In all, Reuters examined 30 projects by two-dozen advanced recycling companies across three continents and interviewed more than 40 people with direct knowledge of this industry, including plastics industry officials, recycling executives, scientists, policymakers and analysts.
Most of those endeavors are agreements between small advanced recycling firms and big oil and chemicals companies or consumer brands, including ExxonMobil Corp, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Procter & Gamble Co (P&G). All are still operating on a modest scale or have closed down, and more than half are years behind schedule on previously announced commercial plans, according to the Reuters review. Three advanced recycling companies that have gone public in the last year have seen their stock prices decline since their market debuts.
Assuming @skybrian was unconvinced of the claim they were "on their way to eradicating plastic pollution". That is a massive goal. We have plastic on top of Everest and in the deepest parts of the...
Convinced of what
Assuming @skybrian was unconvinced of the claim they were "on their way to eradicating plastic pollution".
That is a massive goal. We have plastic on top of Everest and in the deepest parts of the ocean, and many avenues through which plastic works its way into nature.
I read the reply as skeptical, not negative, which makes sense in the context of the article posted. Plenty of non-profits over-promise or misrepresent themselves in some way, even if they have the best intentions.
The plausibility of recycling and individual responsibility being a recourse to pollution was a more malicious form of over-promising: corporate interests say we don't need to worry because the problems they create will be easy to fix in the future. Don't regulate or tax for negative externalities; clean coal(TM) with scrubbers are around the corner.
People can get jaded after seeing this play out over and over, and that jadedness can come across as negativity. The healthy middle grounds between defeatism and gullibility is something like "trust, but verify".
Yes, this is where I'm coming from. (And to be honest, I tend not to watch videos because I assume they are fluff. I'm looking for something more like scientific studies or GiveDirectly's research...
Yes, this is where I'm coming from. (And to be honest, I tend not to watch videos because I assume they are fluff. I'm looking for something more like scientific studies or GiveDirectly's research page.)
It looks like the Ocean Cleanup does publish research, which you can see from their blog's research category. If I were more curious then there is plenty to follow up on.
It seems to me that these "recycling" solutions are just another stop on the way to turning fossil fuels into CO2 emissions. We'd be better off turning post-consumer plastics (where their...
It seems to me that these "recycling" solutions are just another stop on the way to turning fossil fuels into CO2 emissions.
We'd be better off turning post-consumer plastics (where their consumption can't be avoided altogether) into construction materials and building with them to store the carbon, as opposed to re-cracking mixed polymers into burnable fuels.
Well, CO2 emissions are one problem but so is directly contaminating the environment with plastics. It seems like leaving more oil in the ground is a worthy goal. More efficiently using it doesn't...
Well, CO2 emissions are one problem but so is directly contaminating the environment with plastics.
It seems like leaving more oil in the ground is a worthy goal. More efficiently using it doesn't directly help (since the total amount used might just go up) but it could be part of it, along with carbon taxes.
From the article:
Are they doing any better? How do you know?
They aren’t going to say anything bad about themselves, are they? I’d be more convinced by an outside review.
Assuming @skybrian was unconvinced of the claim they were "on their way to eradicating plastic pollution".
That is a massive goal. We have plastic on top of Everest and in the deepest parts of the ocean, and many avenues through which plastic works its way into nature.
I read the reply as skeptical, not negative, which makes sense in the context of the article posted. Plenty of non-profits over-promise or misrepresent themselves in some way, even if they have the best intentions.
The plausibility of recycling and individual responsibility being a recourse to pollution was a more malicious form of over-promising: corporate interests say we don't need to worry because the problems they create will be easy to fix in the future. Don't regulate or tax for negative externalities; clean coal(TM) with scrubbers are around the corner.
People can get jaded after seeing this play out over and over, and that jadedness can come across as negativity. The healthy middle grounds between defeatism and gullibility is something like "trust, but verify".
Yes, this is where I'm coming from. (And to be honest, I tend not to watch videos because I assume they are fluff. I'm looking for something more like scientific studies or GiveDirectly's research page.)
It looks like the Ocean Cleanup does publish research, which you can see from their blog's research category. If I were more curious then there is plenty to follow up on.
Well, I’m not, in this case. I haven’t read the research.
It seems to me that these "recycling" solutions are just another stop on the way to turning fossil fuels into CO2 emissions.
We'd be better off turning post-consumer plastics (where their consumption can't be avoided altogether) into construction materials and building with them to store the carbon, as opposed to re-cracking mixed polymers into burnable fuels.
Well, CO2 emissions are one problem but so is directly contaminating the environment with plastics.
It seems like leaving more oil in the ground is a worthy goal. More efficiently using it doesn't directly help (since the total amount used might just go up) but it could be part of it, along with carbon taxes.