
Trash piles up in US as China closes door to recycling - kushti
https://phys.org/news/2018-07-trash-piles-china-door-recycling.html
======
jobu
Years ago there was a "Penn & Teller: Bullshit!" episode on recycling that did
a decent job of looking into the psychology and economics of recycling.

What I remember is that most people feel bad about throwing stuff away, so a
big part of the recycling movement is based around guilt rather than facts.
The slogan "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" is in that order for a reason. Reducing
the amount of what you use and reusing what you have is much more important
and effective in helping the environment than recycling. Also putting things
in a landfill really isn't really a problem. Landfills don't take up a
significant amount of space, and when regulated and managed properly they
aren't bad for the environment.

As for the economics of recycling:

* Recycling paper is a terrible idea. It takes a lot more chemicals, fuel and labor to recycle paper than produce new paper from trees (and it's a much lower quality product). Also, landfills are able to capture and sell the methane produced from paper as it decomposes, so it makes a lot more economical and environmental sense to just throw it away.

* Recycling glass can be economical depending on the cost of natural gas because the melting point of glass is slightly lower than raw silica. Unfortunately recycling adds cost because of the sorting and cleaning.

* Some plastics can't be made from recycled materials, and even when they can be, the economics of it depends on the cost of crude oil and natural gas. Prices for gas and oil fluctuate a lot, so it's risky for companies to be in the business of processing plastic back into feedstock because they don't know whether they will be able to sell it at or above cost at the time they're buying materials.

* Aluminum is really the only commonly recycled material that makes 100% economic sense. It's really expensive to produce from ore, and cheap produce from recycled materials.

EDIT: Found the episode here -
[https://www.bitchute.com/video/j0Hd6UfA4MKo/](https://www.bitchute.com/video/j0Hd6UfA4MKo/)

~~~
dv_dt
Some of these claims seem extraordinary, e.g. some casual googling seems to
indicate that recycling paper is less chemical and energy intensive than new
pulp... so do you have some specific research that supports these ideas, or
does it all come from the P&T episode?

~~~
sandworm101
Ya, there are too many factors. Turning a pile of very ink-heavy newspapers
into crisp white photocopier paper takes lots of chemicals. Turning it back
into a 50% content for more newsprint isn't as much of a problem.

~~~
werdnapk
Don't you think it takes a lot of chemicals to turn a piece of wood into crisp
white paper? Hint: It does.

~~~
SamReidHughes
Then don't subsidize recycling and let the market sort out which is cheaper.

~~~
londons_explore
Some costs of making new stuff aren't reflected in the market price. For
example the CO2 cost of refining, or the pollution cost of the factory that
makes it.

Rather than tax CO2 or pollution, we instead prefer to subsidize recycling.

Why? Dunno.

~~~
SamReidHughes
Recycling has the same sort of costs. In the past year, I've been harmed more
by the noise of the recycling truck than the total harm of pollution of
manufacturing new materials I could have recycled.

------
ggm
John McCarthy wrote about how future generations would welcome us storing
immensely valuable VOCs and complex chemicals and metals underground for them.
In all seriousness, waste stream management is like education or healthcare:
it's only a net cost if you believe the externalities aren't part of your
economic model. If you go full lifecycle, it's jobs, and revenue, and adds to
the economy in lots of useful ways.

Turning down radiation storage is like saying no to free money. We should all
welcome better long-term storage and compete to host it.

~~~
AtlasBarfed
Externalities involve regulation, and that means it isn't real economics to
the laissez faire believers of the magic self-correcting free market. I'd like
to say they are a fringe, but the think tanks and endowed chairs have made
them the dominant thinking in popular culture and, sadly, American politics.

Radioation storage is a product of obsolete solid rod reactors. LFTRs and
other reactors can use them for fuel.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Externalities involve regulation

Regulation is one possible response to externalities, but externalities don't
fundamentally involve radiation.

> and that means it isn't real economics to the laissez faire believers of the
> magic self-correcting free market.

To be fair, there are more pragmatic laissez-faire types that acknowledge the
existence of externalities but merely deny that regulation mitigates them in
practice, suggesting instead that if you respond to an extension with
regulation you've now got two problems.

And even most people who aren't hardcore laissez-faire types acknowledge that
regulatory capture is a real thing.

~~~
Analemma_
> Regulation is one possible response to externalities, but externalities
> don't fundamentally involve radiation.

The only realistic ways to handle externalities are regulations, class-action
lawsuits, and (Pigouvian) taxes. Laissez-faire market types typically oppose
all three.

~~~
dllthomas
For a sufficiently small externality, "ignore it" is a perfectly valid option.
I think that's uncontroversial, although there would be substantial
disagreement on the actual threshold.

~~~
ggm
Would you call the worldwide systemic crisis in waste stream management
precipitated by China tightening regulation as an instance of _For a
sufficiently small externality, "ignore it" is a perfectly valid option_
because personally I wouldn't.

~~~
dllthomas
Would you call it a fundamental feature of an externality?

------
pagnol
If you live in the Berlin area like me and are looking for ways to produce
less waste, then check out this store called Unverpackt: [https://original-
unverpackt.de/](https://original-unverpackt.de/)

It's a physical store which sells most everything a normal supermarket does
but without the disposable packaging.

~~~
GuB-42
How much does it cost?

Food without packaging is becoming popular in France too. However, it is
usually organic food and it is typically much more expensive than regular,
packaged food. I don't want organic. I just want to avoid packaging, and favor
local food.

Unfortunately, all these "green" initiatives seem to be based on market
segmentation than on real environmental concerns. There is a class of people
who prefer organic, dislike packaging and have money. It is good for business
and shops make money off it. Is it a good thing. However, I think it would be
even better if we could stress the point that green can be cheap.

~~~
schiffern
>However, it is usually organic food and it is typically much more expensive
than regular, packaged food. I don't want organic. I just want to avoid
packaging

Just avoiding packaging is more expensive, because as this excellent article
points out[1], _packaging represents the automation of the distribution
chain_.

> Some of the first packaging arose in the late 19th century. Some of the
> earliest packaging was for Uneeda Biscuits. They were packaged in a box with
> wax paper that sealed in the biscuits so they wouldn't go stale. Packaging
> was all about easing distribution for producers, because before that,
> everything was sold in bulk containers. The transformation of production and
> distribution as well as retail sales—going from mom and pop stores to the
> chain supermarkets we have today—means that packaging represents the
> automation of the distribution system. I think producers are very conscious
> of how helpful packaging is in helping them centralize their businesses. In
> doing that, they get to downsize and streamline and create economies of
> scale that they couldn't create if they didn't get to consolidate—which is
> what a lot of the drive behind switching from the refillable to the
> disposable bottle and can was about. The beer and soda industries
> consolidated massively in the post-war period, and the number of producers
> shrank dramatically. And this massive consolidation in both of those
> industries was facilitated by the switch to disposable containers. The
> industry no longer has the necessity for regional bottling plants where
> trucks can only go so far to deliver the products because then they have to
> go retrieve the empties. Now they can just drive straight through, one way,
> and they don't have to take anything back. They can go to the next central
> hub, pick up more stuff, keep driving and drop it off.

In the same way that containerization resulted in massive automation of ports
and shipping (thousands of dock-workers vs. a few crane/truck operators),
disposable packaging has automated terrestrial distribution channels. This has
resulted in massive cost reductions, leading to large scale and consolidation
("let's ship from a single factory to the whole world" vs. "let's ship from a
thousand local producers located within 100 miles of the end-consumer").

Packaging is really about automation, which is really about supply-chain
lengthening, which is _really_ about maximally concentrating profit.

>green can be cheap

Couldn't agree more. Low-tech is best tech. The permaculture folks realized
this years ago.

The shortest/greenest supply chain is having your "grocery aisle" growing in
the front yard (designed for zero-inputs[2] and near-zero-labor). Perhaps the
ultimate solution isn't "Super Recycling" ie automated plastic sorting (still
needed for other plastics btw) but "Super Reducing" \-- an inexpensive easy-
to-setup food garden that makes the entire supply chain (or most of it)
obsolute. It needs to be something that people in suburbs can A) actually use
and B) get past their HOA/neighborhood association.

The idiot-proof recycling bin is great, but we also need the idiot-proof
organic garden.

[1]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20050401192355/http://www.altern...](https://web.archive.org/web/20050401192355/http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/21651/)
(I know I keep hammering this article, but the author nailed all these issues
way back in 2005)

[2] Yes, zero-input gardening is possible even though you're removing
material. Soil organisms continuously break down rock for minerals, and plants
fix nitrogen and carbon from the atmosphere. See
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2H60ritjag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2H60ritjag)

------
NeedMoreTea
I'd like to remind the US of the creation of Keep America Beautiful. I was
surprised to discover this was an early piece of corporate greenwashing in the
1950s[0]. Funded by Budweiser, Philip Morris, Coke and others to prevent
Vermont bringing a mandatory deposit scheme in for single use packaging. How
topical!

Now companies can pollute to their heart's content and make it _our_ failure
and their externality. Just by advertising at us to recycle and dispose of our
(not that we created or requested it) rubbish carefully.

[0] [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/more-
recyc...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/more-recycling-
wont-solve-plastic-pollution/)

~~~
RobertRoberts
>*"Now companies can pollute to their heart's content and make it our failure
and their externality."

Not that I disagree with your overall sentiment, but are you suggesting that
it's not my responsibility to throw garbage into a trash can?

~~~
delecti
Consumers have less power to reduce resource usage than companies. When
companies put the burden on consumers it's a bit of a farce. There's only so
much power the average consumer has to choose brands that are more
ecologically friendly.

~~~
schiffern
As long as we self-identify as "consumers," and believe our only lever for
change is to "choose brands," we will have no power whatsoever.

------
makecheck
When I was a kid, the “bottle depot” was a very motivating way to go out of
one’s way to collect stray bottles.

Deposits at time of purchase have proven effective. Put a deposit on every
product with recyclable material using some generic measurement (like “weight
of packaging”), such that when you return it you receive a quick and
approximate return (in this example, by weighing _everything_ you recycled and
just not caring too much what the breakdown was).

~~~
nojvek
This * 1000. The way things work nowadays is the supermarket chain doesn’t pay
the cost of polluting the planet.

Every goddamn product is planed obsoletion so it can be cheap with a fat price
margin and the customer has to keep on buying every couple of years.

Charge supermarkets for plastics and pay customers to return recyclable things
and that’s a huge motivator to reduce landfill garbage in half.

I’m also a big believer that we need better robotics. When I saw Wall-E I just
got super excited by seeing trash recycling robots.

Robots should be doing stuff humans don’t do, not replacing them. It shouldn’t
be a zero sum game.

~~~
JimboOmega
There are already some pretty impressive recycling robots, especially in the
field of sorting out mixed recyclables (scanning the incoming stream and
shooting stuff that matches certain parameters into a separate area). It's
pretty cool, you should check it out. I don't know how economical they are but
they still require human backup because of the sheer variety of (incorrect)
crap put in recycling bins.

You need to be careful putting taxes on these things because of their
regressive nature. Who winds up feeling the pinch when you add a $.05/can tax
on soda cans? Does that person really have time to make extra trips to the
supermarket to redeem a few dollars worth of cans?

Also while landfills are among the ultimate NIMBY things, we're not running
out of space on this earth in any real sense.

Some things are just not worth doing economically. Maybe we should go back to
the old ways and have consumers sort into only a few categories that are
easier to manage - e.g. "paper" and "bottles and cans", and not bother with
the rest.

~~~
kungtotte
Have you been to a landfill? We shouldn't be doing that to our planet even if
it was twice the size.

The amount of _garbage_ piling up on this rock is mind-blowing, and there's
literally nothing we are doing about it once it's in the ground. It just stays
there seeping out heinous juices into the surrounding area.

People are worried about tens of tons of radioactive waste material that we're
sealing inside special containers and putting in specially designed vaults
when hundreds of tons of trash are being dumped per day _per landfill_. I'm
not worried about people getting cancer from radioactive waste 10000 years
from now, I'm worried about people catching the plague from all the footlong
rats crawling over their local landfill.

~~~
mschuster91
> It just stays there seeping out heinous juices into the surrounding area.

A proper landfill has multiple layers of protection to the ground below it and
a web of drain pipes to ensure that the fluids don't collect up or, worse,
leak out into the ground.

~~~
TeMPOraL
How many landfills are proper landfills, and not half-assed landfills, or just
holes in the ground? Out of all those proper landfills, how many are properly
maintained? Like everything, protection and drainage degrades with time.

~~~
bluGill
Are you asking about any first world country, or about random third world
countries?

In rich countries the norm is all active landfills are properly maintained.
There are a few bad apples that are caught once in a while, and a number of
long abandoned landfills that cause problems, but for the most part a landfill
in any first world country is not an environmental disaster.

In poor countries people just toss things wherever with no concern.

------
Leary
Rumor has it China stop importing plastic after this documentary came out:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooRVhRt1p54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooRVhRt1p54)

~~~
sundvor
I found that _really_ hard to watch, especially the children stepping on deity
knows what part.

Even then I wish everyone would see it.

Humanity sucks sometimes ... if not most of the time.

~~~
RobertRoberts
A friend of mine has a chronically homeless brother that still does day jobs
(doesn't do drugs so is consistently hired) and he said he was working
cleaning out the toxic ashes from trash burning center and was treated badly.

"..they made him wear a radioactive exposure badge and fired him when the
badge tipped over the safe range."

The union bosses wouldn't even go down there and called orders from
megaphones.

There are videos/photos of many other countries that look much worse than
this, think India, even Mexico.

Edit: The homeless man I mentioned lives in a major city in the US, not a
third world country.

~~~
retzkek
> "..they made him wear a radioactive exposure badge and fired him when the
> badge tipped over the safe range."

Not to defend the company in this case, but I suspect he reached the annual
occupational dose limit [1], so unless they had office work for him there
probably wasn't anything else to do. This is something migrant radiation
workers [2] need to be vigilant about, to make sure they aren't out of work
for a year after one job, or at least make sure that job pays them
appropriately.

[1] [https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-
collections/cfr/part020/p...](https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-
collections/cfr/part020/part020-1201.html)

[2] Commercial nuclear power plants generally shut down once every 1-2 years
for a several-week maintenance and refueling outage, during which time the
plant will bring in several hundred extra workers, often contractors, to help.
This has created a community of highly-skilled rad workers who travel around
the country.

~~~
RobertRoberts
Sure, this seems reasonable. But this wasn't around radioactive material, it
was just trash burners to make electricity. Consider the ramifications of what
that means.

Also, they weren't given any protective gear, so what use is a badge saying
you've been over exposed if it's guaranteed everyone will eventually hit the
limit?

~~~
lacker
_They weren 't given any protective gear, so what use is a badge saying you've
been over exposed if it's guaranteed everyone will eventually hit the limit?_

The point of the badge is to make sure that people don't get more than the
limit of exposure, to keep the workers safe. I know tour guides in Mammoth
Caves in Kentucky work this way - the caves are generally safe, but if you
spend many many hours in them you will get more than the radiation limit. It
just isn't a job you can work for 40 hours a week your whole life.

They also don't wear protective gear. There isn't really effective protective
gear that you can wear to protect against a constant low level of background
radiation. They make lead aprons for x-ray workers but those are impractical
for constant wear and don't protect from every direction anyway.

~~~
RobertRoberts
That seems reasonable. I guess the story about my friend's homeless brother's
situation is just one of many where he's been taken advantage of. (ie, not
given water on the job, improper tools provided, pay not be given out, etc...)
So I assumed this was just another issue on top of all the others.

You have to wonder though, if a cleaning job is only suitable for temps
(mostly homeless people) that get persistent radiation exposure, it seems that
corners are being cut. Unlike a cave, where there's nothing to be done other
than stay out of it...

------
Atreus
This shows an externality - that "Recycling" was really just a sham. Actual
recycling has a cost overhead.

I think this is a good thing. I think it will drive to actual recycling that
does actual good, instead of, as China realistically called it "moving trash".

~~~
craftyguy
> I think it will drive to actual recycling that does actual good

I'm not so sure, at least in the US. Politicians almost always follow the path
of least resistance when dealing with problems (our current system encourages
it), and the shortest, least resistant path to making this problem disappear
is to pay some other country to take it and do what they want with it (burn
it, bury it, etc).

~~~
delecti
> is to pay some other country to take it

They tried that though. There's currently no "other country" willing to take
it. That was Plan A, and it failed, it seems that Plan B is to just let it
build up, but that won't last forever either.

~~~
craftyguy
> There's currently no "other country" willing to take it.

They just aren't offering them enough money.

~~~
drb91
Why not just use that same money to invest in proper disposal techniques?

~~~
craftyguy
Because it's likely cheaper, faster, and easier than investing in proper
disposal techniques.

~~~
drb91
Right—why would you prioritize short term returns over self sufficiency? Seems
like you’re just fucking your kids over.

~~~
craftyguy
Because there's absolutely no accountability for politicians that make
terrible long-term decisions when in office. It's all about the short term
gains for re-election.

------
mirimir
This is just so bloody predictable. Recycling isn't a new thing. It's been
common "forever" to recycle paper and metals. But you had to keep stuff
separate: steel, copper, brass, newspaper, bond paper, etc.

But to increase participation in modern consumer society, commingled
"recycling" became the norm. And it just doesn't work. Broken glass makes
paper useless, because it damages machines. And once commingled recyclables go
through the collection process, with crushing and shearing, separation becomes
virtually impossible.

Anyway, the only hope is source separation. And that's problematic. Because
most people don't want to bother. And because there are just too many
categories. Too many kinds of plastics. Packaging with multiple layers,
including paper, metal and plastic.

~~~
samstave
The real point I always see when looking at the problem is Packaging.

Packaging should be required to be as literally minimal as actually possible,
consuming the least amount of resources in every phase of the lifecycle as
possible.

Excessive packaging should be as illegal as it is immoral and anti-
environmental.

Inks, Paper, Plastic, Wraps, Ties, ALL of it should be as eliminated as
possible.

Think of the time, energy, resources (power, fuel, transport, machinery,
engineering etc) all that has been put into the creation of waste.

~~~
mirimir
I agree. Also, options for material usage ought to be limited. And one could
require that every manufacturer accept return of all packaging. I'm old enough
to remember when milk, beer and soda bottles were typically returned, washed
and reused. The last time I lived in Mexico, that was still common, at least
in some markets.

But the other side of it is that modern packaging arguably reduces waste. Or
at least, I've read that. Maybe it's BS.

~~~
samstave
> __ _But the other side of it is that modern packaging arguably reduces
> waste. Or at least, I 've read that. Maybe it's BS._ __

I find a good illustration on how this is not true is Christmas.

Look at how much packaging waste is left over in your house alone from
christmas. Now, thats consolidated to one day/event, but spread that out
across billions of purchases and you can see that waste in packaging is still
monumentally huge.

On a % of waste for a widget, as compared to, perhaps the way packaging was
previously made for a widget 20 years ago - perhaps its easy to make that
argument that its less waste - but I doubt that as;

The widgets today didnt exist then

Everyone is trying to sell more and more widgets

the widgets are made of more exotic and complex and numerous components

etc..

~~~
mirimir
True. I was thinking about food products.

I've read that a major aspect of product packaging is to make shoplifting
harder ;)

------
forkLding
Better start educating people about cleaning out their plastic containers
before recycling, even a bit of yogurt left at the bottom of a yogurt
container can contaminate and can be possibly thrown out as garbage. Heads up
to those who didn't know like me.

[https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4606893](https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4606893)

~~~
polskibus
That requires wasting water though. Maybe the container for yoghurt should be
changed to be reusable after washing or recyclable without wasting resources
on cleaning?

~~~
danans
The amount of additional water needed to wash the yogurt container, compared
to the massive amount of water mismanagement in agriculture and industry, is
minimal. We learned this during the recent California drought.

The real reason that people (myself included) don't always wash plastic
containers out: it's a hassle.

There are several ways we can try to solve this:

\- Separating recycling materials at the curb, so the yogurt container never
meets the clean paper (although I thought Canada already does this).

\- Biodegradable plant-based plastics suitable for food packaging purposes

\- Better automated sorting technology at the recycling center.

~~~
polskibus
The point is to change processes and habits so the entire sum of resources
used and pollution produced is minimal.

Reuse is almost always better, so maybe yoghurts can come in glass jars
instead of tiny, hard to wash plastic cups? Maybe smallest containers, that
discourage reuse should be taxed extra? Much easier to wash 1l yoghurt cup
than 4 x 250ml.

Biodegradable - that's cool, but sometimes they can be toxic, not really
biodegradable or require a lot of resources to produce, and a lot of waste is
produced as by product.

Sorting is great, but only recycling, which requires cleaning - which is
attacking the problem from the wrong end.

------
Kluny
I'm going to be pursuing a degree in Environmental Management with a specialty
in Waste Management in Denmark next year. Really excited to be stepping away
from software development and into this exciting and growing field :D

------
raverbashing
This really seems like a problem that could be helped by smarter automation
(and a lot of "thinking outside the box")

If plastic bags get stuck to the machines, then maybe the way to getting rid
of them is looking at what happens with them as opposed to other materials.

Also automated identification of materials (by optical inspection or dedicated
sensors) looks like it could help.

~~~
mihaifm
I don't understand why it's so hard to build a machine that separates plastic
from other materials. I mean in agriculture we have machines that separate
tiny seeds from anything else, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to have
a plastic sorting machine.

~~~
lbriner
Because of the massive variation in shapes and sizes, the fact that some
plastics might have other trash inside them and that plastic drinks bottles
are usually more than one type of plastic. There are machines but they can
only perform basic sorting so you still need people to do the "intelligent"
part.

------
dang
Related from a month ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17368168](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17368168).

------
beerlord
India has banned single-use plastics (starting 2022).

[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/single-use-plastic-
ban-...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/single-use-plastic-ban-
india_us_5b3a09b6e4b0f3c221a28a07)

Other countries simply need to do the same. France has banned certain single-
use plastic items starting in 2020.

If a side-effect is less processed food and fast-food being consumed, then
great.

~~~
jakobegger
This is the only real solution. Everything else is pointless.

As long as we keep producing plastics, they will end up in the environment,
and whatever doesn't will be a pain to recycle.

We already have alternatives for almost everything. We have single use plates
and cutlery made from cardboard or wood, we have compostable packaging foil
for vegetables and compostable trash can liners. The only problem is adoption
-- as long as plastic is slightly cheaper, no one will use it.

I really hope the EU comes down hard on plastic packaging -- imagine if all
packaging was compostable, you could just throw it on a pile in your back yard
and it would turn into fertile soil within a couple of months!

~~~
nakkijono
Burning the plastic in dedicated facilities is the only good solution. Use it
for energy, and burn less gas & oil as a result. Everything else tends to have
a bigger carbon footprint.

Burning the stuff is profitable even today.

Compostable will produce methane etc., especially in your back yard.

~~~
viraptor
> Compostable will produce methane etc., especially in your back yard.

Is that a bad thing for a small garden compost pile? I understand it's
dangerous on a large industrial scale.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Methane is around 100X worse as a greenhouse gas than CO2. So even a little,
is a lot.

------
rapnie
Hopeful news is that some really efficient recycling technologies for mixed
plastics are under development, like Magnetic Density Separation (MDS)

[https://www.tudelft.nl/en/ceg/research/stories-of-
science/re...](https://www.tudelft.nl/en/ceg/research/stories-of-
science/recycling-refined/)

------
satokema
For an entertaining introduction (and some perspective) on the whole process
of trash collection and recycling, I recommend _Trashed_ by Backderf. It's an
eye-opener.

Possibly a little exaggerated in parts, but just the basic farts are insane:
all that stands between the gunk in the landfill and the soil system is a thin
layer of plastic, usually.

------
agumonkey
Few years ago Bea Johnson, a French born US citizen, was all in the news on
how she's near zero waste

[https://frenchly.us/bea-johnson-a-french-woman-on-a-zero-
was...](https://frenchly.us/bea-johnson-a-french-woman-on-a-zero-waste-
mission-in-the-us/)

I guess she should get on television asap

~~~
mattkrause
Reusable tampons and condoms (from the article) might be a bridge too far for
many people.

~~~
agumonkey
Ok, the docu I saw about her was mostly about kitchen habits: glass jars, a
few tote bags and compost. I'm not pro-reusable condoms either.

------
al_ramich
not something I had much background on but did a little reading and the
numbers prior to the ban are pretty incredible. Interesting to see the shift
in projected import/exports of plastics to 2030. A big shift in China policy.

[http://geographical.co.uk/people/development/item/2811-china...](http://geographical.co.uk/people/development/item/2811-china-
s-plastic-import-ban-in-numbers)

------
rusk
This can only be a good thing in the long run. Exporting recyclable waste is
like exporting bales of dollar bills, and paying for it.

~~~
lbriner
Lots of materials cost more to recycle than to make from virgin materials,
even glass which is relatively easy to clean and process.

Recycling creates jobs, which might be considered a benefit but from purely
financial means, the cheapest method is to burn stuff and generate electricity
sadly.

~~~
mrpopo
This comes up a lot when talking about recycling, but really the issue here is
that the environment is never counted as a financial asset. Carbon/pollution
taxes cannot come soon enough.

------
Endama
Isn't there an argument here to build more incinerator-style power plants to
manage the garbage buildup (esp. in urban centers?) To my knowledge, lots of
European/Asian developed nations are already doing this with acceptable (i.e.
low) environmental impact.

Can someone more knowledgable comment on this?

------
IshKebab
> the city wants to "better educate our residents about what should and should
> not be recycled"

In the UK they don't make any effort to do this and it really annoys me. There
are so many things that aren't just aluminium cans or glass bottles. Can I
recycle them? No way of knowing.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
In the US even when they do try, they fail. "Toxic waste day" at the dump, I
brought a pickup load of old chemical bottles from the shed, old fluorescent
tubes, alkaline batteries. And took it all home again - they didn't know what
to do with any of it. One guy just suggested dumping it out on my driveway to
'dry up' in the sun.

~~~
danans
As a contrast, the folks at my local hazardous waste disposal facility
(Alameda County, CA), were very knowledgeable and have taken all the items you
listed as having been rejected at yours. So there is hope with better
facilities and education.

------
grizzles
It would be hard to find a better fit for a problem needing a ml / robotics
solution.

------
bitL
Facebook internally uses compostable plates and cutlery in their cafeterias; I
am wondering if creating those doesn't pollute environment even more than
plastics.

~~~
Theodores
In the canteen I use they wash plates and crockery. Imagine if that practice
came to America.

~~~
rhapsodic
_> In the canteen I use they wash plates and crockery. Imagine if that
practice came to America_

American here. What is this "washing of plates and crockery" of which you
speak?

~~~
Theodores
They also wash the cutlery!

Condiments are also available in recyclable glass containers, including 'HP
Sauce'. None of these single portion sachets.

As of yet nobody has died of foot and mouth disease, AIDS, rabies, leprosy or
any other ailment known to be communicable via forks that have been previously
used.

They could do better though, in post mad cow disease Britain you can't feed
the food slops to pigs.

~~~
rhapsodic
_> They also wash the cutlery!_

From what strange and wondrous land do you come?

------
vondur
Can we not burn our trash like some of the Nordic countries currently do? Or
would the EPA frown on something like that?

~~~
ryanmercer
Even if we could, you're talking about a few hundred million tons of trash
each year.

------
carapace
I've been steadily working towards trash collecting robots for several years
now, ever since hearing about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. After the
initial shock wore off I thought to myself, "hey, free resources."

The initial challenge was finding a secure OS to run on the robots so they
wouldn't be suborned into a (physical) botnet. That proved challenging, as the
only way you can trust your system is to prove it correct from the metal up.
In order to be able to trust the proof you have to be able to understand
symbolic logic. It turns out there's a simple notation that makes this easy[1]
and which makes for a simple SAT solver. Combined with a logical-paradigm
reasoning engine (i.e. Prolog or miniKanren or Coq, etc... There are a few to
choose from these days) you can describe and compile e.g. a trustworthy OS and
application code for a swarm robot distributed over the ocean. (I'm _just_ at
that point now. It's been slow going, I lead a chaotic life.)

In the meantime the NN/ML renaissance hit and now a lot of what would have
been hairy problems are already solved. I had thought to have some sort of
volunteer "Mechanical Turk" network of humans to help sort the trash, but very
effective sorting machines have become available in just the last few years.

There are (at least) two major method of recycling plastic: Thermal
depolymerization[2] which uses heat and pressure to turn it back into a kind
of oil-like slurry; and Molten Salt Oxidation[3] which oxidizes (burns)
molecules (not just plastic) within a red-hot bath of molten salt. This latter
process can handle pretty much anything, it's used to dispose of munitions
including chemical weapons. It's also exothermic, you can get power out. It
also makes a good atomic reactor.

There's another option that could be called "divide and conquer". What makes
something a piece of "trash" rather than a building material? Uniformity of
shape and material. Consider the "timbrel vault"[4]. The basic idea is to
subdivide a piece of trash until it's more-or-less "pure" (glass, paper,
plastic, whatever), record the shapes of the individual pieces, and then
assemble them (by machine) into larger structures and glue them together.
Because you would have precise control over the fine structure of the
composite material output you could build non-linear structures (i.e. that
bend or compress in one direction but are stiff in others, etc.) or reinforce
weaker or more brittle materials with stronger bits.

All this to say: "waste" is another word for "resource". Change your
perspective and you change your level of wealth. And it's getting
exponentially cheaper and easier to apply automated intelligence to rearrange
the "waste" into useful forms! From this POV, China has done US a favor.

[1] "Laws of Form" G. Spencer-Brown. Cf. "Markable Mark" G. Burnett-Stuart.

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization)

[3]
[http://moltensalt.org/references/static/home.earthlink.net/b...](http://moltensalt.org/references/static/home.earthlink.net/bhoglund/whatsMoltenSal.html)

[4] [http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/11/tiles-
vaults.html](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/11/tiles-vaults.html)

------
usermac
This is where capitalism trumps sustainability. A mistake was made.

------
dasanman
Maybe now americans will be more thoughtful

------
pandasun
What would happen if we put trash in shipping containers and launch it into
space? (Serious question).

~~~
ryanmercer
Your garbage bill would could you about 10,000 USD per pound and require the
use of obscene amounts of rocket fuel.

~~~
pandasun
Thank you for explaining.

------
romjak
It would be interesting to have data about the global movement of raw
materials in finished products and the restulting waste, net import and export
by country, to see where waste is accumulating and where the consumption
actually takes place.

------
steve19
I wonder how many people have lost their jobs. I don't blame China for banning
it, it makes sense, but I would hate to be employed in China knowing that the
government might any day ban it with no notice.

~~~
konschubert
What are you implying? Politics happen in every country. Banning the import is
the same effect as starting a trade war or adding high import tax.

------
jbob2000
Gee, where is all this waste coming from? _eats take out 3 times a day_. I
just have no idea how we can get better at recycling. _buys a new smartphone
every 2 years_. Like why do we have to separate plastic and paper? _drinks
coffee from a disposable cup twice a day_. I have no idea how Washington will
meet 80% recycling targets! _stocks house with consumer packaged goods_.

The plastic straw ban was a good start, but I'd like to see some more action
on this front. My partner bought a box of crackers the other day and we opened
it up to find half the cardboard box was empty and it was just a small plastic
bag which itself was half empty. The packaging almost weighed more than the
product itself! And I bought a microSD card the other day with a plastic clam
shell package that was 15x the size of the product it was holding.

Ridiculous. Consumerism has gone too far. Mandate that packaging can't weigh
more than the product it holds and you'd eliminate tons of wasteful packaging.
Mandate that all food must be sold in bulk quantities; no more single scoop
yogurt cups or snack bags with like 3 gummies in them.

~~~
EADGBE
There's a warning on the box that says contents may settle during shipment.

As far as having a box too large; well that's just settling for the box
maker's specs. (Almost) No one makes their own boxes.

I noticed Amazon starting shipping in frustration-free packaging. I'm quite a
fan of that. Assuming it helps (if you compost the cardboard maybe?).

~~~
jbob2000
I wasn't complaining about the lack of product, which is what the warning on
the box is for (so people don't call up and say "hey you gave me a half filled
bag!"). My complaint is that there is clearly an inefficiency in packaging
which is leading to this waste.

And again, my complaint with clam shells isn't that they are frustrating; it's
that the product I purchased was far smaller than its packaging, again a huge
packaging inefficiency which leads to waste.

I'm not asking companies to make their own boxes or reduce frustration. I'm
asking consumers to stop buying shit that comes in boxes and plastic. I didn't
need those crackers, we could have happily snacked on homemade bread. Why
couldn't the SD card come in a small dime bag in an envelope?

~~~
donarb
> Why couldn't the SD card come in a small dime bag in an envelope?

Making the packaging bigger makes it difficult for someone to steal it. If you
were to put the card in a small envelope, you would have to store the card in
a locked cabinet and call for an employee to unlock and hand it to you.
Multiply that by hundreds/thousands of small products and employee costs would
outstrip your savings for a cheaper SD card.

~~~
jbob2000
Holy crap, y'all are still missing my point! Having an employee open a locked
cabinet would be AMAZING if it reduces packaging. I don't give a shit about
costs, why do you think I care about cost savings? I care about reducing waste
to the landfill. If that means someone has to unlock a cabinet for me, so be
it.

~~~
EADGBE
The frustration-free packaging seems like the way to go. I don't care what box
my stuff comes in. It's a shame it takes a behemoth like Amazon to get
manufacturers to do this, instead of doing it on their own.

~~~
ryanmercer
>It's a shame it takes a behemoth like Amazon to get manufacturers to do this,
instead of doing it on their own.

The shame is, in my experience, Amazon's frustration free packaging just means
"multiple cardboard boxes and lots of paper instead of plastic bubbles" even
for cables.

~~~
EADGBE
I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing.

------
take_5
I'd love to see Amazon push for its suppliers to offer a low environmental
impact packaging option. If you buy a camera on Amazon, the box isn't selling
anything on Amazon, so you can use a basic recycled board box with minimal to
no plastic for your new camera. Would select that option every time. I have
opened my MacBook box since removing it from the box the first time. It may as
well have been made out of lowest energy to produce and recycle material or
something naturally biodegradable.

