Misery for California shoppers as grocery bills set to spike due to new law (recycling)

California shoppers could soon be paying even more at the checkout line as a sweeping new state recycling measure threatens to send grocery prices soaring, with dairy manufacturers warning some businesses may be forced to shut down or flee the Golden State.

Senate Bill 54 is now entering its first phase of implementation, with companies expected to receive their first bills as early as next month, reported SFGATE.

The measure aims to reduce landfill waste by making manufacturers financially responsible for the packaging they sell after it is thrown away.

It charges companies impact fees on products they sell while also requiring them to phase out packaging that cannot be adequately reused, recycled or composted.

The dairy industry says it stands to be among the hardest hit because many of its products rely on packaging that does not currently meet the measure’s requirements.

CalRecycle, however, estimates the impact will be far smaller, projecting households will pay between $57 and $190 more annually based on data from the California Department of Finance.

Supporters say those added costs are outweighed by shifting the financial burden of packaging waste from taxpayers to the companies that produce it.

Post consumer recycle of most packaging is impossible. Aluminum cans and cardboard boxes are about it and the cost to do so is rediculously expensive in collection, transportation and conversion.

Even the cardboard boxes is near impossible.

Any box that has a plastic coating can't be recycled.

And because most users of recycled boxes does not want any color in the reused paper pulp, any box with a logo printed on it is not recycled.

Most of the cardboard is not recycled because of these limitations set by recycling process and the end users of recycled cardboard.

Recycling is a feel good scam. I don't bother mostly.

My wife has become an Amazon addict. I save the Amazon boxes to take to the recycle bin down the road. Maybe the logo on the box makes it un-recyclable (probably). But if you believe the printed message on some boxes, some companies use recycled paper.

It should be burned as fuel for generating electricity (it's what they do in Germany), but that's in competition with the (Noisome) Getty empire and others.

I was in the Electric industry for 37 years and followed this technology.

It never was successful. And if they knew how it was done, the Greens wouldn't like it anyway.

The plastic must be burned with coal. It never worked when burned by itself. They also don't use much plastic, less than 5% of the fuel burned is plastic.

The EPA drastically changed the way coal power plants are designed and operated. The EPA has demanded basically stack emmisions that are nothing more that CO2, water vapor, NOX and low particulates (minimal ash or soot).

To get soot free low emissions stack gases the operator has to have a nearly uniform fuel mixture day after day.

Because plastic is made with long chained carbon and the formulas very widely from product to product that is impossible. With thousands of different plastics in the consumer market and millions of empty containers filling trash bins every day the make up of those bins vary widely.

Then there is the coal fired power plant's emissions control equipment vary a lot.

I met a very rich man about 30 years ago that had worked for the same company as me had been the company's emissions control expert.

After retiring (early) he started a company that blended coal for power plants to work specifically with their pollution control systems to minimize emissions. He would chose for them a mix of hard and soft coal and where it was from to get the lowest ash and NOX emissions and have the least impact on their systems.

He made millions.

The way that plastic burn is unpredictable because the mix can't be formulated.

Probably the biggest problem with burning plastic is the ash production which is obvious to anyone who has ever burned a plastic bottle in a fire. The thick black ash that is produced is obvious.

That ash in a power plant coat the tubes that boil the water in the plant to produce steam. The ash insulates the tubes making the plant inefficient.

The plants that burn plastic waste never make a profit and require frequent maintenance outages.

These trash burners never got past the prototype plant stage that I know of, due to high cost of operation and low availability. They also could never get the emissions to the point where an EPA permit was even a dream.

Frankly, everything you said was anticipated. I worked in a chemical plant with an RTO for seven years, and qualified two projects for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District in Silicon Valley. Here is your key point:

And if they knew how it was done, the Greens wouldn't like it anyway.

Guess who funds them? Hence the post to which you responded. My take on what you said here (and thank you for it as the details about coal I did not know) is that burning it is better than trying to recycle it. Nothing is perfect. BTW, are you telling me that burning it with natural gas was never attempted or that it was not as successful? From a technical perspective, I don't know why it would be, albeit it might cost more.

BTW, are you telling me that burning it with natural gas was never attempted or that it was not as successful?

Burning plastic with coal is a good fit for coal but not for Gas.

Coal is pulverized to a Talcum Powder consistency and blown into the boiler. Coal plants have complex pollution control systems. Gas plants have little to no pollution controls.

The shredded plastic is mixed with the pulverized coal in the boiler for the burn.

Due to the drastically different chemical makeup of plastics I can't see burning it as boiler fuel as a real practical solution to its disposal.

Complex hydrocarbons do not burn cleanly.

crude oil is a mix of drastically different hydrocarbons.

Crude oil is sent to a complex system that distils and then 'cracks' (breaks the complex chemical down) the different hydrocarbons with heat and catalyst.

That is what it would take to burn the plastic cleanly.

Just my semi-educated opinion.

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