
What Happens Now That China Won't Take U.S. Recycling - edward
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/china-has-stopped-accepting-our-trash/584131/
======
barrkel
The garbage disposal problem, of which recycling is a subset, is due to a lack
of back pressure in the consumption system.

From the perspective of production, disposal is an externality. From the
perspective of the consumer, disposal is an annoyance that they typically
don't have enough buyer power individually to push back on to producers.

Society has come up one workaround: social conscience, the green movement, so
that shame can be used to attack brands, aggregating buying power to push back
on producers. It doesn't work brilliantly with everyone - some people are
allergic to the ritualistic, moralizing pseudo-religious aspects of the
movement.

Politics has come up with another: WEEE: the EU Waste Electrical and
Electronic Equipment Directive. This is an attempt to tax goods by
incorporating the cost of disposal into the purchase price. While the green
movement was necessary to provide political will, it's much better than a
directly shaming approach - the closer the cost of disposal can be pushed to
the producer, tightening the feedback loop, the more likely economic
incentives will work.

Continuing to push the problem upstream into production is the long term
answer. If you try and increase costs at point of disposal, consumers are
simply incentivized to cheat, or pay people to cheat on their behalf. The
whole exporting of rubbish to China wheeze was one big cheat. The costs have
to be loaded at the point of purchase, and producers ultimately made
responsible for costs of disposal.

~~~
mirimir
Yes!

And it's not just economic costs. It's "lifestyle", more or less. So a few
decades ago, all beer bottles were the same size and shape. You took your
empties back to the store, and got paid for them. Distributors bought them
from stores, and manufacturers from distributors. So they got reused until
they broke.

Maybe 40 years ago, some regional US beer makers still did this. Maybe some
still do. I saw this 10-20 years ago in Mexico, for both beer and soda
bottles. And it was also pretty common for wine bottles.

But now? Now my wife buys French yogurt in tiny glass bottles. Tiny _heavy_
glass bottles. We could save them, but they're really too small for anything
but liquor. And who wants to drink from old yogurt containers, in any case?

in the late 60s and 70s, a crucial aspect of the food coop movement was buying
bulk stuff, and using your own containers. In Mexico, old-style milk stores
often didn't provide containers. And if they did, it was plastic bags.
Handling a 2L plastic bag of milk is quite the experience.

I can't imagine how the US could go back to bulk distribution and reusable
containers. Or, for that matter, how we could undo suburbanization. But there
are limits to externalities, and we are hitting them.

~~~
advertising
They still do the glass bottle returns in Mexico.

~~~
ams6110
They still do it in the US also, but you'll pay about 4x more for your milk.
You can often find milk on sale for $1.99/gallon (it's a "loss leader" for
supermarkets) while a half gallon in a returnable glass bottle will be $3.50
or $4.00 not including the bottle deposit.

~~~
joshvm
A store in the UK (sainsburys) briefly experimented with selling milk in bags.
You bought a big jug which the top-up bag clipped into. Ostensibly it reduced
plastic waste. Pretty sure it was cheaper than buying bottles. It never really
caught on though and they canned it.

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/greenerliving/7307719...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/greenerliving/7307719/Milk-
in-a-bag-at-Sainsburys.html)

~~~
selimthegrim
Bagged milk is still big in Canada (at least a decade ago)

~~~
lewisgmb
Confirmed, milk is sold in 1l bags and has been all my life.

~~~
Scoundreller
They're 1.33l.

A company once tried the usual "Let's reduce the size of the package and
nobody will notice" shenanigan and made 1L bags, but it was blatantly obvious
when it didn't fit the plastic jug anymore.

------
Animats
_If we can somehow figure out how to better sort recycling, some U.S. markets
for plastics and paper may emerge._

The technology exists and is in production. Here's a new 90 ton per hour
recycling plant, from Bulk Handling Systems, in California.[1] This is a good
video to watch to see the whole process. Some of the separation is done with
the usual air separators, vibrators, and screens. Optical sorters controlling
air jets do some of the separation. This plant has no manual pickers; it uses
AI vision controlled robots for the hard separation stations. This is not a
prototype; it's a big production plant.

Separating different plastics can be done with near infrared multispectral
imaging. Here's a TOMRA sorter doing that in a real plant.[2] That's from
2015.

Finally, here's a big plant in LA which takes in plastic bottles and puts out
clean plastic pellets ready for injection molding into new bottles.[3]

China is still accepting US plastics for recycling. It just has to be sorted
down to 0.5% contamination, and that's being checked. The standard used to be
1.5%, it wasn't really enforced, and 5% contamination was not uncommon. US
recyclers have to upgrade their facilities to the point that there's no manual
picking required on the output.

Big cities are dealing with this. Smaller communities have problems, because
they don't have enough volume for the newer equipment and don't generate
enough material to find buyers.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=254&v=4FpsH_ETT7...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=254&v=4FpsH_ETT7c)
[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0OZ7Mlmkvk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0OZ7Mlmkvk)
[3] [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) [4]
[https://www.wastedive.com/news/china-contamination-
standard-...](https://www.wastedive.com/news/china-contamination-standard-
MRFs/519659/)

~~~
Scoundreller
The optical scanners sometimes can’t read black plastics.

It just absorbs IR.

We should discourage them.

The scanners are cool since they’re analyzing the plastic itself; not reading
codes.

[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/restaurants-coffee-
pl...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/restaurants-coffee-plastic-
takeout-balzacs-1.4600160)

~~~
Scoundreller
> We should discourage them

By that, I mean discourage the black plastics, not the optical scanners!

------
pfdietz
It's important to understand the issue that recycling is meant to address.
It's cost of landfills, not shortage of materials.

The obvious (but not workable) answer is to just charge the actual cost of
disposing material in landfills. But this doesn't work because it encourages
illegal dumping and littering.

So, I can see two solutions:

(1) Some process that converts bulk garbage into something that takes up less
space. Incineration and pyrolysis are like this. Maybe you get some useful
energy or gases out of it, but the main point is to reduce the cost of
disposal. But this would have to be cheap and clean, a tall order.

(2) A tax on all manufactured goods, based on their disposal footprint, that
subsidizes the landfills. Since this tax is already paid it can't be avoided
by illegal dumping.

~~~
daxfohl
So basically the argument I had with my dad (conservative blue collar) a
couple years ago when he argued "No we're not going to pay $2/mo for recycling
bins, this whole recycling thing is just a scam for the trash companies to
skim money." Me: "Blah blah blah rainforests, blah blah blah manufacturing
waste to produce, etc." I guess he was right?

~~~
rasz
I live in a capital of an EU country. City mandates recycle bins and garbage
segregation due to EU laws, same City collects trash from all bins using same
trucks and proceeds to dump it all in one big hole in the ground ~100km away
while paying hefty fines. Its been like this ever since we got recycle bins.

~~~
robert_foss
Does this happen to be a city in the south of Italy?

~~~
Camillo
What EU country has a capital in the south of Italy? The Kingdom of Two
Sicilies?

------
lukeschlather
> Even in San Francisco, Reed kept pointing out items that aren’t easily
> recyclable but that keep showing up at the Recology plant: soy-sauce packets
> and pizza boxes

This is funny, because I was just at SFO yesterday where I got Sushi while
waiting for my flight, and was confused by the lack of garbage receptacle.
There was a "cans/bottles" recycling bin and a compost bin. A sign announced
"Don't worry, everything you purchased in the food court is either recyclable
or compostable!" There's no way the soy packets were either recyclable or
compostable. (Not to mention the plastic tray with metallic-looking designs on
it, and the foil bag of wasabi peas.) So there's a fair amount of
institutional negligence going on.

~~~
Havoc
What's the issue with pizza boxes?

~~~
chrisseaton
They're often soaked in grease. My community won't accept them for recycling
either.

~~~
hinkley
Mine tells me to put them in the compost bin.

Still teaching the family though.

------
mostlyjason
No one cares because the perceived cost is zero. Burning your recycling just
externalizes the cost to the environment. If I lived in one of those cities,
I’d encourage the city to increase disposal fees so they can do it properly.
If people are too poor to pay the fees, then add a sales tax on wastefully
packaged products to subsidize disposal fees for low income earners. If
business can earn more profit or increase volume by using better packaging,
then they’ll do so.

~~~
BoorishBears
>If people are too poor to pay the fees, then add a sales tax on wastefully
packaged products to subsidize disposal fees for low income earners

That just punishes the low income people again.

Taxes on goods disproportionately affect poor people because the tax is a
larger portion of your purchasing power the lower your income is.

A rich person, or even a middle class person, isn’t going to be put out of
their habits by a couple of cents.

~~~
coldtea
And because the percentage of income one spends for "packaged products" is
gets lower the richer you get (and gets capped), the rich can just put aside a
"pollute as much as I like" percentage of their income just for not having to
care about recycling.

~~~
lotsofpulp
Being rich implies being able to consume more. That’s the difference between
rich and not rich.

~~~
coldtea
No, that's a trailer park idea of the rich.

Being rich implies more wealth and power, which is different than consumption,
and that is the actual difference between rich and not rich.

Rich people can and do consume more, but, unless you're some kind of gaudy
nouveaux into bling or Saudi oil heir, there's only so much you can spend on
the kind of "packaged products" we're discussing (and clothes, foods, gadgets,
and so on) as part of your everyday life.

Rich will buy a fancier car (or cars), a nicer house (or houses), etc, but
those are long term anyway, and can even be investments in themselves. They
don't get new "packaged products" in any substantial number more than middle
class people.

[https://slate.com/business/2013/01/yacht-economics-rich-
peop...](https://slate.com/business/2013/01/yacht-economics-rich-people-don-t-
consume-very-much.html)

~~~
lotsofpulp
It’s the same definition, being able to consume more means having the power to
consume more.

A bigger home, traveling further, fancier cars, are all more polluting than a
few “package products”. I would bet an accurate tracking of externalities
(especially due to extra fuel usage due to extra travel), rich people wouldn’t
just be able to ignore it.

------
jonplackett
So basically, recycling is a lie. Most stuff can’t really be recycled except
at great cost. Who perpetuated this lie to begin with I wonder, was it just to
get us to keep buying stuff?

~~~
HillaryBriss
I would like to know if there is any progress to be made in just "stabilizing"
plastics in large quantities.

Is it a worthwhile research goal to find a cheap method of transforming post-
consumer plastics into an inert, large-scale form (the size of a tractor
trailer) that is long-term stable and doesn't offgas?

Is reusability really necessary?

~~~
lostapathy
Not exactly what you're asking for, but similar goals:
[https://preciousplastic.com/](https://preciousplastic.com/)

~~~
HillaryBriss
really interesting. i had no idea such a movement existed. they make it look
simple and easy.

~~~
HillaryBriss
this guy is already producing a 9KG "upcycled plastic brick" which apparently
can be used in construction

[https://bazar.preciousplastic.com/en/listings/687199-upcycle...](https://bazar.preciousplastic.com/en/listings/687199-upcycled-
plastic-bricks)

------
mc32
If we look back 2, 3000 years ago, disposal was a problem already. We can see
how people discarded things even when they were relatively expensive. Example
all the different strata at the Troy/Troja site.

It’s hardly a modern problem. But in modern times we have added complications
of sheer volume, toxicity, and lack of biodegradability.

~~~
coldtea
> _If we look back 2, 3000 years ago, disposal was a problem already_

Disposal is a problem since the dawn of time in the general since (you need to
dispose waste somewhere, even if you're an amoeba), but it's misleading to
call it a problem anywhere close to today's sense back 3000 years ago.

It wasn't even close in neither quantity, nor quality.

~~~
mc32
I already acknowledge that. My point is being expensive doesn’t make people
dispose any less. If they are not useful they don’t get reused repurposed or
recycled.

Given thd volume and unprofitability we can only find ways to process them to
get rid of them. Those things which have value will be recycled, etc.

~~~
inertiatic
>My point is being expensive doesn’t make people dispose any less.

Factually wrong. If I can now afford 1 unit instead of the 2 I used to per
month, I will discard the packaging of 1.

If prices of goods packaged in shitty packaging rises enough, people will opt
for other options. This isn't a fantastical idea, it's what has happened
historically. See for example what happened every time in every country that
decided to force buyers to pay for plastic bags.

------
Simulacra
Maybe this is a blessing in disguise so we're focused more on recycling from
the start, not as an after-the-fact. Companies like Apple (and others) have
been inching us towards this notion of disposable electronics. Once we can no
longer simply "dispose" of things, perhaps it will push companies and
governments to look at making things more environmentally responsible from the
start.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
It could be a blessing in disguise if recycling is considered appropriately.
Reduce, reuse, recycle, dispose, in that order of priority.

Without that it is very difficult to claim, with any credibility at all, being
environmentally responsible.

I'm not optimistic.

~~~
zikzak
My mother, in her 80s, occasionally says they didn't need recycling when she
was young because things were not disposable in the same way they are now.
They were also pretty broke and so much more likely to "make do" than they
were to buy something new. The lack of choice and diversity of goods back then
probably also played a huge role in this. Not saying we should go back to that
but we can learn from it.

~~~
blihp
She's got a point with respect to durable items. In the last century it was
uncommon to throw something out just because it had a crack or tear... minor
repairs were the norm. Now we throw out perfectly good phones when the battery
gets worn out and it isn't fashionable to replace them. We've gotten (a bit)
better at reducing wasteful packaging but much worse regarding the longevity
of what's inside the package. Also, world population growth isn't helping the
problem.

------
michaelbuckbee
The article doesn't mention Plastic China [1] the documentary that in some
ways really prompted China to make this change.

1 - [https://www.plasticchina.org/](https://www.plasticchina.org/)

~~~
unfunco
> "They can split the atom, but they can't recycle plastic?"

I think this was a quote from that documentary, it was either posted here or
on reddit previously (I'm not complaining, it was fascinating) – that quote,
by a worker in a Chinese recycling plant to the owner of the plant, after
being told Americans can't handle plastic, has stuck with me for some reason.

------
forgotmypw
I've always thought recycling is a bit of a sham, designed primarily to
provide some feel-good busywork for people who are concerned about
environmental impact of using bad packaging, but not enough to change their
habits.

~~~
caoilte
I agree up until the last part. Habits aren't formed in a vacuum. Corporations
sell products in bad packaging and for most people most of the time there is
no reasonable way to avoid purchasing products in that form. The only way to
change the situation is to legislate. A tax on packaging seems most pragmatic.
Unfortunately, pragmatism would go against the prevailing dogmatic faith in
the free market being the solution to all problems and so we do nothing.

~~~
AlexTWithBeard
Another way would be to make garbage collection "pay as you go", for example
by charging for collection bags.

This is closer to "free market spirit", but creates a huge incentive to dump
the garbage into the nearest river...

~~~
sanxiyn
The obvious answer is to levy hefty fine for dumping so that expected loss is
higher than collection bag fee. Source: I live in collection bag fee
jurisdiction.

~~~
AlexTWithBeard
So how does it work for you?

My biggest fear is that the cost of enforcement will greatly outweigh possible
benefits.

In this sense taxing the "supply" side is much easier.

------
nobodyandproud
The answer is to put the burden of recycling back on the manufacturer, and add
a refundable cost to packaging on purchase.

Businesses have zero incentive make products easy to recycle.

If I recall, the only recycling success stories involve aluminum, glass, and
perhaps paper. These are relatively easy to recycle, yet even these required
financial incentives.

------
everybodyknows
>Plastic clamshell containers are difficult to recycle because the material
they’re made of is so flimsy—but it’s hard to find berries not sold in those
containers, even at most farmers’ markets.

Yes, but it's easy to find farmers grateful to take them back for reuse. Same
with those green plastic open baskets. Plastic produce bags can be brought
back in a shopping bag for reuse by ourselves.

+1 for farmer's markets.

------
Camillo
Whenever we're talking about mass transit, or communications, or trains, or
pretty much any other piece of infrastructure, there are always lots of people
saying that America can't do things like Europe does because it's huge,
everything is dispersed, there are enormous low-density stretches, etc.

Where are all those people when the subject turns to garbage infrastructure?
If you have so much empty space, take some of it and make a huge landfill! Put
it in a desert or something. Make some hills out of garbage.

There's precedent, too. When the US government needed to test nuclear weapons,
they got a big honking piece of desert and nuked it. When they needed an area
with very low RF interference for some spy stuff, they found some low-density
place and banned radios there. When they need to test artillery, desert again.

------
merpnderp
I'd bet one of the most immediate consequences is a lot less plastic winds up
in the oceans. We know just a few rivers and cities account for nearly all
ocean plastic, and I'd assume several of these are major routes for imported
plastics.

~~~
sct202
Yeah I watched a documentary on what happens to the imported 'recycled'
plastic, and stuff was blowing away in the wind, burning, kids were picking
thru it by hand, etc. I'm not surprised that China would want to put a damper
on the whole thing.

~~~
merpnderp
I bet I watched the same documentary, and I was overjoyed when China banned
imports. The US and most western countries have spent a ton of money upgrading
garbage dumps to have moisture barriers, large fences, and other containment
features, and the plastic is much safer there than in the oceans.

------
andrewstuart
To solve the problem: stop making the packaging/garbage.

It's not solved by working out what to do with all the packaging/garbage, it's
solved by stopping making it.

"Recycling" is the distraction/sleight of hand that the packaging industry
uses to make you feel OK with the infinite spew of garbage it creates. Finally
China has shown the lie of recycling.

In your kitchen, if the water tap is gushing water onto the floor, you don't
spend all your time focusing on how to mop up the water, you turn off the tap.
Same thing.

------
zmmmmm
I guess this might be an unpopular opinion, but I've never seen hard numbers
proving that recycling is actually necessary. I am curious, what would be the
consequences of simply digging big holes and burying all our rubbish? I
understand that some of it generates greenhouse gasses, so that might have to
be dealt with separately. But for general inert waste, is it that bad to just
stick it in the ground?

~~~
unstrafed
In 1990, A. Clark Wiseman from Gonzaga calculated that if we dug a landfill
100 yards deep and put in all trash generated in the US for the next
millennium, it would fit in a square area of land 35 miles on each side
(assuming of course levels of consumption and disposal from the time). By
point of comparison, replacing all existing energy sources with solar and wind
power would require orders of magnitude more acreage. I'm not sure if most New
Yorkers have ever seen a place like e.g. Nevada, but I'm not exactly worried
about the amount of land needed for landfills.

New technologies allow landfill operators to extract some of the waste and use
it for industrial purposes (particularly methane, with potent greenhouse
emissions, albeit relatively short-lived). It also remains true that some
forms of recycling - paper, cardboard and metals like aluminum or steel - are
still cost effective, provided that the public stops trying to recycle their
pizza boxes. I've often wondered if environmental policy would be better
served by focusing on sorting high-quality, cost-effective recyclables into
recycling plants and putting everything else into the landfill.

IMO, recycling has ceased being about - or perhaps never was about - economic
efficiency or ecological health, and is mostly a cheap way for people to feel
like they're doing the right thing. I have become somewhat skeptical about
recycling, and even I feel the shame of being a heretic against pathos-laden
gospel first preached in grade school for failing to throw a plastic bottle
into the recycling bin.

------
chiefalchemist
Perhaps, in the near long term, this is good news? Now wasteful America can't
avoid the results of its ways? Up til now, it's been out of sight, out of
mind. Sure, recycling plastic feels good. But less plastic - a petroleum
byproduct - period would be noticeably better.

Perhaps, once the price of disposal goes up (and landfills are NIMBY) then
root problem will finally be addressed? Perhaps, there is finally hope?

------
thekingofh
The whole point was that we were supposed to be recycling, not using more
fossil fuels to ship it all back overseas to be possibly just burned or buried
anyways. And at best the recycled material is shipped yet again overseas back
to us in the form of new products. The best thing that's come from all this is
that we finally know what actually happens to all that 'recycled' material.

~~~
hahajk
My understanding was that our trade deficit with China meant that we had to
send more shipping containers back to China and we filled them with relatively
light recycling waste instead of simply sending them back empty. It was
basically free transportation.

But maybe that’s not be true.

------
8bitsrule
There are endless 'convenience' obscenities built into the consumer interface
that could easily be eliminated through legislation. Many 'solutions' were
invented up to a century ago, then discarded over the years (for
convience/profit).

Example: boxes of bottled water sold in separate plastic containers.
Replacement: go to a water distributor with a 5-gallon re-useable container.
'Inconvenient' to the consumer? Tough bounce.

Milk bottles ... soda bottles ...

Example: Grocery stores used to pack groceries into boxes products were
shipped in. 'Want plastic or paper?' NEITHER. Consumer may choose to bring
in/rent re-useable crates.

And so on. There are -endless- working solutions that will eliminate the
massive costs of creating all of this waste and of disposing of it. WE have
let this happen, and WE deserved the consequences.

~~~
dec0dedab0de
_Example: boxes of bottled water sold in separate plastic containers.
Replacement: go to a water distributor with a 5-gallon re-useable container.
'Inconvenient' to the consumer? Tough bounce._

Or maybe just raise the quality of tap water

------
hedora
California could raise a tax, let’s call it a “CRV” tax for container
redemption value, and then use it to subsidize curbside pickup of pre-sorted
recycling.

Seriously though, at the current 5-20 cents per container crv tax, how can
recycling in California not be profitable for the state?

Where is that money going?!?

~~~
HillaryBriss
much of it goes to individuals who collect and sort the materials and bring
them to recycling centers for a cash reward.

a lot of times, these individuals collect the materials from big blue bins
consumers have carefully filled and placed at the curbside near their
residences.

another place the money goes is to people in Arizona who gather plastics in
that state and truck it across the border to cash in on California's generous
recycling rewards program.

------
IshKebab
> Then there’s the challenge of educating people about what can and can’t be
> recycled

I have never lived anywhere where the local council has made any remote effort
to do this properly. Surely they'll list a few common items that can and can't
be recycled - like maybe 10 things. But people come into contact with a _vast_
array of different items. 10 doesn't cut it.

They mention wire coat hangers - why can't they be recycled? I would have
thought since they are metal they could easily be magnetically separated and
melted down with all the other metal. No recycling box says whether or not you
can recycle wire coat hangers so you just have to guess.

------
crb002
Cardboard/paper can go to EU and South America. Electronics can get mixed in
with ore worst case. Best solution w electronics is grinding and separating
them in house and reselling to rare earth refiners.

------
advertising
What about the idea of everyone having their own cup and water bottle that
they take everywhere. If you want the drink to go and forget your cup, buy a
new one at a high price or have it there.

------
jelliclesfarm
What about plasma incinerators?

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

~~~
skunkworker
I've wondered about this as well, I guess in land-constrained locations this
could be advantageous, but AFAIK they are not energy-positive on their output.

------
pstuart
There is hope for being able to recycle most plastic:
[https://purecycletech.com/](https://purecycletech.com/)

------
lumberingjack
Alot of my Immediate family works for one of the largest trash pickup, dump,
and recycling facilities in the Midwest you're kidding yourself if you think
that recycling is keeping stuff out of the dump when they get overloaded with
too much recycling which is about every 3 days everything goes to the dump
most plastics go to the dump only about 10% of a really gets recycled.

------
abootstrapper
Producers have to be made responsible for disposal. Perhaps a tax on the
weight and type of material of the packaging minus recovered and reused
materials.

------
skybrian
It seems like the key is to get people to feel good about throwing things in
the trash? There should be campaigns to "keep our recycling clean" and "when
in doubt, throw it out".

Treating recycling as a moral issue may actually be making things worse, to
the extent that encourages people to think that putting more stuff in the
recycling bin is better.

------
alexandercrohde
Plastic: A real problem as burning it releases estrogens (more formally
'endocrine disrupters') into the air. However $1 bottle deposit and glass
bottles seems entirely viable to me. Maybe a bit of an adjustment, but a
hundred times smarter than burning.

Papers: As far as I know this can just biodegrade. Compostable, no?

------
fouc
I think it would be a fascinating problem use some combination of
AI/robots/etc to design a hugely effective way to sort garbage. Even better if
it was possible to do an army of tiny robots that would just go out and fetch
all the garbage etc.

------
onetimemanytime
Off topic, but isn't it amazing that shipping garbage across many oceans is
profitable?

------
jerrac
Has anyone run across something that would work at the individual home level?
A machine that sorts and cleans the plastic into small bales in your garage.
Maybe something similar for paper and aluminum?

------
Animats
Maybe the US should have high tariffs on packaging materials to prevent their
importation and force domestic manufacture.

------
HillaryBriss
maybe it's time for more plasphalt

[https://www.dot.state.pa.us/public/Bureaus/design/SEMP/FACTS...](https://www.dot.state.pa.us/public/Bureaus/design/SEMP/FACTS/Plasphalt%20District%205-0.pdf)

------
remote_phone
We should only allow fully recycled plastic everywhere. Completely outlaw
single-use plastic that can’t be easily recycled.

Everything else should be compostable. Everything else should have a fee
associated with disposal. Things with dangerous chemicals like batteries, etc
should have high amounts of returnable deposits.

Yes, it’s going to be expensive but it’s worth it.

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leoh
It seems to me that landfill prices ought to be baked into the price of
products sold.

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ThomPete
This is one of those things that should be viewed as a long term opportunity
rather than a short term problem.

The worst solution would be to just find another country to send the garbage.
The best solution would be new technologies locally which would allow us to
deal with garbage.

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leke
I'm hoping innovation happens.

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zeroname
Just dump all the _sorted_ garbage in _sorted_ landfills. Recycling may become
economical again at some point. In any event, future technology will deal with
it better.

~~~
jrochkind1
I assume you are joking, but I liked the joke. (If it's not a joke, it's
horrifying).

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ape4
Got the robots on it

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qrbLPHiKpiux
We consume too much. Driving out of my development on trash day shows me this.
Bags and bags, boxes, loads of trash for a home of 4 people. Two adults, two
children. I wonder what they’re going through?

~~~
convolvatron
its almost as if the invisible hand is encouraging us to be wasteful, to
encourage growth, rather than efficient as we were all taught in primary
school.

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xattt
I too heard the 99PI episode that cited this article.

~~~
doytch
Not only is your snark unnecessary, this article came out March 5 - after that
episode.

