
'Horrible hybrids': the plastic products that give recyclers nightmares - xdze2
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/20/plastic-products-recyclers-single-use
======
diarmuidie
I wish there was some sort of scoring system for product packaging that would
take into account the quantity and environmental impact of the packaging.
Like, if the product comes in a small cardboard box it gets a good score, but
if that cardboard is lined with a plastic film (effectively making the
cardboard non-recyclable) then the score goes way down.

That score could then be used by consumers to make informed decisions or maybe
it's used to charge producers to cover the cost of safe disposal of the
packaging when it reaches its end of life.

~~~
gridlockd
Given that paper bags have a worse environmental impact than plastic bags, I
would suppose cardboard is worse than those plastic containers that are so
annoying to open.

~~~
kilo_bravo_3
Paper bags do not have a worse environmental impact than plastic bags.

Paper bags have a worse impact in a very few, small, narrow metrics such as
"ocean de-nutrification".

Everyone blurts this out because of a study done in Europe that looked only at
a very limited range of environmental factors specifically suited to the
country that commissioned the study.

Also, the vast majority of "savings" plastic bags realized over other forms of
bag is the energy density of the petroleum used to produce them and the fact
that that energy could be recovered by the massive network of refuse-to-power
incineration stations in (the country that did the study, I can't remember).

But most plastic bags don't end up mindfully collected, sorted, and
incinerated.

When taken as a whole, paper bags are much, much better for the environment
than plastic bags.

In 100 years, the paper bag I (HYPOTHETICALLY) threw out my car window is long
gone, worm food, turned into soil.

The plastic bag I (HYPOTHETICALLY) threw out my car window is now several
billion flakes of microplastics and the world is struggling with the health
ramifications of a century of build-up in the environment.

For that matter, the glass bottle is now harmless beach glass or sand (or a
valuable collectible on ebay-next), and the aluminum beer can is now its
10,000th reincarnation-- having been picked up by a bum and traded in for
cash.

My favorite "HOT TAKE" from that study is that "yOu HaVe To ReUsE a ClOtH bAg
500 tImEs" for it to be more efficient (in a very narrow spectrum of
categories, remember) like that's an insurmountable hurdle.

My made-in-USA cotton totes I got on Amazon for $13.99 in 2010 have been used
once a week since I got them.

You do the math.

~~~
gridlockd
> Paper bags have a worse impact in a very few, small, narrow metrics such as
> "ocean de-nutrification".

Paper bags require _more reuse_ , that's the core finding of the study:

[https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-...](https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-73-4.pdf)

> Everyone blurts this out because of a study done in Europe that looked only
> at a very limited range of environmental factors specifically suited to the
> country that commissioned the study.

I wasn't aware that Denmark is a huge player in the international plastic bag
trade, but perhaps I'm just uninformed.

> But most plastic bags don't end up mindfully collected, sorted, and
> incinerated.

Actually, they do - at least in the EU.

> The plastic bag I (HYPOTHETICALLY) threw out my car window is now several
> billion flakes of microplastics and the world is struggling with the health
> ramifications of a century of build-up in the environment.

The world doesn't even know yet if microplastics are a serious health problem,
but if they are, then we've already reached the point of no return.

> For that matter, the glass bottle is now harmless beach glass or sand (or a
> valuable collectible on ebay-next), and the aluminum beer can is now its
> 10,000th reincarnation-- having been picked up by a bum and traded in for
> cash.

What about the added weight of the glass bottle requiring more fossil fuel to
transport? What about all the energy required to reuse that aluminum? There's
good arguments for either of these materials - I don't want to drink my beer
out of a plastic bottle - but helping the environment isn't one of them.

> My favorite "HOT TAKE" from that study is that "yOu HaVe To ReUsE a ClOtH
> bAg 500 tImEs" for it to be more efficient (in a very narrow spectrum of
> categories, remember) like that's an insurmountable hurdle.

It's not insurmountable, but people just don't do it. These bags get
disgusting after a while. People are throwing them away. Same with "reusable"
PET bags.

> My made-in-USA cotton totes I got on Amazon for $13.99 in 2010 have been
> used once a week since I got them.

You deserve a burial at Arlington for that.

~~~
kilo_bravo_3
Whoever told you that is mistaken.

Even in “incineration-friendly” countries, less than a quarter of all trash is
incinerated.

[https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
explained/index.php...](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
explained/index.php/Municipal_waste_statistics#Municipal_waste_treatment)

~~~
gridlockd
In the EU, most plastic trash is either incinerated (39%) or recycled (30%).

[https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/201...](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20181212STO21610/plastic-
waste-and-recycling-in-the-eu-facts-and-figures)

The study considers both the recycling and the incineration scenario and in
either case the plastic bag comes out on top.

------
russellbeattie
Goddammit. I've been buying the plastic bags of Tide Pods because I just
assumed it was less waste than getting a plastic tub every time. Definitely
less space taken up in my recycle bin. Blergh.

It's not like it's 1953 and the world is just discovering the wonders of
plastic. We should be doing better. I don't understand why it's even legal to
produce disposable plastic containers today that are not 100%, easily
recyclable - without some sort of express permit for exceptional needs.

~~~
ars
> I don't understand why it's even legal to produce disposable plastic
> containers today that are not 100%, easily recyclable

It's because it's completely harmless to landfill them.

Litter is bad. Full stop. Landfill however is not.

I've noticed a trend in these types of articles that conflates the two things
as if they were the same. Then they tend of mix in info (plastic in the ocean)
that applies to countries that dispose of trash in their local rivers.

~~~
AstralStorm
You know where landfill ends up in when not properly sealed?

Groundwater and rain runoff.

Drinking partially degraded plastic is not exactly neutral to health.
Poisoning wildlife with the added colorings or plastics themselves, neither.
Especially insidious are plastic fibres - partially synthetic textiles. These
should all be burned clean at very high temperatures first.

Litter is easy to remove and even burn, micrometer level plastic dust is not.
Standard water treatment at best can sediment some kinds of microplastics but
not all. The cutoff levels that are safe for health for some plastics are
miniscule for chronic intake. (Urethanes especially - kidney toxicity and
cancer, probably others too. BPA is a joke compared to base PET stock at
micrometers chronically.)

~~~
ars
> You know where landfill ends up in when not properly sealed?

So then don't do that?

And realistically, are landfills in the US and Europe leaking or not?

~~~
AstralStorm
Water runoff and sludge from landfills is treated, however only final very
time consuming steps of biological sedimentation and treatment can remove most
of them. Or very fine reverse osmosis or treatment with micron level filters,
very energy intensive. So they do tend to end up in clean drinking water.
There are many sources and no norms.

Sometimes even metals bordering on norms can be detected near landfills.

Sample efficiency ranges:
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00431...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0043135418310686)

I had a link with site in Sweden barely keeping norms for lead and cobalt...
due to organic decomposition and incomplete runoff collection. Bad enough that
I wouldn't build a well within some 10 km radius.

Read up on what happens to all this thing called leachate.

This is a main reason why European Commission wants the landfills to remain as
exception.

------
et-al
Went on a garbage plant tour a few months back and we were advised not to
practice optimistic recycling for this matter.

With plastics, if it's not hard plastic, don't hope it will be recycled. Soft
plastics like bags end up gumming up the machines. Sure you can bundle the
bags together in a ball and supposedly the waste collector will process it
separately (i.e. outsource it to someone else), but the general public is
better served with fewer exceptions. Just assume that any plastics aside from
bottles and cartons are not recyclable.

Reduce, reuse, _then_ recycle.

------
gridlockd
_" Discarded single-use plastics have become an international environmental
flashpoint, as they have turned up in the bellies of birds and fish, flooded
pristine beaches in remote countries with litter and even been detected in
microscopic quantities in rainwater."_

Ironically, this is almost certainly due to recycling being so uneconomical
that trash gets shipped to foreign countries, where less diligent actors will
simply dump in the ocean.

Landfills are the best solution, let the trash robots of the future figure it
all out.

~~~
ars
> due to recycling being so uneconomical that trash gets shipped to foreign
> countries

This isn't true. No one is shipping trash to other countries, it's way too
expensive to do that.

Other countries _pay_ to _buy_ recycling, and recently they haven't been as
interested.

~~~
205guy
This isn't true either. The US was shipping badly sorted recycling (aka half-
trash) to other countries because return shipping to Asia is dirt-cheap (aka
trade imbalance). Other countries were sorting the recyclables with miserable
labor and dumping our trash byproduct due to lax environmental laws in said
countries. Recently, they haven't been as interested in this deal.

~~~
redis_mlc
1) The US press followed this for decades.

The Chinese govt. allowed trash shipments for a long time, but nobody in
business wanted to really do the trash shipments because they slowed down the
return trip.

Finally the Chinese government realized banning the shipments was an easy way
to improve air quality in China, since often trash mountains are burned to
isolate metals.

2) There's an erroneous belief that we do recycling in the US. Aside from
vehicle recycling, about 99% effective, most trash is landfilled since there's
no way for private companies to make money on the trash stream.

If you read local newspapers, there's often an article on the municipal
council being asked for $1 million payments from recyclers, so dumping is
chosen instead.

------
robbrown451
Ok, but put things in perspective. A musical greeting card is typically a
$5-10 purchase. People presumably pay this money because they expect someone
to get that much enjoyment out of it.

The amount of recyclable paper in a greeting card is probably worth about
1/100th of a cent, if that.

Maybe these costs seem irrelevant, but still -- they seem to be expecting
people to bypass the card for a more recyclable one, when the recyclable value
of a greeting card is so, so, SO tiny. The more realistic advice is, if you
get one of these cards, don't try to recycle it, put it in the regular trash.
It's not the end of the world. (and no, we aren't running out of space for
landfills.... of all the environmental damage we are doing, modern landfills
are one of the least significant)

At the end of the day, recycling is more to make people feel good than
anything. Sure, aluminum recycling makes sense. Recycling large amounts of
paper (like cardboard boxes) makes sense. But the majority of things that go
in a recycling bin just need a bunch of people to pick through it, so they can
eventually send it to the landfill.

~~~
AstralStorm
How about not buying the trash card and instead opting for regular paper or
fully electronic?

Each tiny piece of complex trash adds to a horribly polluted landfill...

Recycling indeed is not cost effective or even impossible. Even cardboard can
be contaminated with wax or paint enough to prevent recycling or require use
of expensive and dangerous solvents.

Perhaps Asian way of outright banning bad packaging and products is the
solution.

~~~
robbrown451
Fully electronic cards don't count as cards.

------
EvilTerran
> For instance most spray cleaners come in bottles made of high-density
> polyethylene, which can be readily recycled. But first consumers must remove
> the spraytops, as they are made from different plastics and are not
> recyclable. Then consumers must find a way to pry off the brightly-colored,
> printed plastic wraps that packagers are increasingly wrapping around
> bottles to make the labeling more attractive.

> “Who does all that? Nobody,” said Sanborn.

I do! It's a little fiddly, but any sharp knife with a point you can slip
under the label does a good enough job of slicing those off.

Good to know that helps, actually - I've often wondered whether I was wasting
my time bothering with it.

~~~
205guy
I do too! Glad I'm not the only one. I also remove labels when possible and
pull plastic tape off of corrugated cardboard boxes.

The one problem is with deposit beverage containers, plastic or glass, that
have those plastic wrap labels. The proof of deposit is on the label, so you
can't remove it or the recycler won't accept it. So now plastic is added into
the glass recycling stream, or 2 different plastics are mixed in the plastic
recycling stream.

I think packaging should be regulated. No mixed materials, printed not glued
label, or only glue that can be removed. Plastic number stamped on every piece
of plastic produced anywhere in the world. Mandate use of recyclable
paperboard packaging instead of plastic wrap. No fake bio-degradable
packaging. No embedded electronics or batteries.

Also education: everyone is responsible for their trash. Strip out the
recyclables, keep them clean, minimize other trash. In the example of the
singing birthday cards, it should be trivial to tear or cut out the
electronics and put the paper card into the recycling.

If we had sensible regulations and responsible consumers, then with only a bit
of effort, we could have valuable clean recycling streams and minimal
landfill.

------
twomoretime
Are properly lined landfills really that much worse than the trouble and
expense of recycling? Especially with clean landfill technology?

I think people tend to underestimate the cost and inconvenience of proper
recycling. The value regenerated is so low that, personally, I'm ok with
sacrificing a couple plots of land to be later reclaimed and turned into
parks/preserves.

Edit: downvotes are not intended to signal disagreement. Recycling is not free
and I am just looking for a reasonable cost/benefit analysis. Zero
environmental footprint is not practical. There is a happy medium somewhere.

------
pedalpete
> mix their own cleaners

Links to a page with ingredients of vinegar & isopropyl alcohol, both of which
come in plastic containers.

I've been trying to find bath soap that comes in a non-plastic container, but
no luck.

I just found this link about creating liquid soap from a bar, so I may give
that a shot! [https://clark.com/family-lifestyle/make-liquid-hand-soap-
bar...](https://clark.com/family-lifestyle/make-liquid-hand-soap-bar-scraps/)

------
LatteLazy
We have chosen as a species to destroy the planet. We know we're doing it. We
could stop. We won't. So why keep making a fuss? Enjoy it! You're the last
people to see a real sea turtle or a rainforest or a glacier.

It's not nice but it's true.

------
ars
> plastic pouches .... are apt to end up in the ocean

Say what now? No they are not apt to end up in the ocean. Where do they get
that idea from?

Plastic in the ocean is two things: fishing gear, and household garbage in
certain Asian and Oriental countries.

> The program allows consumers to mail in their razors to be recycled.

Now why would they do this, sigh. Mailing them is going to consume more
resources than just throwing them away.

