
All the plastic you can and cannot recycle - yawz
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-45496884?app=news.science_and_environment.story.45496884.page
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moneytide1
There was a similar discussion on reddit yesterday morning:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/9hee9n/what_mak...](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/9hee9n/what_makes_recycling_certain_plastics/?utm_source=reddit-
android)

Several different experts weighed in on the comment section. Plastics
engineer, garbage collector, recycling machine salesman all had some thing to
post.

I've always tried to sort my trash, but now I realize that tossing every type
of plastic in same bin may not be helping as much.

Now I try to minimize plastic purchasing. Bulk dry food and produce without
packaging seems to help, and it usually means learning to cook more which in
turn saves money. I've been using the same $3 stainless steel liter canteen
from Goodwill for the past year. Might last the rest of my life

~~~
sevensor
This reinforces my perception that plastics recycling is mostly a ploy by the
plastics industry to make themselves appear less wasteful while shifting the
burden and the blame to the customer. Some things we're encouraged to do, like
carefully washing out plastic peanut butter jars, seem like they're probably a
net waste of resources.

~~~
ams6110
Yeah I don't recycle anything that needs to be washed first. Quick rinse OK,
but if I need hot water and soap it goes into the trash instead.

~~~
noxxten
It's exactly this mindset that creates such a huge plastic problem. You aren't
wrong, and you shouldn't feel guilty either. People in charge of deciding
packaging should be taking their end customer's ideas and habits in mind. Why
are all my vegetables and fresh foods packaged on styrofoam trays, wrapped in
plastic, and packed home in a plastic bag? At least the plastic bag can be
reused, but the rest has zero hope of being reusable. It's also a huge problem
to recycle plastics that have food waste on them.

All in all, plastics are really not needed in most of the things we buy.

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christophilus
I was just talking to my dad about this. He's in his 60s and says he can
remember a time when plastics were relatively rare. As a kid, his milk came in
glass bottles which were returned, sanitized, refilled, and re-delivered.
There was no permanent waste in that process that he can recall.

So, within one generation, we went from that to the average house on my street
discarding a massive rolling trash-can worth of plastic every week (roughly).
I try hard to reduce my family's contribution to the problem, but it's really
tough. For example, we buy organic produce, and every single one has plastic
stickers, rubber bands, and labels. It's pretty depressing.

~~~
briHass
> There was no permanent waste in that process that he can recall.

Except for the energy wasted to manufacture the glass bottle, clean it,
transport it back to be cleaned, and the increased weight/fragility over a
similar plastic container.

For example, the reusable canvas shopping bag must be reused 170+ times to
actually break even with the environmental impact of choosing it over plastic
bags. By the way, that's without washing it.

~~~
Spooky23
How do you capture the cost of the plastic litter? IMO these arguments are
usually questionable and are based on figures from people with a bias.

The department of public works guy who picks up the discarded bags at the
roadside or in bushes costs the taxpayer $30-50/hr. What’s the cost of the
cubic yard of the earth lost for hundreds of years?

When my county was voting to ban on styrofoam, Walmart and Sam’s club put up
posters about how the weight of styrofoam was saving gas vs paper cups.
Supposedly a hypothetical tractor trailer loaded with a full load of styrofoam
would save some quantity of carbon and diesel.

End of the day, waste is waste and it is difficult to account for the cost of
discarded materials in a meaningful way.

~~~
striking
>How do you capture the cost of the plastic litter?

WRT the parent comment, glass bottles can too be litter. I don't think they're
relevant here.

~~~
Spooky23
Reusable glass bottles by their nature have a lower litter rate because there
is a deposit associated with them.

Even the modest $0.05 deposit in many states results in 80% recycling rate for
soft drink containers, versus about 35-40% for other plastic containers. At
the co-op that I used to work at, reusable glass milk bottles had a $1 deposit
and 95% return rate.

When I volunteered on an "adopt a highway" program through an employer when I
was in college, we'd clean up a couple of thousand yards of urban highway
shoulder and collect around a thousand gallons of trash. Plastic bags, plastic
bottles and coffee cups were about half of the objects picked up. The rest
ranged from the gross to the unusual (an iron bath tub).

~~~
striking
In some states, many plastic bottles also have a deposit. I have never heard
of a $1 deposit, but I assume it's very effective with certain audiences.

~~~
KozmoNau7
We have a ~25c deposit here, and it really does help reduce the amount of
waste. There are also "deposit shelves" on most public garbage cans, so you
can leave the bottle for someone else to deposit, if you can't or won't. That
way they don't have to rummage through the garbage for it.

Local music festivals have also started introducing a ~$1 deposit on plastic
cups. It really helps clean up in front of the stages.

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nimbius
speaking as an automotive engine mechanic, another problematic plastic youll
encounter is stuff that goes in your car or light truck.

these plastics are doped with chemicals to help them withstand rodents, cold
weather, or excessive heat/UV. The panels from a 1993 Saturn, while
revolutionary in their dent resistance, are landfill fodder. No one will touch
them. Certain parts near the ECU will also come doped with electromagnetic
shielding.

The PHB's at BMW apparently got pretty fired up around fibre reinforced
plastics around 2010 as well...so much so that most components like radiators,
pumps and switches are all glass fibre reinforced polyplastics. These cant get
recycled, even though they contain metal parts that often can.

~~~
pixl97
>These cant get recycled, even though they contain metal parts that often can.

Well, you can grind up the entire part and density separate the metal. Of
course, you have ground up plastic stuff now.

------
chadash
Some recycling practices I've come across:

Michigan - All soft drinks (and similar beverages) carry a $0.10 fee a the
point of sale that you recoup when you recycle them. A few states seem to do
$0.05, but at $0.10 people seem to start to care a lot more. Growing up there,
almost everyone kept a pile of cans in their garage that they would take in to
recycle. Almost all supermarkets had machines that you can deposit your
cans/bottles in to get refunds. After parties in college, students are
meticulous to recycle the cans because it would mean 10% off the price of the
next party.

Cambridge, MA - Single stream recycling. Just throw everything in to the same
recycling bin and the city sorts it. Makes it much easier to recycle but I'm
sure this is expensive.

Egypt - When I was there, a coca cola from a corner shop came in a glass
bottle and cost about $0.25 (USD). But you had to drink it there so they could
recycle the bottle. If you wanted to take it with you, you'd pay twice as
much. Personally, I loved drinking it out of the glass bottles, which are also
very easy to clean, sterilize and reuse.

Miami, FL - Basically no one recycles. I've been in vegan cafes (not to
stereotype, but the sorts of places you'd expect to see eco-consciousness)
that don't have bottle recycling bins. My apartment building doesn't provide a
means to recycle bottles, so if I wanted to do so, I'd need to drop them off
somewhere (which I'm pretty sure isn't close by). As a result, I don't recycle
plastic.

Interestingly, more and more buildings in Miami are recycling boxes. What I
recently learned is that because of online delivery, cardboard boxes have
proliferated causing a whole industry of recycling companies for these. People
will actually pay you (I think about $100/pallet) for used boxes, so all of
the apartment/condo buildings are getting in on the action.

In any case, I wish we would address the root cause of the problem, which is
too much packaging. I've had Amazon packages with boxes inside of boxes inside
of boxes. Every time I buy cereal, I'm buying a thick bag inside of a box. Our
culture has too much packaging.

~~~
blang
Interestingly it looks like the Michigan bottle bill was enacted in 1978 when
$.10 was more like $.40 today

~~~
toasterlovin
FWIW, I think 10 cents is probably sufficient. We have a 10 cent deposit here
in Oregon. As a result, on the night before trash day in our neighborhood
there is always a lady going through the recycling bins to pull out the cans
and bottles with deposits. Growing up in Los Angeles, where they also have a
deposit, it was common to see homeless people pushing trains of shopping carts
down major thoroughfares filled with cans and bottles.

------
emodendroket
You're probably best off looking at the instructions from your town if you're
in the US.

~~~
noxToken
Second this. Whoever collects your trash (municipal or commercial) will likely
have instructions posted for what is and isn't recyclable. If you can't find
it, call or email them. It's almost guaranteed that someone will give you a
good response, because some items like plastic bags will actively jam or
clutter sorting machinery.

On that note, plastic bags from grocers (labeled carrier bags in the article)
are almost never accepted by recycling centers for the above reason. However,
there is likely a grocer nearby that will accept those bags for recycling. I
think all Wal-Mart stores will accept these bags.

~~~
ams6110
Our municipality will not accept plastic shopping bags because they say there
is no market for them.

Some of the supermarkets do take them but I have to suspect that they just
truck them to a landfill.

------
writimov
Reverse supply chain disassembly into raw resources for reuse is not being
done in any meaningful way except for a glass, some chips, paper, precious
metals and a few other things. We really need a large upgrade in the
detection, cleaning, sorting, disassembly, prep for reuse and bulk source
materials creation of human waste streams (garbage and recycling).

It starts with detection and sorting robots (one example:
[https://www.amprobotics.com](https://www.amprobotics.com)). Add sensors to
tell organic materials from plastics, sort into cleaning. Once cleaned use
sensors to detect one type of plastic from another, then sort plastic types.

If one type of plastic is bound to another with a metal screw, use a
disassembly robot to get the screw out.

Once sorted, use standard techniques to turn single plastic parts into bulk
plastic materials ready for reuse. (Ex. of do-it-yourself version for HDPE
[https://www.instructables.com/id/Making-Blocks-out-of-
HDPE-m...](https://www.instructables.com/id/Making-Blocks-out-of-HDPE-milk-
jugs/))

Using machine learning and the latest in robotics, this entire cascade could
be accomplished but the business model is broken. The machinery would be too
expensive to pay back with the value of the recycled materials. Instead we
need to value the effort of keeping these pollutants out of the general
environment. Carbon credits are a great example of how this value can be
created.

Create a plastics pollution credits marketplace where you get paid to keep
plastics out of landfills. Now maybe the robots, sensors, and recycling
technologies are cost effective.

~~~
lozenge
If there was actually political will for carbon credits or waste reduction I
would much rather it go to a far more efficient target - reduce the amount of
waste in the first place instead of making incredibly complicated recycling
robots.

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gwbas1c
Sounds like a robot that sorts at the trash collection facility is a good
startup idea!

Seriously, with all the talk about automated cars, and robotic this-and-that,
you'd think we'd just have robots do all the sorting.

~~~
dmm
The best thing of all would be having the cost of recycling included in the
price of the product. Then manufacturers would be incentivized to make
recycling as effective as possible.

~~~
rootusrootus
Also, expand the bottle bill to include all recyclable containers, not just
beverage bottles.

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xefer
There should be a better set of symbols focused on recyclablity. I'm sure
people see a symbol with a group of arrows in a cycle and assume it must be
recyclable.

~~~
rb808
There should be a symbol that says not-recyclable! Which would be great when
my SO tries to put another milk carton in the cardboard recycling again.

~~~
toast0
Some places _do_ recycle milk cartons though.

~~~
rb808
Ooooh, my wife is going to love this lol.

