
How Big Oil Misled the Public into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled - everybodyknows
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled
======
bit_logic
The whole recycling scam makes me upset. For decades the message was to
recycle for the environment. But it was all just shipped to China and then
dumped into the oceans. It actually would've been better if it went to
landfills, at least then it's safely contained. Another lie was that we're
running out of landfill space, there's so much land out there.

Like most environmental issues, the focus should've been on producers not
consumers. Tax plastic usage and producers will use less of it.

~~~
bit_logic
Thinking about this more, wasn't there a time, maybe late 90s early 2000s when
the message was that plastic is more environmental than paper? Something like
at the supermarket checkout you should pick plastic over paper bags to save
rain forest trees? Is my memory wrong or was this a widespread message at the
time?

~~~
aimor
This is what I remember as well. I remember my mother using her own rope net
grocery bags as an alternative to the paper ones.

I remember in school we switched from single-portion paper milk cartons to
square bags of milk that you punctured with a plastic straw. This was sold to
us along with a muppet skit explaining how to use the milk bags (the muppets
rated it "one thumb up and one thumb down, to cover the straw hole when you
puncture the bag"). There was a poster in the cafeteria comparing the giant
pile of milk cartons relative to the small pile of plastic pouches. We paid
much more attention to what adults said than they ever gave us credit for, and
they had been telling us about renewable and non-renewable resources, about
recycling, about landfill space, and about externality. We knew, even if the
rational outcome was the same, that it was more than big pile vs small pile.

I remember when bag fees started showing up, and at the checkout grocery
stores began selling... reusable plastic bags. People seem to collect these
now, maybe 30-40 per household, which is fine by me I'd rather have 40 bags in
someone's pantry than 4,000 floating around outside. But it seems excessive.
I've accumulated about that many: I on occasion "win a prize", family members
bring items over and leave the carrying bags behind, donate money to anyone
and you're sure to get a tote. I actually don't have any rope bags though I
wish I did, my mother still has hers and she's not parting with them. I think
the rope bags are more convenient than anything else, but then what happens to
the 40 odd plastic bags I've accumulated?

~~~
irrational
> what happens to the 40 odd plastic bags I've accumulated?

We always used them as garbage can liners. Now that stores no longer have
plastic bags we have to buy plastic bags. So instead of reusing the plastic
bags we brought our groceries home in, we are buying brand new plastic bags
instead. The same number of plastic bags are entering the landfill. The only
difference is that now we have to pay for them.

~~~
4ad
I don't know where you live and how garbage disposal works where you live, but
in general I would urge people not to do this. Proper garbage can bags are
important because they don't spill out easily. This makes the job of the
garbage disposal people much easier. Imagine having someone overworked and
underpaid, working on autopilot and at fast pace, and suddenly your trash
spills out. You will ruin that person's day.

~~~
irrational
Are there really still places In the US where people actually have to
physically manhandle garbage into a truck?!

~~~
SteveGerencser
Yup. Many rural areas like ours have weekly garbage collection. It's an
ancient truck, with the same 3 guys ever since I moved here nearly 10 years
ago. They hand toss every single bag. And when the truck breaks down they
collect the trash in a pickup truck and handle it twice, once loading it and
once unloading it.

------
x87678r
I can't remember where I read it but there was the view that recycling allows
people to think they're environmentally responsible when they aren't. eg the
typical family has multiple cars, lives in a big suburban house, has
heating/ac buys loads of stuff but recycles their cardboard/glass so thinks
their environmental impact is small.

~~~
barrkel
Moral self-licensing.

I think a lot of the Green movement has the trappings of a religion, with
shame and guilt used as motivators, and expensive rituals like trash sorting
used to evidence your membership of the group.

I want to pay someone else to sort my trash. In fact, I want the cost of
sorting my trash embedded in the costs of the goods I buy, so I - and in
particular, my neighbours - have no motivation to burn their trash, or worse,
dump it somewhere illegally.

As it is, I pay for supplemental private trash collection due to the public UK
council collection now being insufficient to deal with the quantity.
"Recycling" \- mostly cardboard delivery boxes - overflows into the private
landfill bin because the public bins are only collected every fortnight. Which
doesn't help with the smell from nappies and cat litter.

~~~
pydry
>Moral self-licensing. I think a lot of the Green movement has the trappings
of a religion, with shame and guilt used as motivators, and expensive rituals
like trash sorting used to evidence your membership of the group.

Guilting individuals for not recycling was a corporate PR response to getting
heat for the byproducts of their businesses littering the streets. This
started back when plastic packaging was first introduced (~60s, I think).

Just like guilting individuals for jaywalking was a corporate response to
getting heat for too many automobile deaths in the early days of the car. This
happened around the 30s I think.

The fact that the most obviously cynical and powerful groups in the world can
spread deliberately self serving propaganda and then successfully blame their
own disingenuousness on the largely selfless groups who mostly just want to
create a better world for everybody is a portent of a very, _very_ dark
future.

~~~
WealthVsSurvive
Thank you for stating what should be obvious: most of the psuedo-green beliefs
are the result of direct misinformation from the producers of human-harming
pollution. It should make people more rabid to tear them apart, not less.

~~~
thu2111
It can be flipped around a third time. Eco-campaigners that create hate
campaigns against corporations doing useful work, without even the faintest
idea of a proposal for what they want those corps to do differently, will
inevitably produce nonsensical virtue signalling PR responses. What else are
they going to do? As the article discusses, plastic recycling is hard.

~~~
jjeaff
What do you mean no solution offered? Tax non-recyclables at the source and
tax them enough to dispose of those materials effectively and safely. And the
markets will respond by switching to truly recyclable alternatives or else
pass the cost on to consumers willing to pay more for a non-recyclables
option.

~~~
thu2111
That won't solve any environmental problems, as in most cases there are no
plausible recyclable substitutes. Or are you proposing we make iPhones out of
wood?

All that'd do is act as a general consumption tax, and we already have those.

In fact there are no viable solutions, assuming rolling civilisation back to
the stone age isn't considered viable. That's why eco-extremists never get
specific about what they want corporations or governments to do, and in the
rare case where someone is actually serious enough to consider that problem
they end up leaving the environment movement: see the long history of ex-
Greenpeace or now ex-Extinction Rebellion leaders leaving the movements and
coming out in favour of nuclear power.

------
GhostVII
I'm not convinced that it's actually a bad thing to dump plastic and paper
into a landfill. You just cover it up with dirt and plants every 20 years and
build a new one, pretty low impact as long as you have it properly sealed off.
Even gets rid of some CO2. Probably better than putting lots of energy into
recycling when it isn't actually efficient to do so.

~~~
randcraw
You're not convinced... because you understand the component costs and you
believe they add up favorably? Or you don't know and don't care?

The answers to your suggestion start with knowing the volume of plastic, time
to degrade, degradation byproduct toxicity, and alternative 'recycling'
methods and their costs.

There's also clear evidence that the 'current' model and practice for plastic
disposal (that you endorse) is NOT safe and effective. Until you can suggest
how to fix its demerits, it's unhelpful to blithely suggest we just keep doing
it.

~~~
GhostVII
I'm not convinced because as the article says, it's not realistic to recycle
many kinds of plastic, and because I don't see the harm in safely burying
garbage. In my city there is an old landfill which has now been covered in
dirt and turned into a park, with a sledding hill and a bike park. If you
didn't know better, you wouldn't even be able to tell it was a landfill
before, and if properly managed none of that garbage will ever leak out - the
city uses well water and has had no problems with contamination from the
landfill.

If it is less energy intensive to create new plastics rather than recycling
(which seems to be the case), why not just safely bury the old plastics and
make new ones, it should be better for the environment anyways. Of course you
should try to reduce and reuse before throwing out plastics, but if you have
to get rid of them landfills seem reasonable.

~~~
lorenzorhoades
Are you talking about Tacoma/ Ruston Area?

I agree with you. Recycling is stupid; weirdly enough it's a major
contributor(? Totally not the right word) to homelessness.

Secondly, it's allowed to be 'disposed of' internationally. Who knows what the
Chinese and Indians are doing with it.

Instead of CRV at the consumer level, we should have susidies or direct
payments to suppliers for reusing plastic. All the plastic that isn't
'intrinsically valuable', ends up safely in a landfill.

------
octoberfranklin
> Smith allowed people to put two plastic items in their bins: soda bottles
> and milk jugs. He lost money on them, he says, but the aluminum, paper and
> steel from his regular business helped offset the costs.

Wait, what?! He should've just said "aluminum paper and steel only" and earned
greater profits. It's not like people have a choice of recycling providers.

The plastic recycling catastrophe wasn't caused by advertising. It was caused
by entities irrationally subsidizing plastic disposal, for political reasons.
Like this guy at a municipal waste facility. And like China.

People get finite-sized trash bins, and they must pay if they want a larger
size. Make them put the plastic in the trash bin and they will get annoyed by
plastic packaging. I know I do.

~~~
lrem
I pay 1.5CHF per 35l trash bag ($1.65 per 9.2 gallons) and recycling does not
accept plastic other than bottles. Still have no way to evade plastic
packaging.

~~~
octoberfranklin
If the proportion of plastic-packaged goods in your life hasn't reduced then
you (unlike most people) clearly don't buy stuff on amazon. Or from big-box
retailers.

The other day I bought a product from Home Depot that had a glued-in-plastic
window in a cardboard package (this makes the cardboard unrecycleable). It
looked so alien. I hadn't seen packaging like that from a major retailer in
years.

Evade? Never. Reduce? Already in progress. Adjust your focus.

~~~
lrem
Amazon does not have a shop in three out of the four European countries I
lived in, including the current one.

Edit: technically, it operates in two of them, having both some warehouses and
R&D offices, but does not have a storefront for them.

------
analog31
This is probably an aside, but due to the lockdown, I've been doing hardware
development at my house. It's mostly great, but it means that I receive a lot
of packages.

And the packaging, oh the packaging. I'm inundated with packing material.
Let's say I order 10 different parts. Each part was made by a manufacturer and
packaged in a little plastic bag. (If there are sub-parts such as attachments,
screws, etc., they are in a sub-bag).

Each of those bags is placed inside another bag, often a thick zip-loc, with a
sticky label indicating the part number and sales order number plus other
desiderata.

A short (1 meter) USB cable was coiled up and secured with not one but two
twist-ties, sub-bagged, and bagged. There were molded plastic caps on the
ends.

All of those bags are in a big bag, tied at the top. That goes in a box with
packing material filling half the box. I end up knee deep in trash by the time
I've unpacked an order. I keep a few of the nicer boxes, but everything else
goes into the recycling bin.

/rant

------
fmajid
Yes, it’s a scam. Only aluminum actually gets recycled. It’s time to tax
plastic so companies start using paper products (even if they go to landfill,
they will at least sequester carbon there) or aluminum.

~~~
newacct583
Also glass and steel. Rare earth materials like batteries are very
productively recycled. Paper recycling isn't awful either, but more of a wash
than a win.

Really, it's thermoplastic disposables that are the real problem here. Those
__don 't __recycle (except some very specific items), and frankly never really
did. The straw bans are just the tip of the iceberg here. We need to be
talking about banning all plastic disposables.

~~~
dmurray
Paper/cardboard can be quite worthwhile. This article [0] was discussed on HN
not so long ago. And some plastics too (I used to work for a firm that sold
its waste PVC).

The real discrepancy is between consumers and businesses recycling. Businesses
can have a clean, unadulterated stream of waste, likely trivial for them to
sort at scale. Most consumer recycling is useful for awareness at best and
distraction at worst, like California shaming people into fixing their leaky
taps during droughts when a billion times as much water is diverted to almond
farming.

[0] [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-
europe-51420503](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51420503)

~~~
toomuchtodo
All consumer waste streams should be filtered for metals and then shoveled
into a plasma gasifier. You’re not going to break even on the energy input
(source renewables to cover anything above what you generate from burning the
syngas byproduct), but you’re going to break everything down into something
that be trivially landfilled or used as aggregate for asphalt repaving (slag)
and burn the syngas for power.

~~~
dmurray
Aren't there some waste materials you'd prefer to bury in the ground than
oxidise and release into the atmosphere near a city? I don't know much about
this but I suspect you're over-simplifying.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Gasification uses a plasma arc to break down the molecular bonds of the waste
(molecular dissociation) versus incineration oxidation; it can be used for
industrial and hazardous waste you’d want to avoid incinerating, and release
of anything toxic is greatly reduced.

The link below has examples of two such facilities that operated successfully
in Japan about two decades ago; one shut down because the Japanese improved
their waste stream recycling, depriving the facility of the necessary
feedstock to continue operations.

[https://www.netl.doe.gov/research/Coal/energy-
systems/gasifi...](https://www.netl.doe.gov/research/Coal/energy-
systems/gasification/gasifipedia/westinghouse)

------
imglorp
They mention decreasing quality when recycling, but I wonder about less-
chemical recycling opportunities.

For example, composite decking (Trex et al) combines sawdust and resin. It can
be used for picnic tables and such. Road surfaces use ground tires now.
Someone makes large nesting blocks for low-stress construction instead of
concrete. PET can be made into fleece for garments, how about using it for
insulation or other applications?

We should be embracing this stuff in new ways.

[https://www.alternativesjournal.ca/science-and-
solutions/pop...](https://www.alternativesjournal.ca/science-and-
solutions/pop-couture-how-pet-plastic-bottles-are-spun-polar-fleece)

~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
That fleece is one of the major sources of microplastics. By abrasion during
wearing and washing.

------
hangonhn
Planet Money goes into this in a 2-parts series:

[https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739893511/episode-925-a-mob-b...](https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739893511/episode-925-a-mob-
boss-a-garbage-boat-and-why-we-recycle)

------
bamboozled
"It didn't get recycled because the system wasn't up to par," he says. "We
hadn't invested in the ability to sort it and there hadn't been market signals
that companies were willing to buy it, and both of those things exist today."

Don’t trust this guy, he is supposed to sell oil, recycling is in direct
conflict with selling more oil.

There’s no reason we should fall for this twice.

~~~
demosito666
Only 5% of the oil we consume is used for plastic production. I don't think
shifting this one or two percent will affect anyone's profit significantly.

------
m463
A friend - a chemical engineer - worked on a plastics recycling project years
ago (90's)

They worked on recycling plastic, but the problem was:

\- it was very expensive to clean the plastic

\- even when the plastic was cleaned, it could only be mixed with virgin
plastic at a very small ratio - single digit percentages

\- even the small ratio would weaken the plastic considerably. Think laundry
baskets which are flexible but break easily.

in the end I think they made giant logs for playgrounds out of the plastic.

He told me really the best idea was probably to burn the plastic cleanly.

~~~
imtringued
Burning the plastic will release CO2. Just bury it.

~~~
m463
Wouldn't that just be the same, just a different timescale? And then there's
the energy expenditure of burying it.

maybe there's a way to have your cake and eat it too. reuse it for fuel:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification)

------
ardy42
I wonder if sorting could be made feasible by mandating color-coding of
different types of plastic? Like PET has to be clear, HDPE white, PP green,
etc.? Marketers and package designers may not like it, but whatever.

The tiny little recycling symbols seem pretty useless, unless you force
consumers to hand-sort their recyclables according to them.

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
> The tiny little recycling symbols seem pretty useless, unless you force
> consumers to hand-sort their recyclables according to them.

It gets worse: in King County, WA (Seattle metro area) where WM has most of
the contracts we received leaflets from WM telling us to ignore the plastic
recycling symbols entirely and to use only WM's "what we can / can't recycle"
picture chart - which includes things I didn't think were recyclable (
_stained_ pizza boxes) and excludes things that I'd think were recyclable
(plastic films).

...and the list varies within the county too: some cities' leaflets say not to
put _any_ pizza boxes in recycling (even completely clean ones). Aieeee.

~~~
Thorentis
Where I am, pizza boxes are put in the green bins (eg along with garden
clippings) since they end up being composted and used in council landscaping
tasks/sold etc. You can also put used tissues, paper towels, and so on in the
green bin.

~~~
Scoundreller
It's possible they just do this with all paper products in some areas.

If demand for recycled paper isn't high, it's easier to have some cities sort
carefully for high-value recycling, and other cities mix in greasy
paper/towels/tissue since it's all getting shredded into compost anyway.

I've been composting paper this year. It makes a good sub for peat moss (which
is not very renewable!).

------
mschuster91
It's the same crap that BP pulled in 1971:
[https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-footprint-pr-campaign-
sh...](https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-footprint-pr-campaign-
sham/?europe=true)

Basically, both the plastics stuff ofthis submission as well as the co2
campaign of BP is shifting responsibility: from big industry/megacorps to
individual consumers.

The worst thing is: even if _all_ consumers would religiously follow recycling
and co2 saving guidelines, it would barely make a dent in the global view. And
that is the reason why humanity is blowing through all environmental
targets... and politicians can sit in front of the cameras and straight tell
people that "we did all we could".

Seriously fuck this. We need to get megacorps and fraudulent PR under control,
and that _soon_.

------
bondolo
I am hopeful that the initiative which uses waste stream plastics as a
component of asphalt will allow us to finally get some decent alternative to
landfill for plastics. The best part about it was that the plastics didn't
need to be sorted or clean; it is just going to be melted, pelletized and then
mixed with hot tar to make asphalt. Since asphalt is now nearly infinitely
recycled the plastics will be kept in use for a very long time with only minor
amounts escaping in to the environment.

~~~
zamadatix
I'm not as optimistic spreading plastics all over the ground to drive on is
going to lead to less plastics escaping into the environment vs putting them
in a landfill and covering them.

~~~
Jarwain
I think y'all are thinking on different scales of "plastic escaping". One
scale being large plastics like bags or packing materials which could
conceivably be blown away from a landfill or otherwise just left to rot.

The other scale being microplastics leaking into the ground & our groundwater.
I'm not really sure whether the asphalt thing helps with microplastics

~~~
hinkley
It does not. We were just talking the other day about the particulate
pollution from asphalt. If it’s made of plastic, then the dust is micro
plastic.

------
pfdietz
What problem was recycling supposed to be solving? Understanding just what the
negative of plastic is supposed to be would inform how it is to be dealt with.

~~~
kxrm
Anecdotally, when I was younger (80s) the concern was biodegradability. There
were a lot of fears of plastics never really being re-absorbed into the
environment. So the idea that your yogurt cup would live on unhindered for
centuries was a common fear. This lead to movements to reconsider plastics as
large food industry providers were switching away from more expensive glass
(which was incentivized to be reused back then).

So not a lot has changed, it's the same problem but instead of overflowing
landfills of plastic, we are seeing it in the ocean instead.

~~~
pfdietz
I don't see how that justifies recycling, since getting the stuff into
landfills (or burning it) removes it from the environment too.

~~~
closeparen
There is no “beyond the environment.” Landfills count too.

~~~
pfdietz
Releasing plastics into the larger environment, especially microplastics, and
confining them to landfills, are most definitely not the same thing.

~~~
Qwertious
Stuff often leaks out of landfills and into the environment.

As an above comment said, landfills _can_ be done correctly so this doesn't
happen, but often aren't.

~~~
pfdietz
And the vast majority of the stuff does not leak out.

You're making an Argument from Homeopathy here.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
> And there are more documents, echoing decades of this knowledge, including
> one analysis from a top official at the industry's most powerful trade
> group. "The costs of separating plastics ... are high," he tells colleagues,
> before noting that the cost of using oil to make plastic is so low that
> recycling plastic waste "can't yet be justified economically."

I bet if you went back 40 years, there are all sorts of negative documents you
can find about all sorts of tech. Think about solar. I bet if we went back, we
could find experts talking about how it is is infeasible due to being too
expensive or that rare earth minerals to too environmentally damaging to mine,
or that it fluctuates too much.

Not saying what Big Plastic did was good, but using archives to find
dissenting opinions about feasibility seems more like a gotcha fishing
expedition.

------
andrewjl
Wait until plastic becomes the sole source of petrochemical demand. Big Oil is
getting ready. [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/30/climate/oil-kenya-
africa-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/30/climate/oil-kenya-africa-
plastics-trade.html)

~~~
neolefty
Honestly I look forward to that. It's a big improvement over using fossil
fuels for energy — combine it with landfilling, and you're just re-burying oil
after some transportation and manufacturing. And it gives a softer landing to
the petroleum industry.

Over time we can replace petro-plastics with more sustainable materials.
Bioplastics? Incineration-recycling, where you capture the CO2 and turn it
back into plastic feedstock?

Edit: Also I think composting cardboard and paper would be great.

~~~
andrewjl
The problem in this specific case isn't necessarily just in the net benefits
of fossil fuels but instead in how the benefits and their associated costs are
distributed.

I'm certain that the profits of the MNCs pushing this will not remain in
Kenya. Yet the pollution and its consequent financial/non-financial costs most
certainly will.

------
octoberfranklin
> oil and plastics executives began a quiet campaign to lobby almost 40 states
> to mandate that the symbol appear on all plastic

Yeah, but this was a really good thing (probably the only good thing the
oil+plastic lobby has ever done).

Those symbols are a godsend for DIYers; before we had them you could never
know if a piece of plastic could be glued to (and if so, with what glue) or
what kind of chemicals it could safely hold (as demonstrated in _Breaking
Bad_!)

Everything else they did was evil. But not this.

~~~
BlueTemplar
Aren't they talking about a different symbol?

------
daxfohl
Though I'm curious if the "reusable" trend is more of the same. Are single-use
bags and straws really that bad for the environment, and do reusables get
reused enough times to make a difference, or is a reusable straw just another
thing to make money on? (Not that I imagine reusable straws is a lucrative
enough industry to be worthy of dedicated political lobbying teams, but who
knows).

~~~
yourapostasy
It depends upon the Cradle to Cradle context of how the reusable term is used.

A 316 grade stainless steel or aluminum straw that is appropriately marked for
automated material identification (a very big gap in our current industrial
culture) is easy to send back through a foundry to re-melt and reuse when
broken beyond repair (likely by accident, as such a straw could conceivably
last centuries when well taken care of).

Same straw except made out of silicone, and unmarked, will still slowly
(slower than say PET, but still minutely) leach polymers as microplastics into
the environment. Better than a single-use straw, but we can choose better.

I'm very partial to materials that can be fed as the sole feedstock into
industrial processes without adding virgin feedstock. It is amazingly
difficult as a consumer to find out these materials in the end products. Right
To Repair is a part of this picture as well: you want to be able to repair the
smallest piece possible to keep the overall artifact in use for as long as
possible, and send back the smallest possible piece into the feedstock stream.

There could be a Second Industrial Revolution built around standing up an
infrastructure that emphasizes the agile manufacturing of reusable, cradle-to-
cradle-recyclable, repairable artifacts, deliberately serving an S-curve sales
chart because the artifacts last so long, and rapidly switching the majority
of the manufacturing line into different, adjacent artifacts, and leaving
behind only a smaller line that addresses marginal demand from population
growth and parts supply. It could be the first step towards a proto-post-
scarcity infrastructure.

~~~
jimmySixDOF
+1 to that 100%

We are right now in the process of borrowing money from future generations and
so reinvesting it (for them) into building a connection between the
production/sales and recovery/reuse cycles so we have a single business value
chain is a much better long-term strategic return for everyone than whatever
empty calorie derivative product wall st bets it all on these days at the
moment. It ought to be illegal to sell me any product that you are not also
required to take back when it's finished. Unilever & Walmart Et al. should own
the garbage trucks, the landfills, and the responsibility to dispose of
anything they sell me - and I bet they suddenly find creative ways to reduce,
reuse, and recycle things we never thought to be possible.

------
nedt
The takeaway of the article shouldn’t be that no plastic can be recycled. PET
does get recycled into new bottles, bags etc. And it’s fully correct, that new
plastic is cheaper. Only if trashing old plastic is cheap, which it isn’t,
because it stays with us a long time. And a state should put a tax on plastic
to make companies feel the difference in cost and either avoid or recycle
plastic.

------
pedalpete
I feel like this is scapegoating "Big Oil" a bit. They made a product, we know
it's bad for the environment, as a consumer it is up to you to make the choice
not to buy/use it, or limit your use. We've known that recycling was a
bad/underutilized solution for a lone time.

When I'm buying most products, I'll look for (and often pay a dollar or so
more) for glass with metal lid. Unfortunately there are SO many products that
you can't get without plastic. It is everywhere.

But we need to get the message out that step 1 is to not use plastic, which I
think was missed in most education. Also note, I believe most of the education
came from governments trying to reduce landfill, not from "Big Oil"
themselves.

~~~
sumedh
> as a consumer it is up to you to make the choice not to buy

> Unfortunately there are SO many products that you can't get without plastic.

Which is precisely why you cannot say consumers have a choice not to buy.

------
bagacrap
Highly recommend Netflix's Broken episode on this topic ("Recycling Sham").

~~~
yyyuutt
[https://www.netflix.com/title/81002391](https://www.netflix.com/title/81002391)

------
peter303
Its a similar situation with clothing and furniture donation. 90%+ goes to the
dump or international rag merchants. If it doesnt appear to have immediate
resale value- easy to unpack, in style, gently used, clean- they dont want it.
I watched the back lot of a national donation chain beginning with the letter
G. Most of donations are immediately chucked into a number of trash bins. At
least it makes me feel less guilty in trying to recycle stuff.

------
trickstra
They are doing the same about hydrogen right now. Notice that hydrogen is
promoted as green fuel by oil companies. Why? Because 95% of our hydrogen is
produced from natural gas. But they always talk about electrolysis, just like
they used to talk about recyclability. Producing all the hydrogen we need by
electrolysis would be way too inefficient, there are too many losses and we
would be much better off if we just stored all the required electricity in
batteries. Oil companies are promoting hydrogen because they know it will
allow them to keep drilling oil and gas. It's like "Thank you for smoking" all
over again.

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ninkendo
I’ve read about the infeasibility of plastic recycling for years now, and I’m
wondering what others are doing at this point.

Should I even bother putting plastic in the blue bin any more? Or should I
just toss it? What are the folks reading this doing?

~~~
SV_BubbleTime
#1 and #2, blue bin. Everything else, basically trash can. PETE and HDPE do
recycle well, wether yours will be recycled or not even if you bin it is an
unknown.

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SoylentOrange
Question: I’ve previously read that recycling is economically viable in some
EU countries (Germany, Austria, Netherlands). Some countries like Finland have
figured out ways to recycle components that go into landfills in the US. How
did they manage to do this?

Was it through regulation on the type of plastics that are sold to consumers?
Was it through government subsidies? Through a better sorting process?
Something else?

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randcraw
It seems like we need to reimagine how we repurpose old plastics rather than
recycling them. Conversion into park benches and decking won't consume enough
material, but maybe building houses from old plastics will?

[https://www.curbed.com/2019/7/10/20688718/modern-house-
hurri...](https://www.curbed.com/2019/7/10/20688718/modern-house-hurricane-
resistant-plastic-bottles-jd-composites)

------
worker767424
I'm sympathetic to litter concern, especially in the ocean, and some of the
chemicals involved like BPA are a little worrying, but overall, the emissions
involved just aren't that significant compared to other parts of modern life,
and disposal is mostly a political problem. Developed countries that aren't
Sweden aren't excited about burning trash, and countries like the US with tons
of land somehow aren't that interested in burying trash.

~~~
samatman
Germany is seriously gung-ho about trash incineration, to the point where they
import trash from neighboring countries to keep the generators on.

------
atarian
There is a grassroots effort to recycle plastic into new things. The plans for
creating the machinery are all open-source:
[https://preciousplastic.com/solutions/machines/overview.html](https://preciousplastic.com/solutions/machines/overview.html)

------
mohankumar246
2050 headline: How Social Media companies Misled the Public into Believing
They were only connecting the society

------
heratyian
We're doing some market research on plastic bags. Please take this short
survey. Only takes a minute. Thank you!
[https://forms.gle/JZhuFN1CvTsJ2TCS9](https://forms.gle/JZhuFN1CvTsJ2TCS9)

------
mark-r
The ironic part is that recycling bins are almost always made of plastic.

~~~
coronadisaster
but my last bins lasted more then 10 years and got re-used weekly

------
cribbles
This article makes it sound like the main bottleneck in the first-run
recycling process is sorting.

Could anyone with knowledge around ML, robotics and the like chime in on
napkin math around novel labor-reducing approaches to improving the operating
economics here? From the sound of it, this is not really a solvable problem
short of some leapfrog technological advance.

Even then, you don’t want to spend more energy on sorting automation than you
get back from the recycling. And this would only make sense if the diminishing
returns after the first or second recycle made it reasonable to be issuing so
many consumer plastics in the first place.

~~~
David
A friend and former boss of mine founded CleanRobotics which makes the
TrashBot, a trash can that sorts trash from recyclables:
[https://cleanrobotics.com/trashbot/](https://cleanrobotics.com/trashbot/)

I haven't seen the output so I can't comment on how well they work firsthand,
but the idea is pretty cool. As far as I know (which is not far) they don't
attempt to sort recyclables by material, unfortunately.

~~~
mulmen
If this is possible why not just have a "plastic" bin and then transport
everything mixed and sort at the recycling facility? What's the benefit to
deploying all these sorting machines everywhere? Do they go to different
locations?

------
chmod600
Is there some value to sorting even if it doesn't get recycled?

Like, if we're going to bury it all, maybe it's better sorted than all mixed
together?

------
bladewolf47
Reduce and reuse were always supposed to be precursors to recycle, all this
excess was eventually going to end this way

------
fredgrott
Look at any McDoandls place, no recycling of any of their plastic despite a
message on every container to do so

------
lorenzorhoades
Controversial uninformed opinion:

Recycling is a major cause to the Homeless epidemic. Roads, brakes, weight are
major causes to pollution. Heavy cars (IE. Super dense lithium, nickel,
cobalt) will cause more pollution.

~~~
peterlk
Was this comment generated with GPT-3?

~~~
lorenzorhoades
No, but I kinda understand why I was downvoted.

------
tim333
They get sort of recycled - the hydrocarbons start in the ground, are brought
up used and bit and then stuck back in a hole in the ground.

------
Tiktaalik
Don't believe anything giant corporations say. They don't care.

------
momokoko
Any thoughts about adding an automated flag for articles with a title that
includes “Big Something”?

Generally the discussions are fairly low quality.

------
mensetmanusman
Did ‘Big Oil’ mislead, or is our media incompetent? None of this information
was hidden.

It reminds me of how CNN is blaming a ‘gender reveal’ party for the CA fires
instead of talking about forest management challenges issues over the last
decades. It seems like our media is actively out to disinform people.

------
gwbrooks
We're supposed to be upset because an economically-interested party talked
only about features and benefits that helped move its product?

It's _almost_ like NPR constantly promoting the value of the news and not
bringing up that only one story in a dozen (if that) relies on multiple
sources with different viewpoints.

