
Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic - DyslexicAtheist
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled?t=1599932392400
======
jpab
Prior discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24441979](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24441979)

~~~
disown
It was on the frontpage since yesterday. And the minute it drops off the
frontpage, it gets spammed to the frontpage again. Unbelievable. Not only that
another NPR story got spammed to the frontpage at the same time. Now that's
interesting.

Edit: Looks like I touched a nerve.

~~~
kennywinker
How can a frontpage based on user votes contain spam? Seems like you're
implying something nefarious going on in order to explain a huge + impactful
story's presence here?

------
blululu
It is always a little surprising how naive people are when it comes to
recycling. The majority of the cost and difficulty comes in sorting. Back in
the good old days most US municipalities used to require people to sort their
recycling by type, but over the years we have switched to a more wasteful
system.

For aluminum cans the material is valuable and relatively easy to sort. For
plastic the material is cheap and sorting is hard (if you can't tell what the
plastic container you threw in the bin is made out of (HDPE?) in a second then
it is trash).

FWIW this is also a relatively easy problem to fix. We could look to the brief
but successful history of recycling in Taiwan as a good example to copy.
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling_in_Taiwan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling_in_Taiwan))

~~~
neltnerb
No, plastic degrades each time it is recycled. They knew that, every materials
scientist knew that, and it is just not possible to fully reclaim recycled
plastic.

What really pisses me off is the use of the recycling number as marketing.
Which is still ongoing and being modernized. Leave a complaint card any time
you see compostable plastic being used in a city that doesn't have specialized
industrial composting plants, that stuff is worse than trash because it's also
misleading about how to dispose of it and makes the store look green when it's
really just making things worse.

In almost all locations, PLA, "compostable plastic" (often labeled number 7 or
0 for marketing) is not only not recyclable but actively contaminates compost
and recycling plants. I see all these places using "compostable plastic"
because they think it's more environmentally friendly. It's a noble goal, it
makes me so sad to see.

The stores that pick those containers do so because they want to project an
environmentally conscious image, and the "eco" marketing on this utter trash
gets them to pay top dollar for those containers instead of just using paper.
I feel so bad for these stores, it takes a PhD to dispose of this misleading
and dangerous material properly.

As a normal consumer, if I saw that logo and "compostable plastic" guess where
I'd throw it. Compost? Recycling? Probably one or the other right? Wrong, if I
put it in the compost I make the compost produced from the food scraps
contaminated and unsafe for use. If I put it in the recycling it gets melted
in with other polymers and contaminates them, degrading the other plastic even
faster if the whole batch doesn't need to be thrown away outright.

Edit: The one saving grace is that I _know_ that where I live trash is
incinerated. So at least I feel less bad throwing this stuff in the trash. It
was just oil that made a temporary detour as a container before being burned
for electricity. Still, I'd rather they just use unadulterated paper (no
little plastic spouts glued on), glass, and aluminum which are all easily
recycled or burn clean.

~~~
regularfry
It depends if fully reclaiming it _as plastic_ is the goal. That's the current
model, but there are other routes available. Two options that don't quite work
yet (but have moderately promising potential) are either to break the plastic
down to useful precursors with enzymes, or pyrolise it down to biochar.

To my knowledge, the enzyme approach has shown a modicum of promise in labs
but is still impractical, while making biochar is really, really easy. We just
need a market for it. Unfortunately, the very group of people who could make
the biggest use of it (and are most likely to) are blocked by policy: you
can't have an Organic label on your farm produce if you put biochar in the
soil.

~~~
hosh
Huh, I've always considered organics as biochar inputs. Thanks for pointing
out that plastics can be used that way. Have you seen any work done about
addressing release of toxins when burning plastic?

~~~
maxerickson
It's obviously not biochar though. It might be similarly useful, but the bio
in bio char is about the material coming from plants.

------
ceejayoz
Not just touted, but actively pushed legislative requirements that lied to
consumers.

> Industry documents from this time show that just a couple of years earlier,
> starting in 1989, oil and plastics executives began a quiet campaign to
> lobby almost 40 states to mandate that the symbol appear on all plastic —
> even if there was no way to economically recycle it.

~~~
armSixtyFour
The blame is always shifted to the consumers, the logic being that consumers
would make more sustainable decisions if they really cared about it, totally
ignoring that it's either prohibitively expensive for many or almost
impossible to judge the sustainability for many products.

~~~
tastyfreeze
If consumers were compensated for recycling materials they would be much more
inclined to sort properly. Recycling centers that take materials that cost too
much to recycle likely have a government contract to "take care of it". They
dont have a lot of incentive to be efficient. They get paid to make it
disappear.

~~~
LordDragonfang
I don't know about where you live, but in California, we have a "bottle
deposit" on both glass bottles and aluminum cans (~$0.10 per item), which gets
returned to you if you bring it to a recycling center. The only people I see
actually bothering to sort and return these are very low income people and
homeless people that go through public trash cans.

~~~
Symbiote
In Denmark its 1-3kr, or 15-50¢, depending on the size and material of the
container.

Plenty of cans are collected by homeless / lowest income people, but it's also
just about enough that average people will collect them too.

If I have a huge bag after a party, I return them. When I normally only have
0-2 bottles in a typical week, I take them outside and put them on the little
shelf on the bin for someone to collect without needing to rummage:
[https://www.magasinetkbh.dk/sites/default/files/public/style...](https://www.magasinetkbh.dk/sites/default/files/public/styles/975x600_manual_crop/public/migrated/nyheder/field_artikler_stort_billede/pantholder-
dsc_0013.jpg?itok=7MWZoupy)

New food packaging can only use recycled material collected in this way. The
general household recycling is considered too dirty.

~~~
gingericha
This mirrors my experience in Germany. We would often save up a dozen or so
bottles and bring them all to the grocery store where they could be returned.
If we had a beer on the way to the bars we would typically just set the empty
next to a garbage bin for someone to collect and return.

------
mirekrusin
If you go to Switzerland it opens your eyes a bit - there's no plastic
recycling, there's only PET plastic recycling. If the bottle/whatever is not
PET, it's not recycleble and you have to buy special, taxed bag that's used
for "everything else" that gets burned/whatever. PET plastic can be recycled
to lower grade plastic used for outdoor mats etc.

~~~
flixic
Same in Japan.

~~~
franciscop
On the other hand, packaging (and thus plastic waste) in Japan is next-level
ridiculous. A fancier food present will be often wrapped in at least 3 layers,
and I've counted u to 5: bag, present paper, normal box, group package,
individual package.

~~~
capableweb
On the other foot, Japan is next-level clean and don't think I've ever seen
trash there on the streets, especially not like in South America. So more
plastic in packaging but more goes into bins, wonder if it equalizes out on
harm-done compared to Japan?

~~~
andrekandre
> So more plastic in packaging but more goes into bins, wonder if it equalizes
> out on harm-done compared to Japan?

in japan, most trash is incinerated... ive never looked into it, but i suspect
that some amount of that turns into fine-grained soot (e.g not very healthy)

~~~
franciscop
They have these very fancy incineration towers distributed around Tokyo, I
suspect they do filter _a lot_ of the stuff being burned since I have never
even seen them throw smoke nor smelled any burning:

[https://www.tokyotimes.com/mysterious-tower-in-
tokyo/](https://www.tokyotimes.com/mysterious-tower-in-tokyo/)

~~~
andrekandre
thats good to know, i wonder if there are some differences between older and
newer inceneration facilities...

when i lived near the ocean in kawasaki there was always some black fine-
grained soot that would slowly build up over the year on a veranda, and
wondered if it wasnt the nearby incinerators...

~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
Hm, harbour, ships? And in general dust from the tires and brakes of cars and
trucks? In 2014 one container giant coming into the port here had a little
mishap, burning heavy bunker oil which is only allowed at high seas. Turned on
the fire alarms in a hospital 1 km away from the river, and several others too
:-)

[https://www.fotocommunity.de/photo/schwefelpilz-ms-yang-
ming...](https://www.fotocommunity.de/photo/schwefelpilz-ms-yang-ming-utmost-
loest-ulrich-zunke/34812441)

[https://www.mopo.de/action/mopo/23044568/search?query=yang+m...](https://www.mopo.de/action/mopo/23044568/search?query=yang+ming+utmost)

~~~
andrekandre
> Hm, harbour, ships? And in general dust from the tires and brakes of cars
> and trucks?

hmmm that probably makes more sense, yea

------
zests
Here's another one about paper recycling that I read in a book once.
Surprisingly it's not discussed very much at all and its hard for me to judge
how accurate it is.

"Recycling paper is not worth it. The paper we use is grown specifically to be
harvested and used in paper. The act of growing and using this paper is a form
of carbon sequestration. When we recycle paper, we lose out in an opportunity
to sequester more carbon from the air. Landfills prevent the carbon in paper
from re-entering the carbon cycle."

I think the most convincing argument against this is that the tree farms take
up land that could be used for other purposes.

------
nend
Reduce, reuse, recycle - meaning recycling is the last option.

It's better to not consume plastic in the first place, but if you must, find
additional uses for it.

It takes more of a lifestyle change though than to simply put your cans in a
different barrel. Which is probably why few people are willing to try it.

~~~
chrischen
I feel Americans tend to over-consume and undervalue reuse. I always get made
fun of for selling my used things on ebay and also buying used instead of new.

~~~
lopmotr
I've heard that sentiment many decades ago too. I suspect it's because things
cost the same price everywhere due to international trade but labor for
repairing is cheaper in most other countries because they have lower incomes
than America. So it may just be a rational economic decision, not the wrong
amount of consumption and reuse.

~~~
chrischen
There's a lot of friction when it comes to buying used (no warranty, no
guarantees). Used doesn't necessarily mean it requires repair, but people
often don't bother to re-sell things they aren't using and manufacturers have
policies that try to destroy the used market (non transferrable warranties,
planned obsolescence, etc).

------
rogerb
I'd love to see a class action lawsuit keeping the people who lied accountable
for the amount of additional waste in effort, resources that are used to
separate and collect these separate streams.

Stuff like this (h/t @neltnerb): >>In almost all locations, PLA, "compostable
plastic" (often labeled number 7 or 0 for marketing) is not only not
recyclable but actively contaminates compost and recycling plants. I see all
these places using "compostable plastic" because they think it's more
environmentally friendly. It's a noble goal, it makes me so sad to see.

So many groups would have standing to sue here...

~~~
pessimizer
> I'd love to see a class action lawsuit keeping the people who lied
> accountable for the amount of additional waste in effort, resources that are
> used to separate and collect these separate streams.

The minuscule punishment that can be visited on the people involved in things
like this won't clean up a molecule of the damage done, and won't be a
deterrent for people who would do it in future (or who are doing similar
things now.)

Revenge isn't a cure, executing murderers never brings people back to life.
The problem is a system that gives a small number of people the power to cause
such widespread damage for a relatively tiny amount of personal benefit. The
amount of damage that has been done for a $10K bribe, or to keep a $150K/yr
job, etc. is immeasurable. It's not scalable to track down or filter out
people who will put their personal security or comfort ahead of yours, or your
entire town's. We have to accept that the way that power is distributed is
dangerously uneven, and consciously prevent that.

Also, let's not kid ourselves. This story will fade and be forgotten, and the
practices will continue. The ability to stop powerful people from doing what
they want to do isn't dependent on the consequences of what they do, but on
the power that you have to stop them. Power comes from solidarity. They have
it, through their command structure, and we don't. The American mind has
retreated into various competing fantasies and myths; there's no chance for
solidarity among the victims of these types of material harms.

~~~
rogerb
Its (obviously) not about the renumeration of any individual, but about
accountability of the source. There are several examples - Tabacco, Asbestos,
Bopal, Oil, Medication, ... where billions of dollars of fines assessed
against the sources, not exactly small numbers.

------
dgellow
I have difficulties to understand if that's US specific or also a problem in
Europe and the rest of the world.

For example, I'm reading this article from 2011 that mentions that 77% of
Japan's plastic is recycled:
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/dec/29/japan-
le...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/dec/29/japan-leads-field-
plastic-recycling)

Is that complete bullshit too, or is something possible to actually achieve,
just not in the US?

~~~
pfdietz
I suspect "recycling" there means something like "separated and sent to
Thailand to fuel cement kilns".

------
MattGaiser
I see the solution as just a better recycling symbol that a machine can easily
recognize. Instead of the 7 broad categories, have 1000 highly specific
categories and tag each piece in such a way that a machine can read the tag
and sort it accordingly.

Number 1 plastic with water and number 1 plastic with yoghurt should have
different tags because one may be contaminated and one not. The former might
still be #1. The latter would be #278.

Solving the sorting problem would make recycling a lot more economical as that
is where a lot of the costs are.

~~~
maxerickson
With single stream everything is contaminated.

And then many of the categories simply aren't worth anything, sorted or not.

------
drak0n1c
It doesn't help when progressive cities like Seattle provide giant recycling
bins to houses with no charge for pickup, while charging regressive high
prices for small regular garbage bins. It's a huge incentive just to throw
excess plastic and foam bits into the recycling - people do not like getting
charged another $5 for a one-time extra garbage bag pickup.

~~~
miked85
I think it is also just a huge incentive to simply throw anything into
recycling bins. Just glancing inside the one at my complex reveals it is used
as a normal trash bin by many.

------
SahAssar
When I first heard that in the US they just throw all "recycling" in the same
bin it sounded insane. I'm used to sorting into colored glass, clear glass,
paper, cardboard, metal, compost, batteries, plastic and "general".

I'm pretty sure the metal and plastic (if it actually is ever recycled)
categories could benefit from better segmentation too.

~~~
neltnerb
Metal and plastic are super easy to separate by density or by electrical
conductivity. Batteries are considered hazardous waste and have to be disposed
of separately, similarly for old electronics or CFL bulbs that contain
mercury.

But commingled recycling was one of the most predictably stupid moves in the
area of environmentalism I've seen in a long time (well, prior to 2016
anyway), when I heard my city was moving to commingled recycling I knew they
were no longer actually recycling it, I guarantee almost all of it ends up in
the landfill because of contamination. It's so frustrating.

At least corn ethanol wasn't obviously quite so stupid upfront, it was always
theoretically possible that it would make sense even if it was kind of obvious
it wouldn't actually work.

~~~
SahAssar
> Metal and plastic are super easy to separate by density or by electrical
> conductivity

Yeah, what I meant by better segmentation is not to separate them from each
other (we do that) but rather by type. Some plastics are easier to recycle
than others and I don't know if metals can be easily and automatically sorted
from each other.

~~~
neltnerb
Plastic separation is tricky, they tend to have similar physical properties so
you end up relying on small density differences or optical properties or
computer vision which is obviously not so great. I think most places it's
still more cost effective to do it by hand.

Metals are easy to separate from one another, they tend to have substantially
different densities and electrical properties. Aluminum for instance is not
magnetic while steel cans are, but aluminum is conductive so if it passes
through a magnetic field it will still get slowed down.

Those are the two big ones in any case. Then you could get to things like
nickel (magnetic but intermediate conductivity) or tin (light but non
magnetic) or maybe zinc/magnesium, but basically the densities are more
different and the properties are more different so it's easier to tell them
apart. And for some things that it can't figure out it makes sense to just
landfill it.

Plastics though, absolutely vastly harder. You can use density but it only
varies by a few percent. You can use diffraction gratings and cameras to see
crystals and maybe sort a bit by that. But really it's just very hard,
especially since the same polymer has different molecular weights and
crystallinity. Your milk jug is milky while the same molecule processed
differently is clear.

But even that's a mess -- you can't generally "depolymerize" these things very
easily, you are really melting them back together and reusing the melt. When
you start from monomers you can control the molecular weight (chain length)
which controls things like crystallinity and stiffness, so the quality is
higher. If you melt a variety of different molecular weights back together
even if they're the same exact molecule the physical properties will just by
worse. It's just the nature of the beast, and it sucks.

Even if you recycle by perfectly melting all the PET with perfect sorting and
no food residue you'll be guaranteed to increase the variability in the
physical properties of the output. It's just chemistry, unless you can convert
it back to monomers it'll never be as good even in the best case.

For metals at least you can count on a fairly full recovery if you invest in
it, it's not like polymers where it's just not possible. Even with alloys like
steel you can at least in principle go back to the raw materials if you
wanted, even if they are quite tricky.

~~~
SahAssar
So what you're saying is that separating glass, cardboard, paper, compost,
metal (which we can separate from one another if it is just metal by the
methods you described) is valuable, but the all plastic can go in the
"general" type, right?

Glass, cardboard, paper and compost are either recyclable or reusable, metal
is recyclable when sorted correctly, and plastics are pretty much a no-go as
the parent article suggests, right?

~~~
neltnerb
Except by burning it as fuel, yes, that's basically what I'm saying. I don't
think this would be news to a material scientist trained since the 90s, but
marketing is strong.

~~~
SahAssar
I think some people take the "plastic recycling is not viable" to mean that
all recycling is not a thing, so I wanted to make sure I didn't misunderstand
you about things like glass, cardboard, paper, metal and so on.

I think it's even harder to separate those concepts if you throw all recycling
in the same bin.

~~~
neltnerb
I think the point of the NPR piece is that the recycling symbols started
intentionally and have continued to be for marketing.

I don't think it's viable to recycle paper products meaningfully, but they're
also made from farmed trees and burn so I don't object overmuch to them. Worst
case they sequester carbon...

Glass is tricky and probably cheaper to make fresh right now but it's not that
big a difference to recycle it. You'd only need a marginal incentive, or for
sand to somehow become more expensive.

Metal is really worth recycling economically, energetically, and technically.
Glass is worth keeping separate since it can be recycled pretty easily. Paper
products frankly just burn em as biofuels.

Plastics... well... I just kind of wish they didn't exist except for special
applications where their unique properties were necessary. They are space age,
high performance, specialty materials and we use them like they're paper cups.
Use PTFE for specialty tubing, great. Use rubber tires for cars, great.

Use plastics where the properties matter. Don't use it for cups... it's just
so sad...

------
dboreham
I discovered this last year when our city posted on FB that you couldn't put
berry and salad clamshell containers in recycling because if these were found
then the entire batch would go to the landfill. After some clarification
basically only water and coke bottles are eligible here.

~~~
neltnerb
I have called up the waste disposal departments now in three different cities
I've lived in (Somerville, Boulder, Oakland) and in none of the cases did the
people working there have a clue about how recycling works. They just didn't
know anything about plastic.

I'd be like "can I recycle polystyrene (number 6) here" and they'd answer with
"put any rigid plastic in the recycling" and I'm just like... that is not how
it works...

Surprise -- none of those three cities can recycle polystyrene. That's what
those clamshells are usually made of. Same material as packing peanuts,
potentially my least favorite invention of the modern shipping industry.

------
taf2
Is there maybe an opportunity to use machine learning and vision here to
perhaps create a business ? Anyone working on this ?

~~~
sxp
[https://www.youtube.com/c/Bulkhandlingsystems/videos](https://www.youtube.com/c/Bulkhandlingsystems/videos)
has demos of automatic sorting machines.

~~~
taf2
From the looks of those machines (size) it looks to be a big business already

------
admn2
I'm in Chicago. Literally every time I see a garbage truck, it's dumping the
recyclables in with the trash. This doesn't surprise me at all.

~~~
Ma8ee
That’s a common urban myth. The trucks have several compartments.

~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
Not where I live, at least not for glass. I can see down into them from above
and it all goes into the same bin. No separation at all.

~~~
Ma8ee
Which doesn’t make sense, since glass is relatively easy and economical to
recycle. (I’m not saying what you say is untrue, there’s a lot of things in
the world that doesn’t make sense.)

~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
I know. Just wanted to say: "I can confirm this so called urban myth."

It's not that I'd been that interested in it, just read about it, and looked
into it afterwards. And it happens. Again and again.

------
TaylorAlexander
Just thought I would share an album I made from a trip to a Bay Area recycling
facility. I shot a bunch of slow mo of recycling machinery.

It’s pretty crazy that they can’t sort black plastic because the machine
relies on IR light to sense plastic type. We’ve got all these machine learning
engineers in the area and probably not so many of them are working on real
practical solutions to problems like trash sorting.

[https://imgur.com/gallery/IK5zKkO](https://imgur.com/gallery/IK5zKkO)

------
microcolonel
Non-aluminium recycling doesn't make a whole lot of sense in North America.

For plastics, you can make some case for PET recycling, but little else is at
all practical.

Paper recycling is doable, but basically pointless when we have such high
volumes of farmed pulp trees, and new pulp is more efficient than ever.

The one thing I could see working well is a subsidized glass reuse program. I
know a lot of people who prefer to get things in glass anyhow, and
cleaning/sanitizing glass at an industrial scale is an existing capability.

~~~
pfdietz
I'm pretty sure iron/steel recycling makes sense too, since that can be easily
separated from the waste stream magnetically.

Glass, I don't think makes sense, except for downcycling to aggregate.

~~~
microcolonel
> _I 'm pretty sure iron/steel recycling makes sense too_

Oh, sure, forgot that. Though steel and iron are not that common in household
waste where I'm from.

I specifically point to glass _reuse_ rather than glass _recycling_. As soon
as you have to process glass, the energy costs are massive.

~~~
User23
The recycling rate for gold also asymptotically approaches 100%. There's
plenty of money in recycling catalytic converters too. There's probably some
clever economic law waiting for someone to name it after himself about
recycling of metals and their market value.

Also we've all heard stories of, let's call it aggressive proactive copper
recycling.

------
lilSebastian
Corporations lying to ensure revenue? No, I don't believe it.

------
hosh
Food waste in landfills is arguably a much bigger problem than plastics being
dumped into landfills. The acid produced from the decomposing organics eats
away plastics and metals, creating a toxic leachate. Landfills try to contain
that, but it is not contained 100%. That stuff leaks out into soil,
potentially into aquifers. Furthermore the methane gases can build up in the
landfill with potentially explosive consequences. Many landfills add vertical
pipes to vent it, but it isn't captured for later use, contributing to
greenhouse gases.

Contrast that with being able to process food waste onsite (or at least the
neighborhood level) using the carbon cycle -- vermicomposting and conventional
composting. They feed the plant, and unlike oil-based fertilizers, they help
build up soil fertility long-term.

There are many more actions an individual can take that contributes towards
the health of the ecology. I think a lot of people latch onto recycling
because it is one of the few things people know how to do that they think
contributes towards a better ecology. But there are so many more impactful
things individuals and communities can do, that does not depend upon forcing
large megacorps to do the right thing.

------
alpineidyll3
I can't count the amount of flack I got for telling people about this years
ago.

------
einpoklum
> Rogue, like most recycling companies, had been sending plastic trash to
> China, but when China shut its doors two years ago, Leebrick scoured the
> U.S. for buyers.

So isn't a part of the article only relevant to the US, and other countries
which were exporting plastic trash rather than actually recycling/using for
derivative products?

> Here's the basic problem: All used plastic can be turned into new things,
> but picking it up, sorting it out and melting it down is expensive.

> Recycling plastic is "costly,"

By now, we should be well enough educated to say: "What do you mean by
expensive or costly?"

Does it mean...

* Costs a lot of money in the current socio-economic order?

* Requires a lot of human effort?

* Requires a lot of electricity / other form of energy?

* Has a high carbon footprint (by some complex figuring)?

* Involves a process emitting pollutants?

If it's just the monetary cost, then in a sense - that doesn't matter. Just
rearrange society so that either this is funded (or a non-monetary economy).
If it's energy use - maybe it's worth it and it could be arranged to be done
using solar collectors in the desert or whatever. And so on.

------
mgh2
Well China did buy it for recycling, but since that is changing, the corporate
narrative needs to change too.

[https://slate.com/technology/2018/06/why-china-import-
half-w...](https://slate.com/technology/2018/06/why-china-import-half-world-
used-plastic.html)

------
jonplackett
I wonder what the world would look like now if there never was any oil. We’d
have missed out on a lot of industrialising. Would we have had as many wars? I
guess we could still have got into space using methane. Will all the positive
stuff oil’s given us be undone by just how bad the climate gets? Interesting
thought experiment!

~~~
jonplackett
Just realised it would probably just be a world filled with coal smoke, but at
least less plastic pollution!

~~~
hesdeadjim
A jump from coal straight to nuclear and renewables would have been possible.

That said, there are an innumerable number of side effects from cheap fossil
fuels that would change present reality as we know it were they removed.

Removing cheap fossil fuel energy could have drastically slowed down
emigration from cities to the burbs, so it’s also fun to imagine a different
present where there’s dozens of New York Cities spread around the nation,
connected by mass transport, and separated by vast swaths of mostly empty
land. As EV tech and internet became widespread, it’s likely that the
development of suburbia would only just begin to be happening now. Or not.
Like you say though, fun thought experiment.

~~~
jonplackett
It’s weird to think if we hadn’t had fossil fuels at all how badly it would
have hampered human development. Could we have even got to modern development
level without so much free power? It doesn’t seem likely. Perhaps the
challenge would have forced us to come up with more imaginative solutions - I
mean there’s oceans full of hydrogen for starters. And the sun would still be
shining and the oceans still full of waves!

~~~
TurkTurkleton
> Could we have even got to modern development level without so much free
> power?

It's only free if you don't consider externalities to be a cost.

~~~
jonplackett
Yeah of course, we know that now. I just mean could we have got to where we
are now without it. How could we have done it differently?

------
Ericson2314
Almost all the plastic trash I see is due to food takeout. If we simply were
to require that food take out use reusable containers (special bins in public
spaces, deliver people transport back to restaurant for home deliver) I think
NYC could cut its waste by a huge portion.

~~~
macinjosh
I am sick of people saying problems are easy to fix by just enacting new laws
or regulations. It is so naive. Reusable containers are relatively heavy and
take up space in delivery vehicles. It will cost the restaurants time and
money to do this. People won’t spend the time to take the containers back so
they will end up in the trash or people will find use for them. So all you’ve
done is drive up food costs for low income folks and created more wasteful
containers. How dumb is that?

~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
While there may be some truth to this, another truth would be that as it is
now we massively externalize the true costs by making it other peoples
problems by shady schemes.

~~~
Ericson2314
Yeah GP is presuming I want the regulation _and_ I expect the restaurant
business to otherwise function the same. Of course I don't. We're finally
accounting for the externalities, and if this makes some restaurants
unprofitable so be it.

------
m0zg
IIRC it's been a lie for quite a while where I live. It used to be that PNW
"recyclables" were just shipped to China where I strongly suspect they were
promptly landfilled after payment was collected. But China stopped taking our
trash years ago, so now they are landfilled in the US. Ironically, it's likely
less harmful to the environment overall, since you don't have to ship it
first, and the US is likely to have more rigorous environmental standards for
landfills.

------
lumberingjack
When you recycle near me you're mostly just enriching China our local recycle
facility does not usually recycle. Only when the recycle machinehas got
capacity do we actually take the recycling to any type of recycle facility.
Most of the time just gets thrown in the trash dump or it gets shipped
overseas so that somebody else can sort through it. Along the way a lot of it
mysteriously ends up in the ocean.

------
henrikschroder
Who cares? Burn the plastic trash!

You get the plastic item use out of it, and you get almost all the energy from
it as if you had burned the oil directly.

~~~
noizejoy
I think that will require a large number of new technologies to make such
burning environmentally sustainable and cost competitive with other energy
producing technologies. I don’t have enough science, engineering, or economic
knowledge to even take a wild guess at the feasibility of such technology.

Maybe that would be a better challenge for Mr. Musk and various other
privateers and governments than running away to Mars to escape the mess we’re
making of our own planet.

~~~
henrikschroder
Plenty of countries have excellent trash burning plants already, all the
technology exists. You _only_ need to compete with peak oil burner plants, not
the entire power producing chain. Same co2 emissions, a bit less electricity,
but the trash doesn't go on horrible polluting landfills. Win-win.

~~~
macinjosh
Modern landfills don’t pollute.

------
tylorr
I remember hearing some time ago that sorting at the facility was going to be
more efficient than pre-sorting at home because we can't trust everyone to
sort properly so sorting at the facility was required anyway. Is this not the
case anymore? I see many other comments saying that comingled recycling is
bad.

------
tom_mellior
Um, what's the deal with editing the headline? The original asserts a
statement. It may or may not be true. But why would it benefit HN readers to
turn this assertion into a question?

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
no _deal_ \- the submission bookmarklet JS[1] automatically fills in the title
from the html meta:

    
    
        <title>Is Plastic Recycling A Lie? Oil Companies Touted  Recycling To Sell More Plastic : NPR</title>
    
    

[1]
javascript:window.location=%22[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitlink?u=%22+encodeURICompo...](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitlink?u=%22+encodeURIComponent\(document.location\)+%22&t=%22+encodeURIComponent\(document.title\))

~~~
tom_mellior
Ah thanks, that explains it. So it's partly NPR's fault for using a title tag
different from the headline. I guess I was also confused because I think I had
also seen the duplicate submission that used the headline, not the title tag,
so I though this one was changed.

But that bookmarklet is also at fault, since _at the minimum_ submissions are
required to strip out the site's name if it occurs in the title, so leaving in
the ": NPR" bit is a bug in this automated approach. So some amount of human
post-processing will always be needed. And while submissions are expected to
keep the original title, there is also a rule that egregious clickbait like
the question in the title tag should be removed (which has now been done!).

------
flenserboy
I remember plenty of ads, 20 or 30 years back, showing how they would be able
to easily & cheaply break down & reuse plastic (they compared it to un- & re-
zipping a zipper). Was that vision / promise simply abandoned, put on hold, or
not true in the first place? (I'd put my money on #3, but the idea was cool).

~~~
redis_mlc
It's #3 because there's too many molecular types of consumer plastic (so
melting it isn't good enough to reuse), food contamination is a problem, and
it's usually cheaper to make new plastic than move it and recycle it.

In addition, at least in North America, there is no consumer recycling - it's
all landfilled unless a private contractor is paid vast sums to recycle it, or
a local city council lucks into a good deal.

(I read newspapers until recently, and about once a year there's a short
article on the inability to find a recycling partner, so off to the landfill
it all goes. Doesn't matter what city. I have seen video of New York using a
recycling barge that looks legit for at least some streams.)

The best you can do is burn plastic for electricity today, unless you redesign
everything with a sane master recycling plan tomorrow.

The only benefit of consumer recycling in NA is that we've trained people on
awareness and how to separate trash, kinda. There was a time when even that
was unknown.

------
DenisM
Great. Can we also discuss now how recycling paper _hurts_ climate?

Modern landfills are airtight, so buried paper is sequestered carbon. Less
buried paper - less sequestration.

~~~
treyp
isn't sequestering carbon a good thing?

~~~
XCSme
I think that's what he tried to say, if you recycle paper the carbon gets
somehow released. But, in theory, the recycled paper will still come out as
paper, thus carbon will still be there.

~~~
DenisM
> in theory, the recycled paper will still come out as paper, thus carbon will
> still be there.

If paper never gets recycled it will continue accumulating in the landfill at
a fast pace, so more carbon gets trapped over time.

If paper gets recycled the amount of captured carbon will be that trapped in
the paper currently circulating. Even if some paper gets eventually trashed,
it will not be at the same rate.

Recycling paper harms climate.

~~~
XCSme
But what about the trees cut down to make new paper? As more new paper is
needed if less is recycled.

~~~
DenisM
That's the whole point of carbon sequestration: grow a tree, cut it down, bury
it, grow a new tree in the same place.

~~~
XCSme
Assuming that new trees will indeed be planted.

------
KoenDG
Same with batteries, far as I'm aware.

Can't actually be recycled. Just gathered and put in very large warehouses and
nothing is done with it.

That's what our chemist teacher told us about 10 years back, anyway. So for me
that remains in the "no idea what's actually true" camp.

