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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.
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.
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.