
Bikes, bowling balls, and the balancing act that is modern recycling (2015) - Tomte
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/12/recycling-matching-high-tech-materials-science-with-economics-that-work/
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cdolan
It is amazing how much infrastructure and technology is in place for a process
that is proving incompatible with reality (both in terms of capability of the
tech, and economics of the commodities).

Of particular interest was the bit on plastic bags (edit: which are largely
considered “contamination” in the USA) - the worker complained that they put
them into a dedicated stream to bale and sell, “but no one is buying them”.

Economics wrote the truth on the wall for these “recyclable” materials back in
2015 (or before). The world is just now catching up to the reality that
_reducing_ is the only real way to improve the situation we’re in - recycling
should be a last resort.

~~~
ced
> It is amazing how much infrastructure and technology is in place for a
> process that is proving incompatible with reality (both in terms of
> capability of the tech, and economics of the commodities).

Is it incompatible? The article makes it sounds like a clear win for the city,
and a sometimes-win for the plant:

 _All of this may mean that at any given moment, recycling can be anything
from highly profitable to a struggle to cover costs. If we were to shut these
facilities down during periods where they weren 't profitable, however, we'd
be wasting infrastructure and expertise we'd want when costs shift in the
other direction.

The city does pay a tipping fee to get rid of the materials, but it's less
than what it would pay to landfill them—plus it avoids the cost of
transporting everything to the landfill.

The city even has a chance to get some of its tipping fee back. When recycled
materials are sufficiently valuable, Sims shares a percentage of the profits
back with the government. During periods where these materials are priced low,
the company gets to keep any profits it can eke out.

The net result is that the city can benefit when recycled materials are
valuable. And when raw material prices are low, it's still profitable to keep
the facility operating._

~~~
jdietrich
New York City is a massive outlier when it comes to waste disposal. They have
no working landfill sites or incineration facilities, they have considerable
political difficulties in exporting waste to New Jersey or New York State and
their waste management system is still substantially dysfunctional due to the
legacy of organised crime. As a result, they have the highest per-tonne
landfill costs in North America. These problems could be fixed on a practical
level with a handful of modern waste-to-energy plants, but that's politically
untenable in the current climate.

~~~
hinkley
I wish Supercritical Water Oxidation had worked out.

But it requires ceramics that are resistant to heat, pressure, and chemical
erosion, which turns out to be the usual 'pick two' situation.

I had heard someone was working on composite ceramics to deal with this (heat
and pressure resistant bulk, enameled with heat and chemical resistant
coatings) but have heard nothing since.

So far they only seem to be price competitive in hazardous waste situations.

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drworm
If you found the economics portion of this article interestingly, I would
highly recommend the EconTalk podcast episode "Munger on Recycling"

[http://www.econtalk.org/munger-on-recycling/](http://www.econtalk.org/munger-
on-recycling/)

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mschuster91
For plastics, wouldn't it be possible to dissolve the whole bunch of trash in
e.g. acetone or other solvents and then split the solvents again to get pure
raw plastic precursors again? Or would that be too expensive?

~~~
jandrese
The problem with this scheme is that fresh new plastic is incredibly cheap. A
solvent based system like this basically has no chance of competing, even when
getting the raw material for free. The end product won't be as good either
thanks to all of the contamination.

I wonder if it would make sense to instead have dedicated areas in landfills
where you put products that can't be reasonably recycled today in the hopes
that in the future someone figures out a way to do it and can just tap into
the neatly separated pile to get their raw materials? This is pretty
speculative and optimistic. Plus it requires dump site operators to correctly
guess which kind of materials are going to be useful in the future.

~~~
RandallBrown
A book I read as a kid was set in a future where they were out of oil and
couldn't make new plastic. Plastic became very expensive and things like
plastic bowls were used as signs of wealth. The plot involved kids who were
taken and forced to mine plastic from old landfills.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ear,_the_Eye_and_the_Arm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ear,_the_Eye_and_the_Arm)

~~~
smileysteve
> The plot involved kids who were taken and forced to mine plastic from old
> landfills.

So basically what 3rd World countries do with the U.S. electronics.

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Steltek
Related to the coffee cup discussion the other day, wouldn't greater adoption
of municipal high heat composting solve some of recycling's problems?

~~~
sambe
What was the coffee cup discussion?

A colleague recently told me that re-usable coffee cups are about single-use
plastics. I looked down at my coffee cup and found it to be both recyclable
and biodegradable. He told me it was about the lids. The lid was the same.

Without further research, I would be a bit unsure about the cost of making a
re-usable cup vs its lifetime vs biodegradable single-use cups. But despite
the fact that things have already improved, I'm hearing they will be banned...

~~~
jdietrich
The vast majority of disposable coffee cups have a plastic inner lining. This
makes them impractical to recyclable, as the plastic lining must be separated
from the paper shell. They're still theoretically recyclable and so can carry
that label, but it's overwhelmingly unlikely that your local waste system has
the capacity to recycle them.

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-
environment-43739043](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-43739043)

~~~
Steve44
In the UK we now have the capacity to recycle all the 2.5 billion plastic
lined cups we use each year. There are an ever increasing number of recycling
collection points and many major companies are working to make this happen.

[https://resource.co/article/veolia-recycle-120m-coffee-
cups-...](https://resource.co/article/veolia-recycle-120m-coffee-
cups-2019-12774)

> However, two reprocessors have announced this year that they have the
> capability to recycle coffee cup waste. In March, packaging company DS Smith
> stated that it could recycle all the UK’s coffee cups at its paper mill in
> Kemsley, Kent, while on a smaller scale, paper manufacturer James Cropper
> launched its own trademarked ‘CupCycling’ process in May

> Costa announced its aim to recycle as many coffee cups as it sells by 2020,
> equating to 500 million cups. The programme involves the chain subsidising a
> number of waste collection companies, including Veolia, to collect takeaway
> cups from stores (£70 per tonne collected). This subsidy aims to raise the
> value of coffee cups as a material in the eyes of recyclers, making it more
> financially viable to collect them.

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_rpd
> originally ran on December 7, 2015

~~~
sctb
Noted; thanks!

