Wish I used enough plastic and had the tools to make these free bathroom tiles.
Posted on 06/23/2019 3:32:55 PM PDT by rktman
A sign on an upside-down dumpster spelled the end of Pearl Pai’s long romance with plastics recycling.
For years, Pai and her family generated almost no trash. She carefully washed, sorted and bagged hard-to-recycle items and drove them two towns over from her home in Berkeley, California, to the area’s best recycling center.
But on a gray morning in late May, when she pulled up with a bag of flimsy plastic clamshell-style containers, yogurt tubs and meat trays, the sign informed her that, “due to poor market conditions”, these items would no longer be accepted for recycling.
This is a reality that millions more Americans will have to adjust to.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
And just how much water was used, how much detergent sent into the eco-sysytem, how much energy spent to heat the water as she oh! so! carefully cleaned and sorted her recyclables? Not to mention the gas/fuel/energy used in driving two towns over (maybe she should have bicycled?).
It’s like taking the phosphates out of most detergents ... now you have to use 2 or more times the amount of soap and hot water to get dishes/household items as clean as before. Pre-sprays, oxi-clean, and multiple washes for clothes, too.
Then why aren’t they making shoes out of the plastics we use here on land?
Then why aren’t they making shoes out of the plastics we use here on land?
Do think maybe, just maybe, we should go back to U.S. made products (like Trump is trying to do) in order to allow for paper packaging of products that will no longer have to survive trans-Atlantic shipping? Perhaps kitty litter in bomb-proof packaging is not a good idea after all?!
Oh, it gets better. That bar soap that is supposed to be a threat to the environment is now acknowledged according to at least one study to be far and away the environmentally friendlier option compared to the liquid soaps.
Cheaper to make new than recycle.
Unless you're recycling gold, it pretty much is.
I long ago figured out that the rest of this garbage isn't worth anything and we're only doing it to feel better about ourselves. These days it all goes into the same waste containers.
What ever happened to thermal depolymerization of plastic for energy production?
Wish I used enough plastic and had the tools to make these free bathroom tiles.
Yep.
Driving through Iowa a few years back, stopping about every 12 miles at a toll booth, I hear an advertisement from the Gov. telling me Iowa needed the tolls to build new toll booths.
They can burn the plastic along with some paper, generate electricity from the energy released, use the electricity to power smokeless burning technology that captures the CO2 and other pollutants before they are released released into the atmosphere. But you are right. If you are going to collect all that plastic, it is more economical to simply mix it with asphalt and use it as paving material. Fact is recycling plastic is a fool’s errand.
They said that the energy and manpower used to separate good from bad recyclables was a huge waste of "resources'.
They pay people good money to accomplish... well, nothing of value.
Certainly not for the planet anyway.
The only thing that was of marginal benefit is recycling aluminum.
Here in Seattle, they are going on and on about washing out and cleaning recyclables, before recycling.
I wonder just how much that *actually* costs.
With the water usage, the soap usage, plus the time and effort, it has to be a complete LOSS.
All so that liberals can feel warm and fuzzy about "saving" mother earth.
They've been doing that with used car tires for decades. They found the rubber in the asphalt allows better braking on off ramps leading to fewer accidents. After that they started using it in a lot more asphalt. I don't think they've ever been able to keep up with all the used tires though. There are separate used tire dumps adjacent to most landfills these days waiting to be recycled.
I suppose if plastic was shredded to a small enough size it could be used as filler in asphat or better yet; concrete. One trick they use to make concrete stronger is small pieces of fishing line shaped plastics mixed in with the concrete. By adding it to the concrete the rebar doesn't need to be laid in first for smaller projects like driveways and pads for garages where excessive weight like a car or truck will be driven or parked on.
Again; there will always be more plastic than is needed so disposal will still mean ending up in landfills. Plastic is a wonder product with a dirty downside. Perhaps it's time to get back to paper cartons and straws instead of using plastic all the time.
There's a reason there's a Texas-sized island of floating plastic in the oceans.
Where does your plastic go? Global investigation reveals America's dirty secret
We incinerate our garbage and it recently came out that the recycle plastic was being burned with all of the other refuse where I live. LMAO!
100% same stuff different form
there will prolly always be a surplus, but almost NONE of it is being used now for what it could be used for
Most recycling material goes to the landfill. If you pay for recycling, it gets hand sorted before going to the landfill.
Does anyone else remember when scare mongers told us 80 percent of landfills would be full by the year 2000?
That plus electricity..
Although I haven't seen any figures on the relative cost of this method of disposal at least there is a useful product. And it doesn't roast birds or chop them up.. ;-)
Beats me
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