I've always wondered why there couldn't be standard containers for products like jam, wine, butter etc. where the containers are designed to be easily washed and reused. Manufacturers could still create their own branded containers but would pay more somehow for doing so. Is there an obvious problem with this idea?<p>It's nuts that if you buy e.g. 4 bottles of wine they all have different bottle designs and if you optionally go through the effort of recycling them there might be some process involved where they're sent to another country, broken down, melted and then reformed it into new bottles at best. Just wash and reuse the bottle...?
> too difficult<p>> impossible<p>These words are funny to me. It's not literally "too difficult" or "impossible" for people to sort their recyclables. I think they essentially mean, we don't know how to make people do this, or we think we'll be voted out if we ask people to do it. And what it boils down to is that, it's not a socially accepted/expected practice to sort your recyclables. But, you know what? That is a completely different thing from being "too difficult" or "impossible". And by conflating those two things, we as a society are operating with blinders on.<p>As a thought experiment, imagine everybody else was making the needed compromises (to their time, space, etc.) to properly sort recyclables. Is it still impossible for you?
I've long maintained that plastics recycling is worse than useless -- washing all of that plastic takes loads of water, and there just aren't many uses for recycled plastic. Consider the plastics around you. How many objects are virgin plastic? How many are recycled? There's not some secret destination for recycled plastics. Clearly it's being dumped or burned, and it has been for a long time. Now we're doing it in the U.S. again, it's much harder to pretend that's not its fate.
Whenever I see stories revolving around this sort of thing, I'm always reminded of the Penn & Teller: Bullshit! episode they did on recycling (<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0771119/" rel="nofollow">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0771119/</a>). They argue that landfills really aren't that bad and may actually be better than recycling. Of course the entire _premise_ of that show was that you shouldn't just blindly believe everything you're told -- INCLUDING what the show itself tries to argue for. So I have no idea how valid any of their argument actually is.
Could we make standardized durable containers that can simply be scrubbed, optionally polished and reused? Or just melted down and reused. Seemed to work ok for the dairy industry decades before my birth.
This is super exciting. One of the grand challenges I've been thinking about is tackling waste. Why is any material considered waste? The first principles approach to this problem says that landfills are mountains of energy and diverse resources waiting to be tapped.<p>The first step though is to ignore the pervailing reclamation, recycling mentality at the macro level and begin the gruelling work of building a new ecology. We're at a point now where concerted effort into engineered (or found through directed evolution) organisms gives us the opportunity to break down and then re-integrate these dormant resources.<p>In the future a 'recycling' plant will accept any and all waste and be the front end of a manufacturing hub that outputs both new raw materials and finished products. In between the two ends it will be biotechnology that enables the transition from waste back to usable component resources.
A large part of this is the new rules on contamination that exclude a lot of material. 0.5% is China's new limit, while a average city with curbside collection could never meet that. Think about your typical recycling bin: You put in some newspaper that is prime recycling material, but then a milk jug or soda bottle that hasn't been fully emptied or rinsed gets tossed in and the paper gets soaked and is now unusable for recycling. Same with pizza boxes that have grease, stuff that gets rained on, people putting stuff in the bins that isn't recyclable in this manner (including electronic components and such [0]), and suddenly you're throwing away (or burning) a huge amount of material.<p>"China, once the biggest single processor of recycling, said in the spring that it would no longer accept loads of recyclable items — such as plastic, glass, cardboard, and metals — that were more than 0.5 percent contaminated. Officials said they were trying to cut down on pollution from processing dirty recyclables.<p>Philadelphia’s contamination rate is anywhere from 15 percent to 20 percent. That meant its previous contractor for recycling, Republic Services, had to find other markets for processing or begin disposing of portions of contaminated loads in other ways, such as in landfills or by incineration.<p>As recently as the first quarter of 2012, Philadelphia was getting paid $67.35 a ton for its recyclables. By summer 2018, Republic was negotiating a new contract to process recyclables that would cost the city $170 a ton."[1]<p>[0] "Reduce, reuse, incinerate: Why half of Philly's recyclables aren't recycled" (Feb 11, 2019)
<a href="https://www.npr.org/podcasts/657780675/the-why" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/podcasts/657780675/the-why</a><p>[1] "At least half of Philly’s recycling goes straight to an incinerator" (Jan 25 2019)
<a href="https://www.philly.com/science/climate/recycling-costs-philadelphia-incinerator-waste-to-energy-plant-20190125.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.philly.com/science/climate/recycling-costs-phila...</a>
Okay, serious question: how much carbon is sequestered in plastic if we toss it in a landfill? Given that there's a finite amount of oil left in the world, and that it gets more expensive as supplies dwindle, I almost wonder if using more disposable plastics <i>helps</i> the fight against climate change. Better to turn the carbon into a solid and bury it than burn it and put the CO2 in the atmosphere, right?
Another good article on the topic:<p>China's Import Ban Broke Plastic Recycling. Here's How to Fix It<p><a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/06/china-plastic-recycling-ban-solutions-science-environment/" rel="nofollow">https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/06/china-plastic-re...</a>
Fully aware that it’s not a globally useful solution, but I am surprised there aren’t alternatives to China for trash dumping. Why aren’t there alternatives. I refuse to believe all other countries are so eco-minded that they wouldn’t take a dirty cash grab
Relevant: 99pi recently had an episode on China banning imports of recyclables - <a href="https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/national-sword/" rel="nofollow">https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/national-sword/</a>
It seems like we need better education and publicity campaigns. It should always be easy to look up the local rules. People should feel like it's more important to keep the recycling stream clean than it is to recycle at all, which is the opposite of what they do today where putting more stuff in the recycling bin is somehow thought to be better even if it doesn't follow the rules.<p>Unfortunately, garbage companies are not necessarily very good at publicity or education. (My local company's website is badly designed and it's annoyingly difficult to even find the page with the rules.)
"...or burning it in huge incinerators like the one in Chester, which already torches around 3,510 tons of trash, the weight equivalent of more than 17 blue whales, every day."<p>I love that they compare it to the weight of a blue whale!<p>"There isn’t much of a domestic market for US recyclables – materials such as steel or high-density plastics can be sold on but much of the rest holds little more value than rubbish"<p>It's clear to me from the article, does that mean paper and cardboard as well? It seems to be mentioned that China won't take it, but is that getting burned now?
Isn’t there a way to incinerate such rubbish such that it outputs energy (electricity) and any heavy or toxic materials are scrubbed? May be a bit more expensive but the tech exists.
I've been watching a few companies that convert plastic back into oil. it sounds great, but I have no idea yet if it actually works, or is just all glossy brochure.<p><a href="http://renewlogy.com/renew-energy/" rel="nofollow">http://renewlogy.com/renew-energy/</a>
Imagine sorting waste is some amount of effort per item.<p>You could get the homeowner to do it, or you could pay people in a factory to do it.<p>Just like the poor economics of making your own paper, it turns out centralising all the effort works out to less effort expended overall.<p>I therefore don't really see the appeal of the European model of having homeowners separate glass, plastic etc. It seems to simply be a way to make hundreds of mllions of people waste a few minutes each, rather than employ a few thousand full time at a lower total economic cost.
Not even getting power out of burning the stuff.<p>This from the place that once had a power plant with a huge illuminated sign "Electricity is Cheap in Chester".[1]<p>[1] <a href="https://ruins.wordpress.com/2006/11/10/electrical-power-and-corporate-identity-pecos-delaware-generating-station/" rel="nofollow">https://ruins.wordpress.com/2006/11/10/electrical-power-and-...</a>
I find it difficult to imagine the USA giving up its plastic addiction, given the high levels of consumption and the convenience plastic provides.<p>I think a reasonable approach for regulators might be to require all single-use plastic packaging to be industrially compostable (corn-derived etc). This way you still get the convenience of the packaging, no need to change habits, but the waste can all be turned back into soil without pollution.
I am surprised we are not building more Plasma Arc systems to process the waste. Surely this would be better than creating all this dioxin in the air.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification_commercialization" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification_commercial...</a>
>The conscientious citizens of Philadelphia continue to put their pizza boxes, plastic bottles, yoghurt containers and other items into recycling bins.<p>Pizza boxes are not actually recyclable due to the amount of grease they absorb which is unable to be separated.
Something is wrong with the design here. Dioxins aren't a problem if covanta incinerates at a high temperature. Safe incineration to burn trash and generate power is doable. The standard is too low here, it seems.
Can we just gather all the trash into one giant ball and launch it into space?<p>If Dyson sphere has it's place in global solutions space then giant trash ball should too.