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Plastic Recycling Is a Problem Consumers Can't Solve (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: University of Georgia engineering professor Jenna Jambeck said that indeed, part of the reason China is now refusing to process American and European plastic is that so many people tossed waste into the wrong bin, resulting in a contaminated mix difficult or impossible to recycle. In a paper published last week in Science Advances, she and her colleagues calculated that between now and 2030, 111 million metric tons of potentially recyclable plastic will be diverted from Chinese plants into landfills.
Jambeck said that China used to turn a profit by importing the stuff from American and European recycling bins and turning it into useful material. But as other countries attempted to simplify things for consumers with "single stream" recycling -- think of one big blue bin for paper, plastic, metal and glass -- the material reaching China became too contaminated with nonrecyclable items. The instructions to put everything in one bin seemed appealing but made it much easier to do recycling wrong.
Jambeck said that China used to turn a profit by importing the stuff from American and European recycling bins and turning it into useful material. But as other countries attempted to simplify things for consumers with "single stream" recycling -- think of one big blue bin for paper, plastic, metal and glass -- the material reaching China became too contaminated with nonrecyclable items. The instructions to put everything in one bin seemed appealing but made it much easier to do recycling wrong.
Obviously, AI can solve this problem. It can't be hard to switch one of these Go playing AI machines to handle sorting recyclables.
What about using a combination of AI and spectrum analysis?
Table-ized A.I.
If it behooves one consumer to empty all his household trash into one bin, even to the point of saving the poor bastard a mere 27 seconds at the County Landfill, some selfish bastard will ass it up for all humanity.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
My life is HORRIBLE. I have to actually look at the thing Iâ(TM)m throwing away to figure out which bin to put it in! Like, paper goes in one bin and plastic in a *different* one. Can you believe it?? And they want me to RINSE OFF THE FOOD before I chuck it! I canâ(TM)t believe it.
To hell with it, Iâ(TM)m just going to put everything in the trash. Iâ(TM)ve flown across the country and looked out the window, thereâ(TM)s *plenty* of empty space out there we could just dump trash in. Weâ(TM)d never fill it up in a million years!
Everything will go back to common elements. Eventually. What is there to solve? And why is this a /. Story?
Seriously, now is the time for Robotics to be brought up to speed on separating goods. All metals are easy to take out but then you are still left with plastics, glass, and paper as well as items made from assortments of these (think TV). Robotics can solve a lot of this,with a bit of human labor to act on QA.
BUT, what is important, is to keep the items HERE. We paid for the elements. Keep them here to produce with.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Why don't we color code plastics by type? Wouldn't that make automated sorting trivial?
By getting rid of single stream recycling, as well as deposits on beverage containers.
The primary recycling organization in British Columbia, Canada, and still sell this stuff to China. Why? Because the level of contamination is within their standards.
This is achieved through a couple of mechanisms:
First, we do not have single stream recycling. People are forced to sort their plastic containers from their glass from their paper from their organics. It's easy, wherever you are in public that has recycling bins, there's always a bin for each.
Secondly, there are deposits on all non-essential beverage containers. Pretty much everything other than milk has a deposit ranging from $0.05 for a 355ml pop can to $0.20 for 2L pop bottles. There's also an environmental tax that's collected at the time of sale, ranging between $0.01 for the can to $0.16 for a gable-top juice carton. This also extends to the stupidity that is bottled water, and so forth, and represents an enormous portion of the plastic waste.
Thirdly, beer bottles are collected, washed, and refilled. Breweries big and small can all sign up for the program, and get clean Industry Standard Bottles delivered to them. They paste on their labels, fill, and cap with custom twist-off caps, and sell to the consumer. On average, a bottle will make it through the system 10 times before it breaks or is lost.
So yeah, it can be done, people just need to get off their asses and do it.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
The Chinese Recycling industry was born from the trade imbalance. The shipping container industry needed to offset the cost of return trips to Chinese ports to offset the inbound goods, which depressed the price of outbound trips (like what happens with Uhaul trips out of Florida or into California). At the same time, you had municipal recycling programs with too much trash, so it suddenly became real cheap to âoeoutsourceâ and donâ(TM)t ask questions. The trash ended up in landfills in some other country, but the munis didnâ(TM)t care, they were getting subsidies for their recycling programs. Now that the US imports are in decline, the logistics donâ(TM)t make economic sense anymore, so itâ(TM)s time for the programs to scale back.
We have a WINNER here.
Far too many people really do not stay up on this and believe in all the BS that they are fed. You obviously stay up on what is happening.
And what most people do not realize is that it was CHINA ITSELF that pushed for single stream.
The labels Whole Foods uses for waste bins in its dining areas are totally confusing. I don't see how any of its customer discards can be recycled or composted.
All in one bin, and they no longer accept glass.
Sorting out valuables from trash should take a lot of labors, right?
So we have been blaming the Chinese taking over all of our American jobs. Now, the Chinese don't want these garbage scavenging jobs, then my question is why don't Americans take these jobs if they are so desperately trying to win back jobs from China.
Stop blaming others when you are being picky! Hypocrisy at its most ugly form!
The non-obvious solution: stop recycling paper.
Metal and plastics are relatively easy to separate.
Paper = wood = carbon. We keep talking about carbon sequestration. How about burying it in a landfill and planting replacement trees to cycle yet more carbon dioxide in to oxygen?
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
We also need to put deposits on metal, glass, and plastics. If we did, then ppl would actually recycle the main core.
As to paper, and some of the plastics, bio-waste it. The paper comes from trees so not a big deal if we burn it. Some of the plastics can be burned cleaned, or recycled.
Robotics really is here and it is long past time to put it to work on things like this. Esp. with taking apart TVs, Computers, and all electronics. Hell, we sell MILLIONS of iphones. They are ideal for robotic recycling. At he least, crush, and melt out the good elements.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The recycling bins LOOK the same and when in a hurry people DON'T READ the label.
Shape the bottle bin like a bottle, the paper bin like a tree, the glass bin transparent
I used to have curbside recycling service. I'd separate my recyclables and put them in paper bags in a bin, and someone would come haul them off. Then we went 'single stream' and for some reason I can't have curbside service anymore. Annoying, but whatever.
So I bring it to the recycling center myself. I used to put my #1 plastic in one bin, #2 in another, and so on. The number is printed on the item, so it's easy. But then there were opaque rules about certain kinds of #1 in this bin and other kinds in that, the formerly #2 bin now just says 'milk jugs' so I guess they don't take other kinds of #2? And now they've gotten to the point where most of it goes in one big bin which I assume just gets dumped somewhere.
They used to make us separate brown, green, and clear glass, but it turned out that all they do with it is crush it into little bits and bury it in a big pit in the landfill, so why bother sorting by color?
The thing that's really discouraging to me is that I'm perfectly willing to participate in a recycling system by putting forth some effort to rinse, sort, and even transport my trash, but why should I even bother with all of this if the 'recycling center' is just an unnecessarily elaborate front-end for the dump?
For starters, apply a tax to items packaged with non-biodegradable plastic. Exceptions for certain types of products as required. This will encourage packaging to be redesigned to utilize plastics that can be processed along with compost. Gradually increase the tax until biodegradable packaging becomes the norm. For those non-biodegradable plastics that are still required, a tax / refund-upon-return should be applied to assist paying for post-consumer recycling. Adding design elements to make such plastics easy to identify, such as a specific color, would also be a good idea.
Some packaging would no longer be available. Oh well, it is just packaging and does not represent much of a loss. For example, consider plastic retainers for 6-packs of canned beer. We would just have to revert back to a cardboard box - only a small sacrifice.
Note that I am referring to packaging - not final products. Such requirements on final products would unnecessarily restrict innovation. Packaging represents the majority of waste and is where we should start.
Then use Changing World TechnologiesThermal Depolymerization.
Its the workers at the Waste Areas who throw everything in together...need to get better Managers there
I was never a religious recycler, but I did take the time to sort my garbage into the appropriate bins - at the time, there were three categories.
One morning I was running late, but I managed to get the bins out to the collection point... only to see the garbage truck pick up each separate bin and empty the contents into the same holding tank on the back. After that, I just didn't bother separating anything.
Americans really, really don't like being told what to do. It's a cultural thing with us. It's pounded into our skulls by media from the time we grow up. This isn't to say we aren't constantly told what to do or that we don't listen. We do what our bosses say and overwhelmingly identify with hierarchical religions. But that's sort of the problem. In all the major aspects of our lives we have to do what we're told. That means when it comes to stuff like recycling where we're given leeway (since it hasn't really mattered to the ones in charge) we're hyper sensitive to being told what to do.
I think maybe if we had a little more say in the big stuff (Politics, Religion, Economics) you could get us on board for the small stuff like recycling. But good luck getting our ruling class to give any ground on that...
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Bury the plastic and put that carbon back in the ground where it belongs. Don't recycle it. Throw that shit in the ground. Carbon wants to be free so we have to capture it and bury it where even republicans can't find it. What would Jesus do? He would fucking throw plastic away. Or maybe turn it into something else... I don't know. That's another subject.
Make the recycle information MACHINE READABLE and put(print) it everywhere!
This would not solve human laziness, but it would prevent unnecessary information loss after disassembly with minimal cost increase.
And this would change 'Not recyclable unless I put this fscking mess into gas chromatography - practically not recyclable' into 'Just need more labor, I would adjust the price accordingly' recyclable material.
This would even help 'willing to recycle but confused(I'm not sure if this jell-o top film is vinyl or plastic?)' consumer, because practically everyone now have universal barcode reading device - smartphone.
If all you make with blockchain is a paradigms, you're doing it wrong.
Nobody could do the reducto et absurdum like Penn & Teller, and here's their episode on Recycling.
https://vimeo.com/216389085
That's a fault of the county landfill. The fuckers here (TN) are only open 3 days a week from 8-10am and 4-6pm and they charge you money to dump it. No idea where the hell you live that you can dump your trash in 27s (I'm sure that was just hyperbole). Dumping my trash is what my fucking taxes are for, I'm not paying twice. I already have a personal use for my print paper & cardboard stuff (I make fuel logs) so since there's no identifying info in my trash, I ride my 4 wheeler with trailer down there at 1am when I get off work, and pile it all right at the front gate in the middle of the driveway where the trash panda can't even pull his truck in to open it. I usually leave a note taped to the outside telling them exactly why that's being done. If I have just a bag or 2 then I'll driveby fling it over the fence. They ain't said shit, haven't fixed shit, and don't give me any shit.
Again, this is all the dump's fault. Just 12 years ago every dump in the county was open all day every day. Many had an attendent during daylight. Changing that was just some arbitrary decision some committee made.
This is completely besides the actual recycling argument of TFA. If these redneck sumbitches can't even run a dump, there is no way adding recycling to it is gonna go any better. The best we have is metal in this bin, cardboard in this bin, everything else over there, and don't even fucking think about leaving wood or wood products.
Thier lack of competency does not demand care on my part.
I am such an asshole that I actually forego my bottle and can deposits by destroying them myself so no one else gets my "environmental" tax. I have an old industrial shredder I recycled from a closed (I really am pro-recycling) factory. It's probably about a 1950 model. This sucker is about the size of a washing machine and will grind up most metals and glass into powder so everything from my trash cans go straight into it. I don't throw food waste into the trash cause it stanks and attracts bugs, but unnatural wood (pressboard, not brush, etc), paper, everything else does. Every month it gets the oil from my oil changes thrown in there too. It helps grease the mechanisms. Anyway, what the trash truck gets is a can full of small pebbles. Only once have they failed to take my can of pebbles, so I emptied that in the ditch in front of the garabge truck garage, can and all, and took an empty can they had by thier curb.
Moral of the story is don't fuck with me. I'm retired (at 44 son, go Army!) so I have all the time in the world to troll people for real. You WILL NOT make me do something I don't want to do. Even something as trivial as this. I'll die first and I project that aura to everyone around me. They know I'm serious.
I'm not anti-recycling. I do it to fuck with the government. There are ways to positively persuade me to change my mind. The single stream portion is non-negotiable though. Large items I understand. I have never even wanted to throw a fridge in there because I can take that to the scrap yard and they give me the money for it. The landfill expects me to give them money to take it. Fuck that. But what I am not doing is taking the time to wash my trash, peel those damned labels off of those damned beer bottles, or any of that other nonsense. I pay my taxes. They should hire folks to do that. It's a jobs program so it's a win-win for both of us. I know taxes will go up, and I've never minded provided you don't ask for my money AND labor. Others pay me for my labor. You, the government, don't get it for free.
I live in Howard County, MD. Originally the recycle stuff was to be sorted by us in separate bags and picked up that way from the blue recycle containers by the county. A few years ago they went to "All Together Now" which meant all the stuff was mixed up together in the recycle containers. This devalued the recycle stream to the point where the recovery companies that were supposed to be able to sell the recycled items as a product couldn't. Most went out of business. It probably sounded great to the politicians that thought this crap up but it made most recycle streams unusable for most recycle processing. Now the county is drowning in the stuff, most of the processors are out of business and there are repeated stories in the local news about recycle material being diverted to incineration and such just to get rid of it.
This is what happens when political people become "creative". God help us.
bob@Osprey:~>
I was never a religious recycler, but I did take the time to sort my garbage into the appropriate bins - at the time, there were three categories.
As a Unitarian, I'm a religious recycler. My town (rural northern AZ) has multiple-stream recycling, but all plastic and metals go into one bin, so an AI would have to classify plastics and separate metallics.
Down in the desert, the city of Phoenix has single-stream recycling, which is currently sorted manually. An AI would have a tougher time doing this classification, but that would save a huge amount of labor and make the operation truly economic.
Phoenix has had several instances over the years of murderers literally throwing away their victims, in the municipal collection. So far as I know, no body sent to the landfill has ever been successfully found. One small advantage of Phoenix' manual-classification recycling system is that when a stupid albeit socially conscious thug throws a victim into a recycling bin, the body has always been found the next day.
NEAR each house? You mean you don't have your OWN bins? Oh that's a deal breaker for me. I can barely get my bins to the curb on Monday morning and it's like, 4m from my front door. There is no way I'm pushing some carts down to a shared location. I'm lazy. I'm what sanitation engineers have to plan for and there's a lot of us.
Phoenix has had several instances over the years of murderers literally throwing away their victims, in the municipal collection.
Those could be sorted into a general "compostable" bin.
Not really, game theory and visual recognition are two different things. The first has a specific solution that takes a ton of processing and machine learning can simplify this processing, the second is hard enough that humans can't even figure it out some times, much less train a machine learning program to a high degree of accuracy. Machine learning should reach this level but we have a lot of work (and $s) before it is there.
Go and Chess are good because we spent time and effort to make it easy. The computer doesn't have to figure out which pieces are on which spaces, because specially built boards or pieces are used - machine vision portion is off the table. Then they have massive databases that are optimally indexed with positions and patterns - search tree is radically pruned. We wouldn't be where we are today in machine learning with gaming AIs unless we spent time figuring out clever ways to simplify the problem. Why not use the same tricks for recycling?
Want to make it simple to sort EVERYTHING in a recycle bin? Pass a law that says you have to pay an extra 5% in taxes unless you put a QR code on all your packaging indicating its material composition. If you don't want to change your packaging, no problem, you are contributing money to have people hand sort recycling. If you put a QR code on packaging, machines will be able to scan and instantly identify what it is they are holding, and you get to avoid paying an extra tax.
A lot of effort has already been spent writing image recognition software that can read QR codes. Slap them on everything and let the robot sort em out.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Perhaps, just perhaps, you don't actually care. I mean, at first I thought you did because in the 2 top positioned threads you have posts advocating that AI sorting was the answer and that's what we should be doing. You even got pissy when someone said your idea was dumb.
Now you're here playing The Dickhead's Advocate. So which is it? Do you think AI can do the job or not?
They could easily. In Germany recycling is something of a national pride thing. Everyone recycles and those who don't are broadly considered low lifes and are sometimes even publicly shamed, whether they look like a bum or wear a tie and suit.
Collecting bottles is a thing for lowest income people and the homeless and it adds a strange sort of social integration. People leave their bottles standing next to the rubbish bins (which are often recycling bins) do that those who need the few cents can pick them up without having to go through the garbage.
Everyone, and I mean everyone serrates paper from organic from plastic waste. Even the kids learn it in school.
Truth is, Germany could go from this to a near zero waste society in a matter of months and not even skip a beat because of this broad spanning awareness.
So recycling is a thing consumers can easily solve, they just need to be aware of it. This is by and large a environmental awareness thing and in Germany lefties/greens and conservatives are pretty much on the same page with this issue.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Guess not, the mega corps profit is the most important. Just shove the responsibility and work over on the end consumer.
No the metal can be automatically separated from the plastic using electromagnetism. Firstly remove all the ferrous metal with a large electromagnet. Secondly remove all the none ferrous metal from the plastic using electromagnetic induction which makes the metal magnetic and can then be removed magnetically.
OK, so not entirely wrong, we have sort of got suckered into the fallacy, that "We Do Recycling" == "We Are Green". What we REALLY should do more than anything else, is reducing the production of stuff that gets thrown away; then, change production, retail etc and educate people to maximise reuse.
Businesses save money by being able to give away plastic items that will be thrown away immediately - and in the end, it is society as a whole that has to pay the bill - which means throught taxes (which rich people tend to avoid, too). IOW, businessess are never going to fix this problem voluntarily - to them giving up profit is the ultimate sacrifice - so government has to step in and make it mandatory, possibly even by telling them exactly how. It isn't rocket science either - not many years ago, it was the norm in many countries to reuse all glass bottles and only recycle when they broke.
Seriously. Socialism is killing our planet. Want to fix this? End socialist garbage policies. Stop the "free" pickup and give taxpayers back their money.
They will be faced with either spending lots on private trash service or becoming extremely good stewards of the environment.
Oh, and don't go easy on the companies providing trash/landfill service, they also must be good environmental stewards.
You would be surprised how little waste people make when they pay for every pound. And you'd be surprised how much more excited people are about recycling when the easiest and most desirable recyclable items aren't just free pickup, but pay if you do a good job sorting them.
I have learned just the opposite about why China refuses recycling. Its because so many recycle and so few companies are actually finding good uses for it.
I know in the US its a real feel good moment for people to sit that recycling out on the curb. Of course on a windy day those cans tip over and pollute the countryside with plastics but that's another story. In the end much of it still ends up being waste that is never recycle because not enough if it is in demand to be used in manufacturing. Let's face it, recycling plastics doesn't really do anything to fix the problem with plastics which is they won't degrade and create more plastic products even with recycled plastics doesn't help that.
And you fell into the trap of not knowing what you saw. Modern recycling trucks have separate holding tanks but just one chute which direct the contents of your bins into the correct holding tank.
What you say has been repeated so many times it has become an urban legend by now.
I work at a big call center and we have a cafeteria downstairs. They used to have labels on the various disposal bins: Trash, Recycling, composte.
All the bins were filled with the exact same stuff. No effort was made to sort by anyone (except uselessly I usually did).
Now they literally put big pictures next to all of the bins of what should go into them. They still look exactly the same on the inside though. I see people walk up, looking at the giant pictures the whole way, then just toss everything in whatever bin is closest to them.
They see that the Pacific Ocean is gratis (zero cost economically) and that the infractors can dispose the garbage to this giant trash (the Pacific Ocean).
So, they are killing passively the fishes, orcs, whales, dolphins, ... for many years and generations that this giant garbage is present.
Stop creating single use plastic to tackle contamination. If all plastic is recyclable plastic then it make the use of plastic relatively more acceptable.
And what about sorting at the recycling center? Can nobody come up with a process to sort out problematic material at the recycling center?
Recycling is good. But let's face it, if you add to many steps to what would otherwise be just dropping something into a can, people won't do it. If you expect people to wash their trash, remove any labels, check for markings and carefully separate it instead of just throwing it away, you will be disappointed. That's like expecting people to do the entire Thriller dance before taking a leak - making something incredibly fast and easy more complex and time-consuming than people are generally willing to put up with.
Expecting the consumer to do it is pointless. There's no way you can have a system of the consumer carefully sorting and separating materials, without mistakes or laziness. And expect it to work.
I'm not sure what the answer is (Wall-E? Robots maybe?) but this ain't it.
Switching to Biodegradable Plastic will be also a good solution to this plastic problem. In addition, Micro-plastic contamination is also increased in the ocean, which can lead to a serious problem. Regards: Kaviraj k Blogger at https://healthy-natural-food-blog.com/
I would imagine plastic waste would make excellent fuel for incinerators. i doubt the incinerator would care if it's number 2 or number 8, it's all hydrocarbons.
AI and Robotics take time to make. America has an excess of H1B engineers. Offer them citizenship in exchange for sorting garbage. These are all geniuses, the incentives offered should reduce project turn around time.
Is there data around recycling volume / adoption rates by household when a region switches from multi-stream to single-stream? A reasonable hypothesis is that more people recycle overall when it's easier, even if some folks get it wrong.
Where I live, recycling is mandatory, and the biggest scam I've ever seen, and does nothing for the environment.
Our single-stream recycling program requires that we clean all glass and plastic containers and completely remove all labels, whether they be plastic labels wrapped around a soda bottle or paper labels fixed to a milk jug with adhesive. There can be no food at all left in plastic or glass containers, which means I have to actually run my recyclable containers through the dish washer or wash them out by hand before I throw them away.
Paper products cannot be contaminated with food of any kind, so pizza boxes have to be thrown in the trash. But then, there's a $50 fine for throwing away recyclable material, so all the pizza delivery places in town no longer deliver, because people don't want to get fined for throwing away cardboard.
It's a dumpster fire that doesn't save any energy due to the energy that must be expended cleaning everything, and time wasted removing adhesive labels. I'm sure some public official is getting rich off of it though, since our town laws prohibit disclosure of where the money goes that comes in from selling the recyclable material.
Typical New York corruption...
> "... part of the reason China is now refusing to process American and European plastic is that so many people tossed waste into the wrong bin, resulting in a contaminated mix difficult or impossible to recycle"
Baloney - it's about their costs based on how they set up their operations. Take plastic bags for example - these CAN be recycled but they have so much trapped air it makes the process less efficient and less profitable. So they throw it in the dump and this is why only something like 10% of all plastic is recycled.
Suggestion: dump it all into a pyrolytic chamber and boil off the plastic to oil. Leftovers are carbon black plus whatever really was not recyclable.
I guess I agree with the OP - consumers can't/won't solve this. Bring on the garbage-sorting robots!
Plastic recycling is a problem that can't be solved by markets. Environmentalists need to put their money where their mouth is and stop trying to convince people recycling can be profitable. Tax your community to pay for it, or stop requiring them to waste their time with bins.
Separating plastic from metal is rather easy for a large portion of what's in there. You can use the difference in density and the fact that many metals are magnetic to reduce the amount that requires any intelligence to classify.
The main issue tends to be separating paper from plastic. And really dirty recyclables from the rest of the waste.
For me personally, it's gotten to the point where what is and isn't recyclable and what goes where has gotten ridiculously complicated. We can't even assume that just because the plastic has a particular type that it can be recycled.
I miss the days of multi-stream recycling as it was a lot less confusing. Paper, metal and glass are extremely easy to figure out how to classify. And plastics were usually just a matter of figuring out what type they were and tossing them in the trash if they weren't on the list.
But now, it's not just that the plastic has to be the right type, it also has to be something that the machinery can deal with. So, you're stuck with a ton of rules about things like that size of lids and some things may or may not be recyclable depending upon whether or not they've been properly cleaned.
And, to make matters worse, we've got the garbage collectors rooting around in our trash to see that we haven't thrown away things that should be either recycled or composted. Making things even more of a headache.
We separate ours but the (newly changed) instructions of what goes into the blue recycling bin are as difficult to understand as ever. 'No packaging materials' is one instruction rendered meaningless by the creativity of the companies making products... If a plastic/paper package can be separated by me into just paper and some thick but transparent plastic...then what? Recycle one? Both? Neither? Just one example of the puzzle the consumer is faced with.
So, they are killing passively the fishes, orcs, whales, dolphins, ... for many years and generations that this giant garbage is present.
Too bad about the fishes, whales, and dolphins, but we can really do without the orcs.
At high enough termperatures that dioxin isn't an issue.
Of course, you REALLY need to carefully monitor the burn sites to make sure they're not just tossing it on a pile.
Reuse is better than recycling.
Nevertheless, that which is not reused should be recycled by chemical engineering methods. For example, almost all plastics are soluble in acetone. Ferrous materials are separable with magnetism. Many slurries are separable by centrifugation. Even wood and paper can be changed to mulch chemically for reconversion to paper.
So people knew this was happening, sent the trash anyway, and are now whining that they can't keep doing it and have to deal with their own waste like they should have been doing all along?
modified by the rule of expected consequences. who didnt think this would happen?
The only thing you are dropping is your pants, so you can take it in the ass from Trump.