Report: Save the Oceans – Stop Recycling Plastic!

Breitbart ^ | June 30,2018 | James Delingpole

[Hojczyk]

, the stream of waste delivered to China expanded vastly. Annual imports reached 85 million tons, including 8 million of plastic. The quantity was so huge that inspection at ports became impossible, and the unscrupulous found that even mixed or hazardous waste could profitably be sent, disguised as “recycling” to avoid landfill tax or high management costs in rich countries. Unable to handle this tsunami of refuse, the Chinese were forced to either burn or dump vast quantities. An unknown amount found its way to the oceans.

The consequences for the environment and for public health of this “recycling” madness have therefore been horrendous, and have ultimately proved too high for the Chinese, who have now banned waste imports entirely. Recent figures suggest that recycling businesses in the UK have responded by simply shipping waste to Asian countries with even weaker environmental standards. So even more waste will end up in the oceans in future.

Most of this pollution derives from rivers in Asia and Africa. But this does not let the West off the hook. On the contrary, Paunio says, the ocean plastic pollution problem is largely the creation of Western environmentalist ideologuesI will argue that ideologically motivated environmentalists in the 1980s and their dreams of recycling and a ‘circular economy’ are the ultimate cause of the marine waste problem, because they have discouraged development of municipal waste schemes in Asia and Africa, and because they have encouraged developed nations to use management schemes that make it hard or expensive to deal with waste and therefore tend to ‘leak’ to the environment, sometimes catastrophically so.

The sensible and effective solution to plastic waste, says Paunio, is to incinerate it. This reduces its bulk by 80 per cent and means it can safely be disposed of in landfill

[Hojczyk]

Interesting Article worth a read..

[SgtHooper]

The PRC. The worst examples of selfish and criminal humanity.

[pepsionice]

I will relate this story. Back in 1992, I transferred to Bitburg Air Base, and the initial week of processing included this 30-minute piece by the new German recycling chief of the base. He hyped up the standard rules, explained how the system worked, and questions were allowed.

Someone asked a direct question...just how much could the German economy around that area, or nationally...recycle paper and plastic. Long pause, and his answer....roughly 40-percent. The rest was being dumped in the local dump and this was frustrating the environmental folks greatly.

What they did over the next decade was look for various ways to encourage (financially) recycling operations to work. You could sit and see how this was developing.

Some folks would come up and present this idea of shipping plastic out of the country to countries that they claimed....had a recycling program, but there was a need for money to ship the stuff out and there had to be some profit margin. This all got cooked up...some middle-guy was paid cash to pick up tons and tons of waste plastic....transport it to Hamburg, where it got dumped on medium-sized third-world freighters and it ‘disappeared’. The middle-guy got his cash....the boat owner got his cash...and it’s very likely that more than half of what got shipped out...was dumped in the Pacific.

They built an entire system that simply couldn’t handle the amount of plastic being used by society, and they couldn’t handle the idea of just burying it or burning it. It was all fake environmentalism.

[SunkenCiv]

ideologically motivated environmentalists in the 1980s and their dreams of recycling and a ‘circular economy’ are the ultimate cause of the marine waste problem, because they have discouraged development of municipal waste schemes in Asia and Africa, and because they have encouraged developed nations to use management schemes that make it hard or expensive to deal with waste and therefore tend to ‘leak’ to the environment

Thanks Hojczyk.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Paper, aluminum, steel and glass are the only things worth recycling. Everything else is not cost effective to recycle. And the glass takes huge amounts of water to recycle.

[The_Media_never_lie]

Why not mandate use of glass bottles with a deposit to avoid using so much plastic?

[pepsionice]

Go try to explain this to an environmentalist.

I watched some report last month here in Germany where they were hyping up an anti-plastic agenda and trying to force food production companies to drop plastic. The business guy just laughed...it’ll never happen.

[rexthecat]

Why can’t plastic be developed that breaks down in salt water after a period of time?

[MUDDOG]

management schemes that make it hard or expensive to deal with waste

Just as liberals have made it hard and expensive to deal with illegal immigration.

The solution is simple and the same for both plastic waste and illegal immigration -- dump the plastic in a landfill, dump the illegals back across the border.

[I want the USA back]

Breaking apart is not the same as breaking down. Breaking apart is separating into small particles without any change in chemical composition. Breaking down is a chemical decomposition into a substance that does not have the characteristics of the original material.

The plastic in the ocean is breaking apart, spelling a disaster for creatures living in the ocean. There is currently no way for plastic materials to break down in the ocean or salt water. Would be nice if there were. There isn’t.

[McGavin999]

That’s exactly what I was thinking. Milk bottles were sanitized and refilled. Coke and other pop bottles had a nickel deposit. Many kids financed their comic book addiction by picking up bottles and returning them for the deposit. Paper bags were used for tons of things from lining shelves or bird cages to composting in the garden

[firebrand]

I had this idea a long time ago but no one ever did it:

Sell food and other stuff in containers that can be recycled as building blocks.

[fso301]

Why can’t plastic be developed that breaks down in salt water after a period of time?

But then what will the turtles eat?

[dfwgator]

The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the Earth plus plastic. The Earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the Earth. The Earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the Earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?”

"Plastic… a__hole.”

[plain talk]

Paper, aluminum, steel and glass are the only things worth recycling. Everything else is not cost effective to recycle. And the glass takes huge amounts of water to recycle.

Yep and if plastic is indeed worthy of being recycled it should be done here in the U.S. Sending ships of used plastic to China to be recycled is nuts.

[usconservative]

Report: Save the Oceans – Stop Recycling Plastic!

If we're recycling plastic, how's it getting into the ocean?

Had to ask -- onto reading the article now.

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

I have no choice but to keep putting plastic bottles in my recycle bin.

Insane California liberals force you to recycle by making the garbage container so tiny, you can’t barely fit all of your weekly garbage. I don’t know what large families do, but a small family can’t get all of their weekly garbage in one of these tiny bins, far smaller than the standard metal garbage cans we had through the 1970s.

I have been provided a MASSIVE green plastic bin for plant waster, a fair sized blue recycle bin, and a tiny gray garbage bin.

I could not fit any plastic or cardboard in the small gray bin if I tried. I have stuffed the MASSIVE green bin full of cardboard before, then covered it will leaves and branches. I can get rid of all my cardboard that way, but I just don’t have room in my tiny gray garbage bin so all that plastic is still going to find its way into the Oceans.

The insanity of liberals never ends. The unintended consequences screw us over again and again.

[usconservative]

Why not mandate use of glass bottles with a deposit to avoid using so much plastic?

I'd venture an educated guess that shipping in glass is cost prohibitive compared to plastic because of the weight difference between the two types of containers. Add the recycling costs of glass and the resources required (water, heat, etc..) and it's probably even more costly.

I think the article's conclusion is exactly right that we need to stop shipping plastic all over the place and simply incinerate it, reduce the bulk by 80% or more and make it more safe to dispose of vs. what's currently being done.

[usconservative]

Sell food and other stuff in containers that can be recycled as building blocks.

There's a company here in Illinois that makes lawn furniture out of recycled plastic. It's quite good, very durable, easy to clean and lasts forever. The company is By The Yard and I own some of their stuff. Very high quality! I think their idea is brilliant and I wish more companies innovated like they do.