I posted another similar article from The Atlantic a couple of weeks ago. The most disturbing thing to me about this is that it reveals that we may not have ever really been recycling at all, and...
The most disturbing thing to me about this is that it reveals that we may not have ever really been recycling at all, and certainly not to the level that most of us believe we are. All we've been doing in reality is shipping a bunch of our garbage to China.
There's so much infrastructure and process built up around recycling, is all of it just going to end up as a farce now? Will we keep dividing up our trash, having separate pickups, etc. if it all just ends up in the same landfill?
Recycled plastics will eventually be more appealing and affordable than they are now, for the simple reason that petroleum is a limited resource and plastics are too damn useful to disappear...
Recycled plastics will eventually be more appealing and affordable than they are now, for the simple reason that petroleum is a limited resource and plastics are too damn useful to disappear entirely.
We just keep kicking the can down the road. Once oil gets back up above $100 a barrel and the economy actually stabilizes around it, we'll see a lot more interest in the practices, and, for whatever irs worth, the plastic isnt going anywhere.
I don't think market forces are going to take care of this one, plastic is just too cheap to make. Global plastic production uses less than 5% of our oil, and demand for oil is likely to fall in...
I don't think market forces are going to take care of this one, plastic is just too cheap to make. Global plastic production uses less than 5% of our oil, and demand for oil is likely to fall in the coming decades as more and more transport is electrified. Even with hefty carbon taxes, it's going to be a very, very long time before recycling plastic is more price efficient than making new plastic. If we don't want our environment to be filled with the stuff, we're going to need to regulate plastic production and disposal pretty heavily.
This assumes that we're going to wean off of oil before it disappears, which... In the US and other developed countries, maybe. But there are large swaths of the world where renewables are still a...
This assumes that we're going to wean off of oil before it disappears, which... In the US and other developed countries, maybe. But there are large swaths of the world where renewables are still a pipedream, which will still drive oil scarcity well past what we've seen before when it finally does dry up.
Economically, recycled plastics are a certain bet due to the nature of their production. Oil, right now, is more valuable as fuel anyway. If that never changes, we simply run out and recycling becomes extremely important. If it does, plastics become more expensive to manufacture and recycling becomes more economically viable.
Will it be 20 years from now, or 100? Hard to say. But even our discovery of how to mine shale is quickly proving to be a rapidly shrinking stopgap, and without it, we were facing a crisis only 10 years ago. So I'm inclined to believe sooner, rather than later.
The developing world is actually MORE likely to bypass fossil-fuel dependence than the developed world is. Renewables are objectively better energy sources for weak states. They're decentralized,...
But there are large swaths of the world where renewables are still a pipedream
The developing world is actually MORE likely to bypass fossil-fuel dependence than the developed world is. Renewables are objectively better energy sources for weak states. They're decentralized, local areas and municipalities can build them up themselves, and they don't rely on access to strategic resources that you might have to get from elsewhere. The only hard part is getting the technology and engineering knowhow in place, but those are challenges with fossil fuel based energy too.
I disagree. There is a vested interest in fossil fuels which far exceeds that of renewables, and goddamn it, it is easy to burn oil, get energy. Its the difference between machine shop to learn an...
I disagree. There is a vested interest in fossil fuels which far exceeds that of renewables, and goddamn it, it is easy to burn oil, get energy. Its the difference between machine shop to learn an engine, and a 4-year degree to learn solar, hydro, wind or a PHD for nuclear.
Take a look at China's explosive growth on the back of petroleum and you'll see exactly what is already happening in Africa.
China's explosive growth has been on the back of coal more than petroleum. And they're also rapidly adopting nuclear and renewables at a way faster clip than the developed world has. They have the...
China's explosive growth has been on the back of coal more than petroleum. And they're also rapidly adopting nuclear and renewables at a way faster clip than the developed world has. They have the ability to do this specifically because they don't have as many sunk costs into fossil fuels. They're able to electrify from scratch.
If we end up burning most or all of our remaining oil, plastic pollution is going to be the least of our concerns: proven reserves are about double what's been burned since 1850.
If we end up burning most or all of our remaining oil, plastic pollution is going to be the least of our concerns: proven reserves are about double what's been burned since 1850.
Perhaps, I don't know nearly enough about those industries to know at what point it might start making recycling plastic economical. I've seen some interesting claims before that eventually it...
Perhaps, I don't know nearly enough about those industries to know at what point it might start making recycling plastic economical.
I've seen some interesting claims before that eventually it will become profitable to "mine" landfills and treat garbage almost like a new type of "ore" to extract valuable materials from.
I don't think this follows. If the potential for new plastic runs out, we're not making the recycled plastics cheaper, we're just getting rid of the cheaper options. The recycled ones are still...
Recycled plastics will eventually be more appealing and affordable than they are now, for the simple reason that petroleum is a limited resource and plastics are too damn useful to disappear entirely.
I don't think this follows. If the potential for new plastic runs out, we're not making the recycled plastics cheaper, we're just getting rid of the cheaper options. The recycled ones are still expensive, we're just making packaging more expensive in general.
That said, a LOT of our plastic use is actually of very limited utility and we only do it because it's so cheap we don't have to think about it. In some cases, it's actually causing disutility. I hate cocktail straw. HATE them. And I resent that I can't just order a whisky at most bars without having it come with a side of sea-turtle choking thrown in.
Will they be there to recycle? Unlike metals and glass, plastics have limits to how many times they can be recycled, and I don't see recycled plastics becoming the norm unless we simply can't make...
Recycled plastics will eventually be more appealing and affordable than they are now, for the simple reason that petroleum is a limited resource and plastics are too damn useful to disappear entirely.
Will they be there to recycle? Unlike metals and glass, plastics have limits to how many times they can be recycled, and I don't see recycled plastics becoming the norm unless we simply can't make anymore.
There is also ample evidence and studies that recycling programs actually create a greater carbon footprint than they save. Japan I think did a study and found the only two things worth bulk...
There is also ample evidence and studies that recycling programs actually create a greater carbon footprint than they save. Japan I think did a study and found the only two things worth bulk recycling were cardboard and heavy metals, it wasn't worth running the extra truck around for recycled materials, the sorting and other things going in versus raw materials. And this is Japan, Japan societally is very organized and disciplined about sorting and properly recycling everything, that should be the most efficient it gets really. I imagine in places like the US where a lot of recyclable stuff ends up in the trash and non-recyclable material thrown in the recycling its even less efficient.
Recycling isn't about reducing carbon emissions, it's about not filling the environment with rubbish. Carbon isn't the only pollutant that matters, and it's arguably a lot easier to deal with than...
Recycling isn't about reducing carbon emissions, it's about not filling the environment with rubbish. Carbon isn't the only pollutant that matters, and it's arguably a lot easier to deal with than things like microplastics and heavy metals.
they are, but i mean... there's just not a lot that can take the place of plastics, to be honest. plastic is extremely versatile in ways most other materials cannot be; even a mixture of...
they are, but i mean... there's just not a lot that can take the place of plastics, to be honest. plastic is extremely versatile in ways most other materials cannot be; even a mixture of alternative materials would, i'm guessing, probably not be able to replace everything plastic can do due to things like demand; and it's also cheaper to manufacture, generally, with new plastic than recycled plastic (which the article touches on). so while plastic is the issue, it's really hard to actually fix because the best alternative all around to plastic is literally recycled plastic--but the infrastructure doesn't really exist to recycle plastic on the level needed, because we've also historically sent most of it to china because selling to china is one of the only ways that recycling is able to be cost effective.
or to make a long story short: yes, but for a variety of reasons, the best alternative after plastic is probably recycled plastic, which obviously doesn't really help the situation.
What about all the substances we used to use before we started using plastic for everything? Glass, metal, paper, cardboard, cotton, and so on. Soft drink used to come in glass bottles. Milk used...
there's just not a lot that can take the place of plastics, to be honest.
What about all the substances we used to use before we started using plastic for everything? Glass, metal, paper, cardboard, cotton, and so on. Soft drink used to come in glass bottles. Milk used to come in glass bottles, and then cardboard boxes. A lot of food that currently comes in plastic containers used to come in tin cans or glass jars. Coffee cups used to be made of crockery, and waxed cardboard. Nappies/Diapers used to be made of cotton. Clothing used to be made of wool and cotton. And so on. There are lots of uses of plastic which are purely optional and could be replaced tomorrow, just by going back to what we used to do.
There are some uses of plastic which would be harder to adapt to other materials, but it's not impossible - just more expensive and more labour-intensive. We can do it if we decide to.
the additional expenses and labor-intensive nature is actually why this reversion you're talking about will not happen without something like government intervention. plastic is cheaper than all...
There are some uses of plastic which would be harder to adapt to other materials, but it's not impossible - just more expensive and more labour-intensive. We can do it if we decide to.
the additional expenses and labor-intensive nature is actually why this reversion you're talking about will not happen without something like government intervention. plastic is cheaper than all of that, and corporations are out here to make profits, not necessarily to make quality products or look out for the environment. some of them do as selling points, but most corporations seek the path to the most money with the least resistance, and that all (particularly with the larger corporations that would be contributing to plastic waste in a significant way) runs through plastic and will continue to run through plastic as long as they're making the calls.
I don't disagree with what you're saying; all your points are rolled up in my "we can do it if we decide to", where the "we" refers to the human race collectively, rather than you and me as...
I don't disagree with what you're saying; all your points are rolled up in my "we can do it if we decide to", where the "we" refers to the human race collectively, rather than you and me as individual consumers. I know that plastic is cheaper than, say, glass - for one thing, it's lighter, and therefore cheaper to transport. But if we, the collective human race, decide to stop using plastic, we can do it. Maybe that requires government intervention, maybe that requires consumer action, and maybe that requires other methods of expressing our collective will. But it can be done if we all decide to do it.
In a lot of cases we wouldn't even need to STOP using the plastic entirely, but could adapt to less plastic intensive use patterns. For example, suppose if rather than buying moisturizing lotion...
In a lot of cases we wouldn't even need to STOP using the plastic entirely, but could adapt to less plastic intensive use patterns.
For example, suppose if rather than buying moisturizing lotion as individual bottles, we had our own bottles and the grocery store just had vats of lotion you filled up. Or they could sell milk in bags (way waaaay less plastic than a milk jug) and you bring the bag home and pour it into your own bottle (they do this in India and probably other places as well where sanitation/garbage disposal is still not so great).
I've been to Russia and they do something similar to this. The milk comes in bags that you cut the corner off of. Then you put the bag in a reusable (plastic) holder with a handle that makes in...
I've been to Russia and they do something similar to this. The milk comes in bags that you cut the corner off of. Then you put the bag in a reusable (plastic) holder with a handle that makes in work like a normal milk jug.
My mother owned and ran a shop like this when I was a teenager. It wasn't done for environmental reasons, but for financial reasons: the idea was that it was cheaper for people to buy cleaning...
My mother owned and ran a shop like this when I was a teenager. It wasn't done for environmental reasons, but for financial reasons: the idea was that it was cheaper for people to buy cleaning products if they supplied their own containers.
Of course, the shop was mostly a tax write-off for my parents, and they transitioned the business to ladies' fashion within the first year, but... my mother started a shop selling bulk cleaning products over 30 years ago.
I've never seen that before. It seems pretty cool, though I can see it being a hassle. I forget to bring my own bag to the grocery store often enough, I don't know how good I would be about...
I've never seen that before. It seems pretty cool, though I can see it being a hassle. I forget to bring my own bag to the grocery store often enough, I don't know how good I would be about bringing containers for all of my staple goods along with me.
On the other hand, low-packaging is really appealing. I was registered to a CSA for a while and it was nice to just have all of my produce in a crate instead of each thing being individually wrapped or packaged. What was less nice was having to cook up whatever the CSA provided that week. Don't feel like potatoes? Too bad! You've got 40 fingerling potatoes to do something with.
I posted another similar article from The Atlantic a couple of weeks ago.
The most disturbing thing to me about this is that it reveals that we may not have ever really been recycling at all, and certainly not to the level that most of us believe we are. All we've been doing in reality is shipping a bunch of our garbage to China.
There's so much infrastructure and process built up around recycling, is all of it just going to end up as a farce now? Will we keep dividing up our trash, having separate pickups, etc. if it all just ends up in the same landfill?
Recycled plastics will eventually be more appealing and affordable than they are now, for the simple reason that petroleum is a limited resource and plastics are too damn useful to disappear entirely.
We just keep kicking the can down the road. Once oil gets back up above $100 a barrel and the economy actually stabilizes around it, we'll see a lot more interest in the practices, and, for whatever irs worth, the plastic isnt going anywhere.
I don't think market forces are going to take care of this one, plastic is just too cheap to make. Global plastic production uses less than 5% of our oil, and demand for oil is likely to fall in the coming decades as more and more transport is electrified. Even with hefty carbon taxes, it's going to be a very, very long time before recycling plastic is more price efficient than making new plastic. If we don't want our environment to be filled with the stuff, we're going to need to regulate plastic production and disposal pretty heavily.
This assumes that we're going to wean off of oil before it disappears, which... In the US and other developed countries, maybe. But there are large swaths of the world where renewables are still a pipedream, which will still drive oil scarcity well past what we've seen before when it finally does dry up.
Economically, recycled plastics are a certain bet due to the nature of their production. Oil, right now, is more valuable as fuel anyway. If that never changes, we simply run out and recycling becomes extremely important. If it does, plastics become more expensive to manufacture and recycling becomes more economically viable.
Will it be 20 years from now, or 100? Hard to say. But even our discovery of how to mine shale is quickly proving to be a rapidly shrinking stopgap, and without it, we were facing a crisis only 10 years ago. So I'm inclined to believe sooner, rather than later.
The developing world is actually MORE likely to bypass fossil-fuel dependence than the developed world is. Renewables are objectively better energy sources for weak states. They're decentralized, local areas and municipalities can build them up themselves, and they don't rely on access to strategic resources that you might have to get from elsewhere. The only hard part is getting the technology and engineering knowhow in place, but those are challenges with fossil fuel based energy too.
I disagree. There is a vested interest in fossil fuels which far exceeds that of renewables, and goddamn it, it is easy to burn oil, get energy. Its the difference between machine shop to learn an engine, and a 4-year degree to learn solar, hydro, wind or a PHD for nuclear.
Take a look at China's explosive growth on the back of petroleum and you'll see exactly what is already happening in Africa.
China's explosive growth has been on the back of coal more than petroleum. And they're also rapidly adopting nuclear and renewables at a way faster clip than the developed world has. They have the ability to do this specifically because they don't have as many sunk costs into fossil fuels. They're able to electrify from scratch.
If we end up burning most or all of our remaining oil, plastic pollution is going to be the least of our concerns: proven reserves are about double what's been burned since 1850.
Really? Thats quite a bit more than I thought, I'm surprised.
Perhaps, I don't know nearly enough about those industries to know at what point it might start making recycling plastic economical.
I've seen some interesting claims before that eventually it will become profitable to "mine" landfills and treat garbage almost like a new type of "ore" to extract valuable materials from.
I don't think this follows. If the potential for new plastic runs out, we're not making the recycled plastics cheaper, we're just getting rid of the cheaper options. The recycled ones are still expensive, we're just making packaging more expensive in general.
That said, a LOT of our plastic use is actually of very limited utility and we only do it because it's so cheap we don't have to think about it. In some cases, it's actually causing disutility. I hate cocktail straw. HATE them. And I resent that I can't just order a whisky at most bars without having it come with a side of sea-turtle choking thrown in.
Will they be there to recycle? Unlike metals and glass, plastics have limits to how many times they can be recycled, and I don't see recycled plastics becoming the norm unless we simply can't make anymore.
There is also ample evidence and studies that recycling programs actually create a greater carbon footprint than they save. Japan I think did a study and found the only two things worth bulk recycling were cardboard and heavy metals, it wasn't worth running the extra truck around for recycled materials, the sorting and other things going in versus raw materials. And this is Japan, Japan societally is very organized and disciplined about sorting and properly recycling everything, that should be the most efficient it gets really. I imagine in places like the US where a lot of recyclable stuff ends up in the trash and non-recyclable material thrown in the recycling its even less efficient.
Recycling isn't about reducing carbon emissions, it's about not filling the environment with rubbish. Carbon isn't the only pollutant that matters, and it's arguably a lot easier to deal with than things like microplastics and heavy metals.
they are, but i mean... there's just not a lot that can take the place of plastics, to be honest. plastic is extremely versatile in ways most other materials cannot be; even a mixture of alternative materials would, i'm guessing, probably not be able to replace everything plastic can do due to things like demand; and it's also cheaper to manufacture, generally, with new plastic than recycled plastic (which the article touches on). so while plastic is the issue, it's really hard to actually fix because the best alternative all around to plastic is literally recycled plastic--but the infrastructure doesn't really exist to recycle plastic on the level needed, because we've also historically sent most of it to china because selling to china is one of the only ways that recycling is able to be cost effective.
or to make a long story short: yes, but for a variety of reasons, the best alternative after plastic is probably recycled plastic, which obviously doesn't really help the situation.
What about all the substances we used to use before we started using plastic for everything? Glass, metal, paper, cardboard, cotton, and so on. Soft drink used to come in glass bottles. Milk used to come in glass bottles, and then cardboard boxes. A lot of food that currently comes in plastic containers used to come in tin cans or glass jars. Coffee cups used to be made of crockery, and waxed cardboard. Nappies/Diapers used to be made of cotton. Clothing used to be made of wool and cotton. And so on. There are lots of uses of plastic which are purely optional and could be replaced tomorrow, just by going back to what we used to do.
There are some uses of plastic which would be harder to adapt to other materials, but it's not impossible - just more expensive and more labour-intensive. We can do it if we decide to.
FYI: @suspended
the additional expenses and labor-intensive nature is actually why this reversion you're talking about will not happen without something like government intervention. plastic is cheaper than all of that, and corporations are out here to make profits, not necessarily to make quality products or look out for the environment. some of them do as selling points, but most corporations seek the path to the most money with the least resistance, and that all (particularly with the larger corporations that would be contributing to plastic waste in a significant way) runs through plastic and will continue to run through plastic as long as they're making the calls.
I don't disagree with what you're saying; all your points are rolled up in my "we can do it if we decide to", where the "we" refers to the human race collectively, rather than you and me as individual consumers. I know that plastic is cheaper than, say, glass - for one thing, it's lighter, and therefore cheaper to transport. But if we, the collective human race, decide to stop using plastic, we can do it. Maybe that requires government intervention, maybe that requires consumer action, and maybe that requires other methods of expressing our collective will. But it can be done if we all decide to do it.
In a lot of cases we wouldn't even need to STOP using the plastic entirely, but could adapt to less plastic intensive use patterns.
For example, suppose if rather than buying moisturizing lotion as individual bottles, we had our own bottles and the grocery store just had vats of lotion you filled up. Or they could sell milk in bags (way waaaay less plastic than a milk jug) and you bring the bag home and pour it into your own bottle (they do this in India and probably other places as well where sanitation/garbage disposal is still not so great).
I've been to Russia and they do something similar to this. The milk comes in bags that you cut the corner off of. Then you put the bag in a reusable (plastic) holder with a handle that makes in work like a normal milk jug.
I don't know how widespread of a concept it is, but some of my family goes to this store that does exactly that: https://kootenaybiz.com/bizblog/article/waste_not_want_not_at_zero_waste_fullfill_market_in_kimberley
You bring in your own containers and fill them with shampoo, cleaning products, etc.
My mother owned and ran a shop like this when I was a teenager. It wasn't done for environmental reasons, but for financial reasons: the idea was that it was cheaper for people to buy cleaning products if they supplied their own containers.
Of course, the shop was mostly a tax write-off for my parents, and they transitioned the business to ladies' fashion within the first year, but... my mother started a shop selling bulk cleaning products over 30 years ago.
FYI: @NaraVara
I've never seen that before. It seems pretty cool, though I can see it being a hassle. I forget to bring my own bag to the grocery store often enough, I don't know how good I would be about bringing containers for all of my staple goods along with me.
On the other hand, low-packaging is really appealing. I was registered to a CSA for a while and it was nice to just have all of my produce in a crate instead of each thing being individually wrapped or packaged. What was less nice was having to cook up whatever the CSA provided that week. Don't feel like potatoes? Too bad! You've got 40 fingerling potatoes to do something with.