
Precious Plastic Version 3.0 aims to fix plastic pollution - mattia_io
https://preciousplastic.com/
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andrewstuart
I urge you to stop believing in recycling.

Here's some things to think about:

 __The "packaging" industry, is in fact a nice way of saying the "garbage
manufacturing" industry.

 __At least in Australia, the "recycling industry" is owned by the "packaging
industry". Hmmm.. why is that? It put it to you that the garbage manufacturing
industry has in fact worked out how to "own" the environmental movement by
pushing "recycling" as the "balance" to the spewing forth of garbage from the
packaging industry. The packaging industry must be laughing so hard at how
easily it has owned the environmental movement.

 __Have you ever wondered if all that packaging you put in your recycle bin
gets recycled? It 's a question worth thinking about.

 __I have come to believe that recycling, which environmentalists embrace
deeply as a core value, is in fact just a smokescreen that allows everyone to
feel OK about the garbage manufacturing industry creating an unending quantity
of plastics that have made their way into every nook and cranny of our
ecosystem.

Please, __stop believing in recycling.... if you recycle, then you do not
question the unbelievable, and unrecyclable, quantity of plastic packaging
that you consume __.

One you stop believing in recycling, you start to ask the question, "why the
heck do we permit the packaging industry to create this unstoppable flow of
garbage"

Seems to me that world MUST eventually move to a solution which is a set of
standardised containers for all products, which are durable, washable, have a
refund value attached, and may have paper corporate brand stuck on them after
being washed.

Another strategy worth bringing forward is the idea of "garbage brands".....
showing off all those precious brands but in their true context... as garbage
in our creeks, rivers and oceans, drains and footpaths. Once brands start to
become associated with garbage, they might rethinkg whether they want their
names and logos on the digusting mess destroying our environment.

Please, stop believing in recycling and the smokescreen will clear and you
will start to ask questions about the packaging industry and our
community/commercial system that supports it.

Asbestos, tobacco, sugary foods, packaging - all industries that have fooled
us into believing things that are wrong but served their own ends. The
packaging industry has fooled us into thinking that it is OK because recycling
exists.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
I have had similar thoughts, but it's also worth considering the products that
all that garbage protects, whether that's to prevent manufactured goods from
being broken in storage and transport, or foodstuffs from spoilage. In either
case, not protecting things also wastes huge amounts of resources - which
isn't to say that there aren't other options for packaging than plastics.

~~~
andrewstuart
My post suggests that we need a set of standardised, reusable, washable
containers. These containers have a refund value attached to ensure they are
returned.

Say for example maybe 150 different sizes and types of containers.

Companies would be legally required to ship their products in these
standardised containers, or pay some penalty somehow that is a strong
disincentive not to make products that do not fit the standard packages.

~~~
colordrops
I looked into starting a company around this idea about 10 years ago but I
don't think the world was ready for it. I think my number was 250 heh. I still
don't think the world is ready for it. Manufacturers gain too much from pretty
and clean and unique packaging. One solution could be to create a system
whereby environmentally friendly dyes could be sprayed onto and washed off the
containers to allow for differentiation.

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Animats
Precious Plastic is using far too much labor to recycle tiny amounts of
plastic. This is an art project, not a solution.

Here's a solution at scale - CarbonLite's plastic recycling plant in LA.[1]
Bottles turned in for recycling go in, and food-grade plastic pellets for
making new bottles come out.

Separating items in mixed recycling is heavily mechanized, and the advanced
systems use computer vision rather than humans to pull out unexpected junk.
There are many cool videos on line of big plants where trash goes in at one
end and gets separated by machinery.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAr4BZM_Tzk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAr4BZM_Tzk)

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chromaton
People occasionally contact us wanting us to waterjet cut the parts for the
Precious Plastic shredder. Unfortunately, the designs on the website require
metric thickness metals, and that's just hard to obtain in the US.

From what I've been told, it's much more practical to buy a used Chinese made
plastic shredder off of eBay.

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spodek
One of the best actions in my life was to avoid packaged food. Now I throw out
my garbage once or twice per year.

More importantly, my eating is more

\- Delicious

\- Convenient

\- and Cheap

than ever. Plus more social, in that I met the farmers who grow most of my
food, more people come to my place for meals, and get-togethers are
friendlier.

It took a while to learn to prepare food from scratch, but worth it.

~~~
fovc
I would love to hear more about this. Do you buy everything in bulk with
reusable packaging? Does that require driving out to the farms? Do you end up
eating seasonally and locally? What equipment did you have to buy to achieve
this?

~~~
spodek
I write tons about it on my blog:

[http://joshuaspodek.com/?s=farm](http://joshuaspodek.com/?s=farm)

[http://joshuaspodek.com/?s=fly](http://joshuaspodek.com/?s=fly)

[http://joshuaspodek.com/?s=packaging](http://joshuaspodek.com/?s=packaging)

To answer your questions: I buy dry legumes, nuts, seeds, and grains in bulk
with containers I bring to the store.

Most fruit and vegetables I get from a CSA, which means picking it up weekly
from a drop-off point a few blocks away. I get a lot from the local farmers
markets, where I also drop off my compost.

Yes, I eat seasonally and locally, not that I decided to. It just worked out
that way.

I didn't buy anything to start the change, but buying a pressure cooker
enabled cooking lentils and beans in five or ten minutes, which facilitated
things a lot. I don't buy a lot, but the pressure cooker is one of the best
purchases I've made.

I didn't plan to get into food and cooking. It's just that with every change I
made, my food got more delicious, more convenient, cheaper, and created more
community.

The results, in my friends' words: [http://joshuaspodek.com/food-world-
reviews](http://joshuaspodek.com/food-world-reviews)

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ricardobeat
Praise to the authors for a very well done project. I always wonder though,
what's the ultimate impact of recycling plastic like this? One or two extra
cycles is still nothing compared to its 500-year life span. We should start
reducing usage in mass produced items altogether - with current purchasing
habits you don't even need the durability it offers for most products.

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Varcht
California isn't even on their map, guess they don't want me...

edit: the one on the front page doesn't, clicking through to the interactive
one has it.

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jaggederest
This comes up in 3d printing often.

The bottom line is that grinding and pelletizing and then extruding even pure
PLA post-use for use in the same machine is nigh impossible. It degrades, it
gets dust in it, you block your 3d printer nozzle and damage your hot end.

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sharpercoder
> 'We don't know what to do with it'

Is there a $1M prize for solving this problem?

