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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.
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
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!
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.
I believe the issue is more that packaging has intentionally been marked in very misleading manner by the plastics & packaging industry that suggests to the consumer that the item is recyclable when it frequently is not. This leads to people with good intentions adding a lot of contimation to recycling.
This issue can't be fixed by cities or consumers, the answer is to settle on a minimum set of plastics that we can easily recycle then make have large fines for companies packaging goods using other plastics or other non-recyclables.
What about using a combination of AI and spectrum analysis?
What about not not using "simplified recycling"? They introduced that braindamage over here a year or so back despite there being exactly zero evidence that people had problems distinguishing the three categories of plastic, paper, and everything else (glass, metal, etc). As a result, the unified recycling bins are now used as general trash bins because there's no need for people to think about what's recyclable and what isn't.
So the solution to a problem created by going with a really dumb idea isn't to throw tech at it, it's to undo the dumb idea.
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