things to fulfill these roles generating even more trash that it
boggles my mind.

------
csense
Someone should build a recycling plant that ingests any possible waste, heats
it hot enough to break apart all molecular bonds so there aren't any nasty
complex byproducts, then uses temperature-controlled cooling to separately
condense individual elements or simple standard molecules.

My guess is that it's not against the laws of physics [1]. But it would be
pretty far beyond any current technology to do it economically, or at the
scale to handle a significant fraction of the waste output of a large country.
And also pretty energy inefficient.

If you have a grasp of the engineering issues (I sure don't), feel free to
chime in on the (in)feasibility of this idea.

[1] I'm no astrophysicist, but this is basically what happens to "recycle"
planets or asteroids, if a star swallows them and then goes supernova.

------
hiisukun
When I was growing up, the mantra was "reduce, reuse, recycle". The order was
important. It was one of those government promoted national sayings in
Australia, along with 'slip slop slap'.

Unfortunately my current impression is that there is a strange blindness to
these first two: reducing waste in the first place seems ignored if the item
is recycable. And if you couldn't avoid packaging, choosing to use that item
again makes no difference - just recycle it!

It is like 'recycle' has some ultimate environmental positive power on
people's attitude. If something is recycled, or recyclable, we don't need to
worry about anything else. Quite concerning.

------
carapace
We should learn to live in harmony with Nature. Among other things, biomimetic
technology should be preferred.

However, Molten Salt Oxidation can handle pretty much anything non-metallic,
including plastic (which is reduced to "synthesis gas"), and it's exothermic
(you're basically burning stuff in a liquid salt bath).

They use it to deal with chemical weapons and stuff. We have all the
technology we need, we just have to be smarter about how we meet our needs.

------
peterwwillis
It's possible to purchase goods in such a way that there is no disposable
plastic involved on the consumer end. The problem is the processing, packing,
transportation and distribution. We need a revolution in these fields that
prioritizes reusable materials and methods. After industry changes how we
receive the goods, we can work on getting people into the habit of reusing
materials rather than disposing of them.

~~~
jay_kyburz
Australia recently banned single use plastic shopping bags. Next we should
consider all plastic packaging.

------
abledon
Why aren’t films like the one mentioned in the article “plastic china” free to
watch? They seem like a great educational piece to use but I tried searching
and I had to purchase it — I understand the creators need to make money off
this to survive but I think government should subsidize these films so they
are free for the public to view

~~~
tomcam
How much extra in taxes do you wish to pay for this? And what happens when the
government chooses a subject you don't wish to support?

~~~
abledon
1\. 1$ a year. 2\. I accept that I lost a dollar

