
'Moment of reckoning': US cities burn recyclables after China bans imports - chriskanan
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/21/philadelphia-covanta-incinerator-recyclables-china-ban-imports
======
seanwilson
I've always wondered why there couldn't be standard containers for products
like jam, wine, butter etc. where the containers are designed to be easily
washed and reused. Manufacturers could still create their own branded
containers but would pay more somehow for doing so. Is there an obvious
problem with this idea?

It's nuts that if you buy e.g. 4 bottles of wine they all have different
bottle designs and if you optionally go through the effort of recycling them
there might be some process involved where they're sent to another country,
broken down, melted and then reformed it into new bottles at best. Just wash
and reuse the bottle...?

~~~
CydeWeys
This is commonly done with bottled water in many European countries. You see
stacks of formed plastic holders for the bottles in the back. As bottles get
drunk, the empties are placed back into the holders, and the company servicing
the restaurant comes frequently and swaps out the empties for full ones. You
can tell the bottles are reused a lot because they have pretty substantial
wear marks on their sides where they rub against the holders.

And yeah, it'd be great if the same kind of system were extended to more
products in the US. It'd be awesome if we could standardize on containers of,
e.g., size 50mL, 100mL, 200mL, 500mL, 1 L, both for liquid and solid goods,
and just have everything be sold in those. Then you'd just recycle those
containers as normal, and instead of being broken down and remade, they'd
simply be washed and reused.

~~~
derefr
It’s not done for small bottled water in the US, but it is done for multi-
gallon “water bottles”, i.e. the things you use with a water cooler. Mostly
you’re not returning them, though (although you _can_ return them); you’re
just reusing the ones you own.

I feel like that might be a more sustainable system: a grocery store where
everything is shipped to the store and held in large bulk containers (which
can be reused between the store and the supplier), and then, when purchased
(through a deli counter or machines), some of the contents of the large
container are transferred to fill up a small reusable plastic container you’ve
brought from home. (Either by plugging it into the vending machine—like with
refillable water jugs—or by handing it to the deli clerk to fill. Or, in the
case of bulk bins, just filling your containers yourself, and then weighing
them at the self-checkout. [That presumes each container has some sort of
standardized tare code on it you can scan so that you don’t have to weigh
every container empty when you first come in.])

~~~
yorwba
Such grocery stores exist: [https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-
business/2014/sep/16...](https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-
business/2014/sep/16/berlin-duo-supermarket-no-packaging-food-waste)

------
darkerside
> too difficult

> impossible

These words are funny to me. It's not literally "too difficult" or
"impossible" for people to sort their recyclables. I think they essentially
mean, we don't know how to make people do this, or we think we'll be voted out
if we ask people to do it. And what it boils down to is that, it's not a
socially accepted/expected practice to sort your recyclables. But, you know
what? That is a completely different thing from being "too difficult" or
"impossible". And by conflating those two things, we as a society are
operating with blinders on.

As a thought experiment, imagine everybody else was making the needed
compromises (to their time, space, etc.) to properly sort recyclables. Is it
still impossible for you?

~~~
tachyonbeam
IMO, you shouldn't ask people to sort recyclable materials at home for a few
reasons:

1\. It's not impossible, but it's _impractical_. You need multiple containers
all of a sudden, and these can't be fixed-size containers because not everyone
consumes the same proportion of any given material.

2\. People are going to sort things wrong, meaning you need to check/re-sort
at the processing plant.

3\. How difficult of a challenge is it to build sorting machines, anyway? Are
you going to tell me self-driving cars are coming soon but we can't build
machines to handle this? If it really is too hard, have regulations put in
place so that some machine-readable material tag be put on all packaging.

4\. I think this is a good domain for regulators to step in. Tax things that
are hard to recycle, and encourage packaging that is easy to recycle or
biodegradable. Keep in mind, glass containers are recyclable and also
_reusable_ , meaning you can just clean and refill them at the factory, which
is more energy-efficient than melting everything. No new technology needed,
just go back to selling milk, sodas, etc. in glass jugs.

~~~
cr0sh
> How difficult of a challenge is it to build sorting machines, anyway?

Machine vision and learning, conveyor belts, lots of delta arms - seems doable
to me.

Heck - maybe we need something akin to the whole "smart car" thing in China -
let kids and others come up with trash sorting machines, compete in challenges
(FIRST/FRC style?), etc?

Hmm - business idea:

Educational STEM startup focused on the above (aka - FIRST/FRC robot contests
for trash sorting); all entries must be open source/open hardware; same
company (more or less) could use innovations from the open source entries to
develop full-scale machines and systems for implementation in actual industry?

~~~
mtw
If it's already contaminated, with food waste or other, there's no amount of
machine vision or labour that will get you rid of the contamination so you can
send it to China.

~~~
clort
maybe you use the machine vision and sorting machine to reject that item then,
and still send all the uncontaminated items to China?

~~~
cududa
Years ago I dabbled in the agtech space and reasonably affordable
spectrometers were available. Perhaps that could help pick out contaminated
items?

------
sevensor
I've long maintained that plastics recycling is worse than useless -- washing
all of that plastic takes loads of water, and there just aren't many uses for
recycled plastic. Consider the plastics around you. How many objects are
virgin plastic? How many are recycled? There's not some secret destination for
recycled plastics. Clearly it's being dumped or burned, and it has been for a
long time. Now we're doing it in the U.S. again, it's much harder to pretend
that's not its fate.

~~~
CydeWeys
If the plastic is burned in a really high quality incinerator, with a great
scrubber stack, it at least isn't putting out lots of pollutants, and can
generate power to boot. This might be a better fate than having them end up in
a landfill, though of course they are releasing CO2 when you burn them (though
I don't know if that's significant at all compared to global CO2 released in
manufacturing and transport).

~~~
AstralStorm
About the same CO2 impact as manufacturing them.

The problem is burning it clean. To do that you have to run a very hot
furnace, near gasification temperatures.

Otherwise, you will be releasing cracked chlorine, sulphate, partial urethane
chains and other hydrocarbons into air. They're invisible but noxious and
sometimes stinky.

Electroscrubbers have limitations and high energy cost too.

------
joekrill
Whenever I see stories revolving around this sort of thing, I'm always
reminded of the Penn & Teller: Bullshit! episode they did on recycling
([https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0771119/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0771119/)).
They argue that landfills really aren't that bad and may actually be better
than recycling. Of course the entire _premise_ of that show was that you
shouldn't just blindly believe everything you're told -- INCLUDING what the
show itself tries to argue for. So I have no idea how valid any of their
argument actually is.

~~~
everdrive
If I recall their entire argument was based on whether or not something
_financially_ worth it. And so they recommended recycling aluminum, because
aluminum is worth so much. Whereas everything else loses money.

If it were true that recycling plastic were better for the environment, but
was a financial loss I'd be for it. I'm not sure this is true, but the point
is that purely financial considerations miss the bigger picture here.

As other HN posters have pointed out, it seems that fewer disposable plastic
containers is the better path here. (really, as few as possible!)

~~~
derefr
Consider: it might be cheaper in total long-term ROI to dispose of things in
landfill now, and then let people a hundred years from now dig them back up if
they have need for the materials then, than to recycle those things right now.
And by “cheaper”, I mean for the entire economy that includes both us and the
hypothetical future people digging those things up! Our recycling now might
have lower ROI (higher costs, less reclamation efficiency) than their digging-
up + recycling would! (This is actually a thing in archaeology: frequently
sites that are hard to dig up will be left to future archaeologists who—it is
assumed—will be able to reclaim them more cheaply and effectively than we can
today.)

It’s sort of like the “bargain” of cryptocurrencies: what promotes long-term
GDP growth more, bank fees or massive electricity use? Crypto miners are
hurting the environment right now; but they pay for their own externalities.
Banks impose fees that lower net productivity in a way that might mean that
the companies/technologies that we need to reach sustainability take longer to
come into existence. So will we be in a better place with 100 years of crypto
mining + 100 years of an economy [including green industry] that was spurred
on no bank fees; or vice versa? The question doesn’t have an immediate,
intuitive answer.

A stupid but weirdly-precise analogy: when playing an RTS like Starcraft,
anything that slows down your “economy” (mineral mining) prevents you from
“teching up” as quickly as your opponent. In humanity’s case, our opponent is
Malthusian resource starvation (in the small—of individual resources) and
habitat loss from climate change. Anything that slows down our economy from
“teching up” to face these problems, for a reward of merely _moving around in
time_ our ability to use our resources (rather than decreasing permanent
losses/increasing permanent gains of resources), isn’t really worth it, if
we’re “racing the clock.” (That’s a big, hotly-debated “if”, of course.)

~~~
marcosdumay
> what promotes long-term GDP growth more, bank fees or massive electricity
> use?

Assuming they have the same cost, bank fees promote more GDP growth, hands
down, at any time horizon.

Money simply changing hands will always beat money changing hands with added
useless usage of resources and labor.

And that's not even considering the reality, that average electricity costs of
a BTC transaction are orders of magnitude expensive than the average bank fees
on money transactions.

~~~
derefr
Oh, no, I meant that the other way around. As in, "what promotes GDP growth
more—companies and individuals having more money from a [lack of] bank fees,
or power grids having more spare capacity from a lack of miners consuming
electricity"?

------
ohiovr
Could we make standardized durable containers that can simply be scrubbed,
optionally polished and reused? Or just melted down and reused. Seemed to work
ok for the dairy industry decades before my birth.

~~~
grecy
That's the amazing thing about what the developed world right now, recycling
is the _worst_ of the three things we should be doing. i.e.

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

Go to a developing country and the deposit on the beer bottle costs more than
the beer in it. They are all clean and reused. Tons of countries charge money
for plastic bags, or have even made them illegal. We need to catch up.

~~~
Scoundreller
Do you think the rest of the world is ready for milk in bags?

And most other non-carbonated liquids?

~~~
wil421
Why would you use a plastic bag for milk? Most of the milk I buy comes in
paper cartons.[1] Paper should degrade much faster than a plastic bag, plastic
bottle, or glass.

[1][https://www.horizon.com/faqs?f%5B5%5D=field_faq_category%3A9...](https://www.horizon.com/faqs?f%5B5%5D=field_faq_category%3A98)

~~~
YUMad
The inside of that carton is still lined with plastic tho.

~~~
wil421
24% polyethylene is still much better than a near 100% plastic bag or milk
container.

~~~
o_nate
It depends. If your county has the right equipment to recycle those mixed
paper/plastic cartons then probably so, otherwise the whole thing goes into
landfill or is incinerated, and that's more material than a plastic bag. You
can check online if your county has the facility (unfortunately mine doesn't).

------
iandanforth
This is super exciting. One of the grand challenges I've been thinking about
is tackling waste. Why is any material considered waste? The first principles
approach to this problem says that landfills are mountains of energy and
diverse resources waiting to be tapped.

The first step though is to ignore the pervailing reclamation, recycling
mentality at the macro level and begin the gruelling work of building a new
ecology. We're at a point now where concerted effort into engineered (or found
through directed evolution) organisms gives us the opportunity to break down
and then re-integrate these dormant resources.

In the future a 'recycling' plant will accept any and all waste and be the
front end of a manufacturing hub that outputs both new raw materials and
finished products. In between the two ends it will be biotechnology that
enables the transition from waste back to usable component resources.

~~~
wool_gather
> landfills are mountains of energy

If you're talking about literally turning garbage into fuel, there's, as I
understand it, very rapidly diminishing returns unfortunately.

Even the apparently simple act of just burning garbage to generate electricity
is complex, because you have to be concerned about what the heck is in there
and what you're releasing into the air.

~~~
CptFribble
In principle, plasma gasification _can_ be made to work net positive energy
output, plus slag for whatever you want to use slag for.

In practice, it's really expensive to set up and operate without a lot of
throughput, so it doesn't happen that much.

Though, I've read the US Navy is putting plasma gasifiers onto its newest
generations of big ships.

~~~
rapjr9
I asked a local waste handling company owner whether he'd be interested in
plasma gasification. He told me that one plasma gasification plant would
require all the trash from Vermont, plus parts of NY and NH and MA to keep it
fed and economical. So that would require a lot of trucking. Still, that seems
better than releasing all the toxins in the materials into the environment and
means just one plant could service a large rural area. More plants would be
needed in more densely populated areas. Still seems like a great solution.

------
checkdigit15
A large part of this is the new rules on contamination that exclude a lot of
material. 0.5% is China's new limit, while a average city with curbside
collection could never meet that. Think about your typical recycling bin: You
put in some newspaper that is prime recycling material, but then a milk jug or
soda bottle that hasn't been fully emptied or rinsed gets tossed in and the
paper gets soaked and is now unusable for recycling. Same with pizza boxes
that have grease, stuff that gets rained on, people putting stuff in the bins
that isn't recyclable in this manner (including electronic components and such
[0]), and suddenly you're throwing away (or burning) a huge amount of
material.

"China, once the biggest single processor of recycling, said in the spring
that it would no longer accept loads of recyclable items — such as plastic,
glass, cardboard, and metals — that were more than 0.5 percent contaminated.
Officials said they were trying to cut down on pollution from processing dirty
recyclables.

Philadelphia’s contamination rate is anywhere from 15 percent to 20 percent.
That meant its previous contractor for recycling, Republic Services, had to
find other markets for processing or begin disposing of portions of
contaminated loads in other ways, such as in landfills or by incineration.

As recently as the first quarter of 2012, Philadelphia was getting paid $67.35
a ton for its recyclables. By summer 2018, Republic was negotiating a new
contract to process recyclables that would cost the city $170 a ton."[1]

[0] "Reduce, reuse, incinerate: Why half of Philly's recyclables aren't
recycled" (Feb 11, 2019) [https://www.npr.org/podcasts/657780675/the-
why](https://www.npr.org/podcasts/657780675/the-why)

[1] "At least half of Philly’s recycling goes straight to an incinerator" (Jan
25 2019) [https://www.philly.com/science/climate/recycling-costs-
phila...](https://www.philly.com/science/climate/recycling-costs-philadelphia-
incinerator-waste-to-energy-plant-20190125.html)

------
NickM
Okay, serious question: how much carbon is sequestered in plastic if we toss
it in a landfill? Given that there's a finite amount of oil left in the world,
and that it gets more expensive as supplies dwindle, I almost wonder if using
more disposable plastics _helps_ the fight against climate change. Better to
turn the carbon into a solid and bury it than burn it and put the CO2 in the
atmosphere, right?

~~~
dehrmann
Not a direct answer, but 4% of global oil production goes to plastics, so I'd
put the ceiling slightly higher.

~~~
jtms
4% does not seem a big enough slice of the carbon puzzle pie to really make a
huge difference compared to something like fuels. seems like we should just
focus on a solution that minimizes local and immediate human suffering.

------
josefresco
Another good article on the topic:

China's Import Ban Broke Plastic Recycling. Here's How to Fix It

[https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/06/china-plastic-
re...](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/06/china-plastic-recycling-
ban-solutions-science-environment/)

------
b_tterc_p
Fully aware that it’s not a globally useful solution, but I am surprised there
aren’t alternatives to China for trash dumping. Why aren’t there alternatives.
I refuse to believe all other countries are so eco-minded that they wouldn’t
take a dirty cash grab

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Going on pieces I've read in the last few months, others are backing away from
being the world's recyclers too.

I recall a piece about Malaysia no longer being willing to thanks to a large
increase in localised pollution, and illegal burning of non-recyclables (wrong
plastic in bundle, labels, lids, etc). A fast search doesn't turn up a link.

~~~
Scoundreller
They might also realize they can get the same inputs by creating domestic
recycling programs.

------
warunsl
Relevant: 99pi recently had an episode on China banning imports of recyclables
- [https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/national-
sword/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/national-sword/)

------
skybrian
It seems like we need better education and publicity campaigns. It should
always be easy to look up the local rules. People should feel like it's more
important to keep the recycling stream clean than it is to recycle at all,
which is the opposite of what they do today where putting more stuff in the
recycling bin is somehow thought to be better even if it doesn't follow the
rules.

Unfortunately, garbage companies are not necessarily very good at publicity or
education. (My local company's website is badly designed and it's annoyingly
difficult to even find the page with the rules.)

------
blakesterz
"...or burning it in huge incinerators like the one in Chester, which already
torches around 3,510 tons of trash, the weight equivalent of more than 17 blue
whales, every day."

I love that they compare it to the weight of a blue whale!

"There isn’t much of a domestic market for US recyclables – materials such as
steel or high-density plastics can be sold on but much of the rest holds
little more value than rubbish"

It's clear to me from the article, does that mean paper and cardboard as well?
It seems to be mentioned that China won't take it, but is that getting burned
now?

~~~
bryanlarsen
IIRC it's the mix that's the problem. Pure newsprint has value, but it takes
very little laminated paper or food contamination to make it cheaper to throw
it all out than to sort it.

~~~
Scoundreller
Another issue is that optical scanners read the code on plastics, but the
black plastic on things like to-go coffee can’t be read (they absorb the
light).

Small changes like “Number 5 plastics cannot be black in colour” would help
without any consumer impact.

------
mc32
Isn’t there a way to incinerate such rubbish such that it outputs energy
(electricity) and any heavy or toxic materials are scrubbed? May be a bit more
expensive but the tech exists.

~~~
nicktelford
There are. Someone I used to know in the waste industry referred to it as
"recycling by thermal decomposition". Norway has deployed this pretty
liberally, to the point that they actively import waste to fuel their plants.

~~~
MDWolinski
I believe that Germany does this as well, I recall an article from a few years
ago about Germany being a destination for a lot of waste in Europe because of
their technology around that.

------
briffle
I've been watching a few companies that convert plastic back into oil. it
sounds great, but I have no idea yet if it actually works, or is just all
glossy brochure.

[http://renewlogy.com/renew-energy/](http://renewlogy.com/renew-energy/)

~~~
AstralStorm
It is either energetically expensive or dirty. Reforming carelessly is what
Germany did during WW2 to make synthetic rubber and oil from brown coal. The
result is the Black Triangle due to sulphite pollution.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Triangle_(region)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Triangle_\(region\))

------
baybal2
Funny fact, garbage was _literally the biggest_ US export to China until the
ban.

~~~
twentythree
That's interesting, do you have a source for that? A quick Google search turns
up aircraft, machinery, and agricultural products (and doesn't mention
garbage), but I'd be curious to learn more.

~~~
baybal2
> For more than five years, scrap and trash has consistently been the US’s
> biggest export

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/09/china...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/09/chinas-
crackdown-on-trash-could-make-it-harder-for-u-s-cities-to-recycle/)

And it is likely to be more as trash is often declared as raw plastic,
cellulose, aluminium billets, or "electronic components" to evade numerous
bans that China been enacting over the last decade.

This is also why American own _material statistics_ by US ITC is likely a
better measure (access to ITC data is paid)

~~~
bhelkey
That article doesn't contain the quoted line. However, it does contain the
following line:

>Since 2007, one of America's top exports to China has been... trash

Assuming positive intent, it is possible that the article was edited in the
five hours since you linked it. However, it was written in 2013 so that seems
unlikely.

~~~
baybal2
I was homed onto the link by [https://qz.com/82640/china-doesnt-want-your-
trash-anymore-an...](https://qz.com/82640/china-doesnt-want-your-trash-
anymore-and-that-could-spell-big-trouble-for-american-cities/) the quote is
from there. Did not notice that it wasn't from the original article.

------
londons_explore
Imagine sorting waste is some amount of effort per item.

You could get the homeowner to do it, or you could pay people in a factory to
do it.

Just like the poor economics of making your own paper, it turns out
centralising all the effort works out to less effort expended overall.

I therefore don't really see the appeal of the European model of having
homeowners separate glass, plastic etc. It seems to simply be a way to make
hundreds of mllions of people waste a few minutes each, rather than employ a
few thousand full time at a lower total economic cost.

------
Animats
Not even getting power out of burning the stuff.

This from the place that once had a power plant with a huge illuminated sign
"Electricity is Cheap in Chester".[1]

[1] [https://ruins.wordpress.com/2006/11/10/electrical-power-
and-...](https://ruins.wordpress.com/2006/11/10/electrical-power-and-
corporate-identity-pecos-delaware-generating-station/)

------
fooblitzky
I find it difficult to imagine the USA giving up its plastic addiction, given
the high levels of consumption and the convenience plastic provides.

I think a reasonable approach for regulators might be to require all single-
use plastic packaging to be industrially compostable (corn-derived etc). This
way you still get the convenience of the packaging, no need to change habits,
but the waste can all be turned back into soil without pollution.

~~~
gwbas1c
I get compostable cups... The liquid will only be in them for a short time.

But can a compostable bottle last the months needed to hold a beverage on the
shelf?

------
JTbane
I'm convinced that a tax on all plastic containers is nessecary to avoid the
negative externalities of manufacturing them.

------
tmaly
I am surprised we are not building more Plasma Arc systems to process the
waste. Surely this would be better than creating all this dioxin in the air.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification_commercial...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification_commercialization)

------
elhudy
>The conscientious citizens of Philadelphia continue to put their pizza boxes,
plastic bottles, yoghurt containers and other items into recycling bins.

Pizza boxes are not actually recyclable due to the amount of grease they
absorb which is unable to be separated.

------
tenaciousDaniel
what about like a really really really deep hole

~~~
jandrewrogers
This is already done. Some of California's "recyclables" are transported by
rail to large desert canyons in Nevada that are literally filled to the top
with garbage. The scale of these landfills are impressive. Nevada is a popular
large-scale waste terminus precisely because deep desert canyons are plentiful
and cheap.

~~~
abathur
I guess I'm supposed to have faith that whoever came up with this thought it
through.

It probably depends on which recyclables are going, but this seems a lot like
the geologic analogue to "let's just throw all this crap in the storm
drain"...

------
chriscappuccio
Something is wrong with the design here. Dioxins aren't a problem if covanta
incinerates at a high temperature. Safe incineration to burn trash and
generate power is doable. The standard is too low here, it seems.

------
rinchik
Can we just gather all the trash into one giant ball and launch it into space?

If Dyson sphere has it's place in global solutions space then giant trash ball
should too.

~~~
ceejayoz
Sure. You'll just have to pay $2,500/kg for your trash pickup. (Probably more
for escape velocity...)

~~~
rinchik
true, but just to clarify (seems like everyone is missing it), I was
referencing Futurama.

