Recycling Doesn’t Work—and the Plastics Industry Knew It

[rangerrebew]

Kate Aronoff
 
February 26, 2024
WEASELS
Recycling Doesn’t Work—and the Plastics Industry Knew It
The industry knew decades ago that recycling was never viable in the long term, and now we’re all being poisoned by its product.
 
A Chinese laborer sorts plastic bottles in a village on the outskirts of Beijing in 2015

Hardly any plastics can be recycled. You’d be forgiven for not knowing that, given how much messaging Americans receive about the convenience of recycling old bottles and food containers—from the weekly curbside collections to the “chasing arrows” markings on food and beverage packaging. But here’s the reality: Between 1990 and 2015, some 90 percent of plastics either ended up in a landfill, were burned, or leaked into the environment. Another recent study estimates that just 5 to 6 percent are successfully recycled.

While those numbers may surprise you, these sorts of statistics aren’t news to the companies that produce plastics. For more than 30 years, the industry knew precisely how impractical it is to recycle them, according to a new report from the Center for Climate Integrity. A trade association called the Vinyl Institute concluded in a 1986 report that “recycling cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution” to plastics, as it merely prolongs the time until an item is disposed of.” Still, facing public backlash over the growing amount of plastics being incinerated and piling up in landfills, manufacturers and their lobbyists sold recycling as an easy solution, warding off potential legislation to ban or limit plastics.

https://newrepublic.com/article/179267/recycling-doesnt-work-plastics-industry-knew

[roamer_1]

Sure works with glass.

[sneakypete]

Sure works with glass.

@roamer_1

Yup!

Not to mention steel,aluminum,copper,etc,etc,etc.

I CAN'T be the only one that remembers searching roadside ditches for Pepsi and Coke bottles to take to the grocery store to get a nickel for each one.

Granted,even back then a nickel wasn't big money,but two emply soda Pepsi bottles would buy you a candy bar!

And this ain't even getting into adult recycling,which ALWAYS includes copper,as well as automobile recyclying that includes rubber,plastics,steel,aluminum,glass,tin,and who knows what else?

Yeah,I know it is next to impossible to do this if you live in a city these days due to zoning laws,but trust me,people who live in rural areas know all about auto/truck recycling.

[roamer_1]

@roamer_1

Yup!

Not to mention steel,aluminum,copper,etc,etc,etc.

I CAN'T be the only one that remembers searching roadside ditches for Pepsi and Coke bottles to take to the grocery store to get a nickel for each one.

Granted,even back then a nickel wasn't big money,but two emply soda Pepsi bottles would buy you a candy bar!

And this ain't even getting into adult recycling,which ALWAYS includes copper,as well as automobile recyclying that includes rubber,plastics,steel,aluminum,glass,tin,and who knows what else?

Yeah,I know it is next to impossible to do this if you live in a city these days due to zoning laws,but trust me,people who live in rural areas know all about auto/truck recycling.

Actually @sneakypete , in my yoot in Chicago, roadside bottles were pretty close to the same as paper route money, without any clients to deal with.

And yeah. I can't even begin to calculate all the crap I dragged down to the steelyard here, where all that recycling takes place... too include all my number one piles at the shop, and whole cars. I made a contraption once to strip aluminum out of retired power lines... The power company had truckloads of the stuff out in their yard they couldn't get rid of, so I made a pretty good deal with em.

The machine stripped the casing off and fed it into a shredder (making the plastic a #1 recyclable), and at the same time, cut the cleaned aluminum wire at every foot (making the aluminum braided wire a superior #1 aluminum)

I cleaned up on that deal.

[DB]

Sure works with glass.

It may work with glass but why? Glass is cheap to produce. All the labor and energy used to recycle glass is probably higher than making it from raw materials in the first place (I'm guessing).

And what does glass do in a landfill that causes any issues?

[roamer_1]

It may work with glass but why? Glass is cheap to produce. All the labor and energy used to recycle glass is probably higher than making it from raw materials in the first place (I'm guessing).

And what does glass do in a landfill that causes any issues?

It's pretty easy to grind right back into sand, then you can throw it anywhere you want... Or turn it back into something else.

More than that, re-use. Soft drink companies routinely washed and reused. Look at the ubiquitous Mason jar. And for years and years we routinely reused pickle jars and mayo jars. For a while there, they made em so canning lids would fit them.

Reuse is by far the best recycle.

BUT, they are heavy. I get that, and super fragile in shipping compared to plastics... And many times, back when I would climb rocks, I would drop my quart Snapple Peach tea, far down to the rocks below, and it always came out alright. Can't do that with a ball jar.

In fact, I have routinely reused Snapple jugs as water jugs - They work great! I like having a lid on things. And they would reuse for a few months, till they started getting ganky - The plastic molds eventually... When you throw em out and get another. I would not want to pack a mason jar around instead... So I get all that.

[Fishrrman]

Couldn't plastic waste be burned for power generation?

I realize that it might take a special type of boiler (combined with equipment to reduce pollution) in which to do so.

But short of finding some way to "break it down" into re-usable chemical components (which I believe is possible but is also expensive), why not...?

[Smokin Joe]

@roamer_1

Yup!

Not to mention steel,aluminum,copper,etc,etc,etc.

I CAN'T be the only one that remembers searching roadside ditches for Pepsi and Coke bottles to take to the grocery store to get a nickel for each one.

Granted,even back then a nickel wasn't big money,but two emply soda Pepsi bottles would buy you a candy bar!

And this ain't even getting into adult recycling,which ALWAYS includes copper,as well as automobile recyclying that includes rubber,plastics,steel,aluminum,glass,tin,and who knows what else?

Yeah,I know it is next to impossible to do this if you live in a city these days due to zoning laws,but trust me,people who live in rural areas know all about auto/truck recycling.

They were only worth 2 cents where I lived. That didn't stop us from making off with a shopping cart from the local grocery and coming back with it full to support our candy habits as kids.

[roamer_1]

They were only worth 2 cents where I lived. That didn't stop us from making off with a shopping cart from the local grocery and coming back with it full to support our candy habits as kids.

When I was a kid, Chicago had a bounty on bottles that was a surcharge on the retail product that made em all worth a nickel a piece. Wouldn't have been worth it for pop bottles, but beer bottles were another thing. They were everywhere in the ditches.

[Hoodat]

I CAN'T be the only one that remembers searching roadside ditches for Pepsi and Coke bottles to take to the grocery store to get a nickel for each one.

The cruelest 4-word phrase to a kid back then was 'No Deposit, No Return'.

[DB]

It's pretty easy to grind right back into sand, then you can throw it anywhere you want... Or turn it back into something else.

More than that, re-use. Soft drink companies routinely washed and reused. Look at the ubiquitous Mason jar. And for years and years we routinely reused pickle jars and mayo jars. For a while there, they made em so canning lids would fit them.

Reuse is by far the best recycle.

BUT, they are heavy. I get that, and super fragile in shipping compared to plastics... And many times, back when I would climb rocks, I would drop my quart Snapple Peach tea, far down to the rocks below, and it always came out alright. Can't do that with a ball jar.

In fact, I have routinely reused Snapple jugs as water jugs - They work great! I like having a lid on things. And they would reuse for a few months, till they started getting ganky - The plastic molds eventually... When you throw em out and get another. I would not want to pack a mason jar around instead... So I get all that.

You have to collect the bottles from virtually every home separately from the regular trash, transport them to someplace to sort them and then move them to where they can be ground up and reused. All of that is more wasteful than just putting it in the land fill.

[The_Reader_David]

Recycling works the moment it's economically viable.  This is the case with the commodities others have mentioned -- glass, aluminum, copper,... or for that matter, precious metals (you don't usually think of selling scrap jewelry, which gets melted down and made into new jewelry as recyling, but it is) -- and could work with other things in places where landfill space is expensive to access.  Cost savings from keeping stuff out of landfills could be used to subsidize the actual recycling making more sorts of recycling economically viable.  If that isn't enough to make the bottom line work, tossing stuff in a landfill is the best solution. 

It turns out that the plastic gyres in the oceans are not due to littering or careless trash disposal on ships, but to plastic recycling programs that ship plastic waste overseas to countries with cheap labor, where the tiny fraction that's easy to pick over and clean actually gets recycled, and the rest gets dumped in a river to make its way to the ocean.

[roamer_1]

You have to collect the bottles from virtually every home separately from the regular trash, transport them to someplace to sort them and then move them to where they can be ground up and reused. All of that is more wasteful than just putting it in the land fill.

Which is why I said reuse first... And a bouty on em, like mentioned upthread, seems to work pretty good, and provides an income source for low-income and kids.

I get what you're saying, but having dug up plenty of old farm-side landfills from the turn of the century, and understanding the peril garbage of all kinds represents to wildlife and particularly livestock, I'd just as soon it was sand again.

The gathering I'll admit. And maybe it ain't worth the sorting for color... Well then run em through the grinder and forget about it.