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.<p>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.<p>As for the economics of recycling:<p>* 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.<p>* 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.<p>* 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.<p>* 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.<p>EDIT: Found the episode here - <a href="https://www.bitchute.com/video/j0Hd6UfA4MKo/" rel="nofollow">https://www.bitchute.com/video/j0Hd6UfA4MKo/</a>
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.<p>Turning down radiation storage is like saying no to free money. We should all welcome better long-term storage and compete to host it.
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: <a href="https://original-unverpackt.de/" rel="nofollow">https://original-unverpackt.de/</a><p>It's a physical store which sells most everything a normal supermarket does but without the disposable packaging.
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!<p>Now companies can pollute to their heart's content and make it <i>our</i> failure and their externality. Just by advertising at us to recycle and dispose of our (not that we created or requested it) rubbish carefully.<p>[0] <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/more-recycling-wont-solve-plastic-pollution/" rel="nofollow">https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/more-recyc...</a>
When I was a kid, the “bottle depot” was a very motivating way to go out of one’s way to collect stray bottles.<p>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 <i>everything</i> you recycled and just not caring too much what the breakdown was).
Rumor has it China stop importing plastic after this documentary came out:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooRVhRt1p54" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooRVhRt1p54</a>
This shows an externality - that "Recycling" was really just a sham. Actual recycling has a cost overhead.<p>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".
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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p><a href="https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4606893" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4606893</a>
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
This really seems like a problem that could be helped by smarter automation (and a lot of "thinking outside the box")<p>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.<p>Also automated identification of materials (by optical inspection or dedicated sensors) looks like it could help.
Related from a month ago: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17368168" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17368168</a>.
India has banned single-use plastics (starting 2022).<p><a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/single-use-plastic-ban-india_us_5b3a09b6e4b0f3c221a28a07" rel="nofollow">https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/single-use-plastic-ban-...</a><p>Other countries simply need to do the same. France has banned certain single-use plastic items starting in 2020.<p>If a side-effect is less processed food and fast-food being consumed, then great.
Hopeful news is that some really efficient recycling technologies for mixed plastics are under development, like Magnetic Density Separation (MDS)<p><a href="https://www.tudelft.nl/en/ceg/research/stories-of-science/recycling-refined/" rel="nofollow">https://www.tudelft.nl/en/ceg/research/stories-of-science/re...</a>
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.<p>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.
Few years ago Bea Johnson, a French born US citizen, was all in the news on how she's near zero waste<p><a href="https://frenchly.us/bea-johnson-a-french-woman-on-a-zero-waste-mission-in-the-us/" rel="nofollow">https://frenchly.us/bea-johnson-a-french-woman-on-a-zero-was...</a><p>I guess she should get on television asap
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.<p><a href="http://geographical.co.uk/people/development/item/2811-china-s-plastic-import-ban-in-numbers" rel="nofollow">http://geographical.co.uk/people/development/item/2811-china...</a>
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.<p>Can someone more knowledgable comment on this?
> the city wants to "better educate our residents about what should and should not be recycled"<p>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.
Facebook internally uses compostable plates and cutlery in their cafeterias; I am wondering if creating those doesn't pollute environment even more than plastics.
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."<p>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 <i>just</i> at that point now. It's been slow going, I lead a chaotic life.)<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>[1] "Laws of Form" G. Spencer-Brown. Cf. "Markable Mark" G. Burnett-Stuart.<p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization</a><p>[3] <a href="http://moltensalt.org/references/static/home.earthlink.net/bhoglund/whatsMoltenSal.html" rel="nofollow">http://moltensalt.org/references/static/home.earthlink.net/b...</a><p>[4] <a href="http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/11/tiles-vaults.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/11/tiles-vaults.html</a>
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.
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.
Gee, where is all this waste coming from? <i>eats take out 3 times a day</i>. I just have no idea how we can get better at recycling. <i>buys a new smartphone every 2 years</i>. Like why do we have to separate plastic and paper? <i>drinks coffee from a disposable cup twice a day</i>. I have no idea how Washington will meet 80% recycling targets! <i>stocks house with consumer packaged goods</i>.<p>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.<p>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.
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.