Posted on 01/19/2023 7:44:12 AM PST by grundle
NPR recently published this article, which is titled, “Recycling plastic is practically impossible – and the problem is getting worse.”
The article states:
“The vast majority of plastic that people use, and in many cases put into blue recycling bins, is headed to landfills, or worse, according to a report from Greenpeace on the state of plastic recycling in the U.S.”
“The report cites separate data published this May which revealed that the amount of plastic actually turned into new things has fallen to new lows of around 5%. That number is expected to drop further as more plastic is produced.”
“Greenpeace found that no plastic – not even soda bottles, one of the most prolific items thrown into recycling bins – meets the threshold to be called ‘recyclable’ according to standards set by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation New Plastic Economy Initiative. Plastic must have a recycling rate of 30% to reach that standard; no plastic has ever been recycled and reused close to that rate.”
None of that surprises me. Below are two videos, which I’ve posted here before.
The first video shows that much of the recycled garbage from rich countries (the U.K. in this case) gets sent to poor countries, where it just sits there on the ground without any covering or protection, getting blown around, and often ending up in rivers and ultimately the ocean.
The second video shows a landfill in a rich country (the U.S. in this case). The landfill is well sealed and covered, and is now a park with grass, trees, plants, and animals.
Recycling is a scam. It makes people feel good, but it actually hurts the environment instead of helping it. The environment would be a lot better off if we stopped recycling, and put our garbage into landfills. The proof is in the videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRQLilXLAIU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zcMfDbxmgU
Plastic should be burned to make electricity.
Guilty. Of course I do believe in the single stream thing.
It is all virtue signaling.
Burn all garbage for electricity. Put scrubbers on the stacks to keep things clean. The left wants you as a helpless peasant.
NPR is owned by the Left and the Homo LObby.
“Recycling is a scam.”
Some recycling is a scam. Glass and paper recycling can be reasonable, as the article describes, plastic recycling is mostly terrible.
Recycling doesn't work, but liberals don't care. They're about making themselves feel like they're contributing. They don't care if their contribution is totally symbolic.
The solution is the development of easily degradable plastic. The problem to overcome is how to stop biodegradable plastic containers from biodegrading on the supermarket shelf.
Going back to glass is another possible solution. No joke, liberals recently were pushing the idea that there is a sand shortage.
“Recycling plastic is practically impossible”
Perhaps, but burning plastic is no more impossible than burning fossil fuels. And you can generate electricity by doing that, instead of costing us electricity in a futile attempt to “recycle” them.
It takes fossil fuels to recycle, lots of fossil fuels. But they have to cheaper than the price to recycle. There’s not going to be recycling when energy is too expensive.
And worse, these stupid 'feel good' virtue signaling stuns stop us from coming up with rational solutions that would work.
It can be made into diesel......................
“The solution is the development of easily degradable plastic. The problem to overcome is how to stop biodegradable plastic containers from biodegrading on the supermarket shelf.”
You’d probably need a 2-component process, like binary explosives that are stable until two elements are mixed together. Normally the plastic is nonbiodegradeable, but if you spray it with some agent, it starts degrading.
Or we can just burn it and generate power with it.
I do not suggest engineering bacteria to eat plastic, because that is just the beginning of a dystopian science fiction story.
I was out walking yesterday and saw a neighbors new recycling toter had a sign on the lid saying what could go in, and plastic was shown as “garbage” - not for recycling.
It is no longer mandatory here so everything goes into the trash toter. That’s why it’s called “trash”.
Maybe someday they will admit the truth and the original redirection of plastic from landfills to “recycling” has actually created far more pollution and problems than if we had just kept burying it in landfills int the first place.
Recycling has always been a scam. It’s one of those things people virtue signal. Virtue signaling just makes me want to do the opposite. I haven’t recycled my trash for over 20 years. I don’t recycle because my time is valuable and I know that most things are not recycled. I don’t work to enrich scammers. A landfill is perfectly fine with me. But … The next thing we will hear about is the danger of landfills and there is no room for expansion. That by the way will be a “recycled” crisis. We may even have a garbage barge that’s unable to dock and unload. There’s plenty of room for landfills. Just look out and down from an airplane on a coast-to-coast flight.
Recycling is the curbside version of wearing a face mask.
Plastic is too cheap to produce.
It is not cost effective to recycle most plastics.
Funny thing is Glass which is perfectly recyclable, most recycling around me won’t even take, because the weight of it makes the transportation costs too much to make recycling it worth while.
Makes no sense to bury combustible items that can be incinerated to make steam to drive turbines to make electricity.
I used to go to the major dump/landfill outside of Sacramento a couple times a year with misc. household trash (big family). On several occasions I’d see the “recycle” trucks that picked up recycle bins all over the county. I asked a dump employee once about why the recycle trucks were there. He said the recycle facilities have only so much capacity. Usually by late Tuesday or Wednesday they’d have to redirect the trucks from the recycle facilities to the landfill/dump where they would dump with the trash all those bottles and cans and newspapers that the useful idiots spent their weeks rinsing out and sorting and carefully placing in the right bins.
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