
Where does your plastic waste end up? - sambeau
https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conservation/2018/11/where-does-your-plastic-waste-end
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nitwit005
Article connects the plastics ending up in the ocean to the exports to
recyclers, but it never shows how that would work. Are the recyclers dumping
the stuff they don't want into a nearby river?

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alimw
This article did not help me to understand the economics of recycling.

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acdanger
If you're truly interested in the economics of the waste industry, the book
Junkyard Planet by Adam Minter was a good introduction:
[https://www.amazon.com/Junkyard-Planet-Travels-Billion-
Dolla...](https://www.amazon.com/Junkyard-Planet-Travels-Billion-
Dollar.../1608197913)

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dugluak
May be not relevant but somewhat related to the title - Some plastic ended up
at the bottom of Mariana Trench

[https://www.bbc.com/news/science-
environment-48230157](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48230157)

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
In general, anything that is billed as a low-effort way to accomplish X that
anybody can do is probably not very useful. You see this in health scams,
financial scams, etc. It is likely the same way with the environment. We are
now finding out that encouraging plastic recycling was probably
environmentally worse that if people had been allowed to just throw it all
away in a landfill.

Other well-intentioned efforts that resulted in bad outcomes:

Discouraging plastic bags -> Increased CO2 for cloth/paper bags Banning DDT ->
likely millions of deaths from malaria over the years Opposition to nuclear ->
more dependence on carbon heavy sources of energy (see Germany)

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blacksoil
I live in Indonesia, here people don't even separate compostable, recyclable,
and junks. Everything is just mixed and piled together like a man-made
mountain at the central garbage dump site. One day there was even a homeless
trying to make some money out of picking up recyclables who died from getting
avalanched by the trash... It's really disheartening to hear..

Does anybody know any resources on the economics of trash processing? I wanna
explore the possibility of doing such a business in a sustainable way

~~~
teknologist
I have some contacts in the industry and, as far as I know, sustainable waste
processing is expensive and people are always trying to avoid it even if
legally mandated. It is down to government regulation to force businesses to
process waste in certain ways.

I think you'd have to find what your government legally requires in a certain
waste management area and work within those parameters

~~~
blacksoil
Thanks for the insight!

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spoiledtechie
Makes me rethink my use of plastics....

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cfarm
I didn't realize that it's cheaper to export used plastic than process it
within the country.

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cronix
I'd imagine minimum wage has something to do with it. Plastic is cheap, labor
is not. Most west coast states are over $11/hr. Of course that is not a lot of
money, but it is when you're paying that labor to recycle pennies worth of
plastic. It's not economical because the plastic has to be (mostly) clean of
contaminants in order to recycle it without lowering quality too much. So
there's also a lot of water involved. Diminishing returns.

~~~
seandougall
According to the article, there's a huge disparity just in transportation
costs, before wages even begin to factor in:

> Today, Recology, San Francisco’s employee-owned recycling company, pays
> £230-to-£390 to ship a container of recycled plastic across the Pacific–a
> fraction of the £2,700-to-£3,100 price tag for transporting that same
> container across the United States to plastic processing plants that are
> mostly located in the South, according to Robert Reed, a company spokesman.

~~~
dillonmckay
Transportation costs most likely include labor costs.

I am betting the crew on the container ship do not make US wages.

Similarly, why there are no cruise ships that only stop at American ports, so
the labor can be foreign. Also, why American river cruises are so expensive.

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acdanger
"To cite one example, American recyclers sold 101 tons of plastic waste in
Thailand in the first six months of this year–a 1,985 percent increase over
the 4,409 tons sold during the same period in 2017."

Hmm.

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ComputerGuru
Complete sidebar here, but that domain made me think that maybe the name needs
to be changed to _International Geographic_ ;)

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wink
"Where does _your_ plastic waste end up?" is the title of the piece and while
it seemed to be on the UK edition (.co.uk domain and "UK" selected in the top
right), it opens with "When President Donald Trump signed legislation", also
after a not-too-deep skimming of the article it seems to mostly revolve around
the US.

And now I'm confused. Is it really about the UK? Is the title just bad for
_this_ edition (should be on .com). Was the story planned to be for the US
edition and then just moved to the other one? Nitpicking, I know - but this is
what I noticed first and even after a little digging I'm none the wiser.

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wtdata
From the article: “I hate seeing my country as the dumpsite for the developed
world,” said Yeo Bee Yin, whose full title is Minister for Energy, Technology,
Science, Climate Change, and Environment. She declared that “no developing
nation should be the dumping site for the developed world.”

This hypocrisy is appalling. They just have to stop importing those plastics
with the false promise they are going to recycle it or dispose of it properly
while they get paid for it.

Nobody is forcing Malasya to take anything, in fact Malasya is happily
engaging in a bid with other countries to import that garbage for the best
price.

If these countries weren't lying this all time and only took the plastics they
can actually cleanly dispose of or recycle, the West would be (at a greater
expense is true) getting rid of them properly during all this time.

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ttlei
Did you even read the article?

~~~
Stratoscope
From the commenting guidelines:

 _Please don 't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read
the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions
that."_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

