Posted on 08/24/2024 2:37:12 PM PDT by algore
A Texas city has been flooded with mountains of plastic waste that hasn't been touched in a year and a half as the facility continues to fail fire inspections.
Wright Waste Management, located 20 miles outside of downtown Houston, has hundreds of pounds of plastic trash just sitting behind a locked gate.
The garbage hasn't been touched in more than a year and a half, according to CBS News.
To tackle the ongoing plastic pollution problem, the Houston Recycling Collaboration - made up of the City of Houston, ExxonMobil, LyondellBasell, Cyclyx International and FCC Environmental Services - was born.
It was supposed to be able to take any plastic and either recycle it mechanically - the traditional way - or burn it chemically into a new plastic or fuel.
However, 20 months into the program, environmental groups found that the plastic dropped off by residents has yet to be chemically recycled, according to CBS News.
Cyclyx International is supposed to open another sorting plant in mid-2025, but for now, the pollution is piling up at the Wright facility, which has failed to pass several fire safety inspections, the outlet said.
The facility does not have the operational permit it needs to hold hazardous materials, flammable and combustible liquids, LP gas, and miscellaneous combustibles. It also failed its fire inspection through Harris County Fire three times, CBS and Inside Climate News discovered.
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most plastic could technically be recycled, some types are so difficult that is is just not done, but it still has the arrows and numbers to make you think it is.
hmmmmmm....maybe they can haul it all away with those ev’s that are going up in flames.
“hundreds of pounds of plastic trash”
Who would get their panties in a wad over that?
Now, if it was HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of pounds, that would be a concern.
> I would bet that less than 5% of plastics are ever recycled.
But you can be sure you’re paying 100% of the cost.
It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to recycle plastics because each time they are sent through a screw extruder they lose some molecular weight.
Each new lot of pellets will become more variable in mw over time so properties eventually won’t meet specifications.
It’s better to heat the plastics to make producer gas.
Plastic is light, but a few hundred pounds doesn't sound like much if you compress it down by running a bulldozer over it a few times. Out city takes 1, 2 and 5 for recycling. It won't take the other plastics.
The county I live in has a recycling program that is self sustaining. They don’t use a dime of taxpayer dollars to run it.
I have no idea what they do with the plastic, glass, aluminum, steel, newspaper and cardboard they take in but I’m happy to give them 2/3s of my trash for free.
link: https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/local/outreach/earth8/gps-tracking-plastic-recycling/509-0233a3d1-64b0-459c-ace9-49841ed75a7c
Give it to the illegal alien invaders as food.
I wonder how plastic burns versus tires, and which is easier to put out.
It’s less than 6% last I checked, so that’s close enough for a win. But the “environmentalists” wont let anyone burn it either, so it just sits in landfill releasing chemicals.
The plastic recycling market died! China stopped accepting.
Our city has a recycling program. Put trash in the trash can, and recycling into a blue tub. Leave both out on the curb, and they will be picked up appropriately.
I stopped doing that when I witnessed, personally, the trash guys emptying the blue recycling bin into the same trash truck as the trash. I saw this multiple times, trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. After 5-10 times of seeing this, I quit bothering. Everything now goes into the trash can.
In Europe, they turn plastic into asphalt by melting it into tiny pebbles. That seems an easy solution to me.
I was taught this in about 1990 in Materials Science class.
Instructor said “don’t waste your time with this”
Today’s soda bottle is tomorrows speed bump.
You can have a dumpster full of bottle glass, the highest consumer quality glass, and if some on throws in a piece of window glass (much lower quality) when that dumpster is recycled, it’s now only good for window glass.
On a motorcycle tour of Italy I was enjoying a fine meal and wine at the banks of a fine mountain lake near the Austrian border. There must have been six trash cans that other tourists would dutifully sort their garbage and place them in the proper recycle bins. Later in the day the trash truck would come and throw everything in to the same truck and take it all to the landfill. I was laughing and being the ugly American I had to talk with one of the waiters who spoke English. He said they have to keep the recycle bins out because if they don’t the tourist set all their garbage (recycleables) next to the bins because they are so obsessed with recycling they can’t bear just throwing trash in a trash bin. So the village keeps all these phony recycle bins so Brits and Germans can sleep well thinking they are saving the planet by sorting out their garbage in to the proper bin even though it all gets sent to the same landfill.
We won’t be running out of sand anytime soon.
When I still lived in a city I came home from work one day and my usual large trash bin was replaced with a tiny little trash bin and two massive bins. One for “recycling” and another for yard debris. So now ai had three huge cans taking up driveway space. Everything still went in the trash bin. I doubt any one on their death bed has said, “I wish I spent more time sorting out my garbage.”
Recycling is a SCAM
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