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US States Banned From Exporting Trash To China Are Drowning In Plastic
hackingbear writes "Not only we depend on Chinese labor for the imports but we also depend on them to clean up our mess. Being green is getting a lot harder for eco-friendly states in the U.S., thanks to the country's dependency on overrun Chinese recycling facilities since the start of China's Green Fence policy this year. Recycling centers in Oregon and Washington recently stopped accepting clear plastic "clamshell" containers used for berries, plastic hospital gowns and plastic bags, while California's farmers are grappling with what to do with the 50,000 to 75,000 tons of plastic they use each year. The Green Fence initiative bans bales of plastic that haven't been cleaned or thoroughly sorted. That type of recyclable material, which costs more to recycle, often it ends up in China's landfills, which have become a source of recent unrest in the country's south. For every ton of reusable plastic, China has received many more tons of random trash, some of it toxic. That has helped build 'trash mountains' so high they sometimes bury people alive. For a country facing environmental crisis after environmental crisis, it is no longer tenable to accept US waste exports."
Guys, lots of other countries use incinerators for non-recyclable stuff. You get rid of it, and get electricity and heat as a bonus. Modern incinerators are so clean, they rarely even emit visible steam.
Why is the US so allergic to incinerators?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Filabot craves plastic!
The answer is pretty obvious. Load up all the trash onto a rocket and launch it into space. Problems solved forever.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
They just need to be more thoroughly sorted
Wrong.
Household waste plastic other than clear plastic PET is not worth recycling. The plastic lobby has pulled the wool over your eyes. Plastic can be easily recycled when sorted, is like saying you can easily walk to work when someone gives you a piggyback ride.
Because there's gold in them thar ships. If you look at the CBS report 80% of the steel used in Bangladesh comes from ship dismantling. The guy who owns the yard is doing well even though he has kids working in his yards. That was shot in 2007, I wonder how many of those kids are still alive today?
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Depends on where you dig from. I always heard that one as a kid, especially when digging a deep hole in the backyard. However, if you go from NY through the center of the earth to the other side, you wind up in the Indian Ocean not far from the southwest corner of Australia.
Perhaps there's an even better way of dealing with the problem...
Ezekiel 23:20
Isn't it all hydrocarbons anyways? Why not just burn it in coal power plants?
That's basically what the Dutch do, and they're the golden child of recycling. They found that burning plastic is more economical than recycling it. They also recycle all sorts of metals, but after incineration.
http://www.triplepundit.com/2010/06/a-tour-of-amsterdam%E2%80%99s-waste-to-energy-plant/
Most people do actually pay for their garbage removal. The cost is just usually lumped in with some other bill and isn't variable depending on how much they generate. I know my waste disposal fee is lumped in with the sewage and water. The annoying thing where I live is that we don't have curb side recycling at all. We have to sort it and then go find a municipal container that we can cram it into. So as a community our recycling is even less efficient because each individual has to drive to the silly containers.
My question is: In a time where everyone is screaming, "Green!!!", why is every little object packaged in a large plastic case 10 times the size of the little object?
It's a theft deterrent. Keeps the dirty hippies from stealing stuff by being environmentally unfriendly and too large to stuff in their pants.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
Handy map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antipodes
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
The 10 cent deposit in Michigan factored into college party etiquette. If you were going to a party and brought your own beer, it was considered polite to leave your empties with the host. If the hosts were able to wake from their hangover the next day, they'd return the empties and have enough for breakfast.
At least that what a friend tells me.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
In Seattle we put food-soiled paper in the yard waste, along with chicken bones, pizza boxes, and seafood shells.
It all gets turned into compost here. Which is then used to grow more food.
Adapt. Pollution has a cost.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --