You've been lied to - Plastic Recycling edition

[ironyak]

If you're like me, you might have a fine collection of #1, #2, #5, and other sundry plastic containers slowly building up in the hopes that Puna Precious Plastics is able to start collecting again and make something, anything, with this material.

However, NPR ran a segment a couple days back as to how the recycling programs for decades were essentially PR scams from the oil industry and the vast majority of plastics were not, and could not, ever be recycled.

Still remaining hopeful (that the change, it had to come, we knew it all along) and
1) somebody finds a use for this abundant oil byproduct (tip my hat to the new constitution)
2) manufacturers finally start to move away from it (we don't get fooled again)

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/822597631...f-plastics
"For decades, Americans have been sorting their trash believing that most plastic could be recycled. But the truth is, the vast majority of all plastic produced can't be or won't be recycled. In 40 years, less than 10% of plastic has ever been recycled.

In a joint investigation, NPR and the PBS series Frontline found that oil and gas companies — the makers of plastic — have known that all along, even as they spent millions of dollars telling the American public the opposite."

Both more text and the audio for the story at the link.

[kalianna]

I was under the impression that the scam in recycling came from shipping plastic overseas, where it was dumped and not recycled. And that a large reason for the dumping was that the plastic was filthy and mixed with garbage. I always wondered about our everything in one bag policy. Someone is supposed to open those bags and sort everything? Really? Have you contacted PPP to ask them about this? They are taking a very different approach. I'd be interested to hear their response.

[Obie]

Most plastic is now made from natural gas and there is this.

Trex decking is made from 95% recycled materials, including reclaimed wood and sawdust as well as recycled plastic from many common household items, such as the plastic overwrap on packaging for paper towels and toilet paper, dry cleaner bags, newspaper bags, grocery and shopping bags.

[ironyak]

@Obie - Natural gas is still part of the oil industry - what's the distinction you're trying to make? As for trex, every bit of recycling helps but those plastics used are a vast minority in terms of total weight of plastic packaging used.

@kalianna - the shipping of plastics to China / SE Asia for it to be picked through for the choicest bits and then the rest dumped or burnt is well known. I think the breadth of the NPR investigation shows that the lack of any substantive recycling has been going on for much longer than this practice and was largely a smoke-screen by the industry to keep people from turning away from plastic.

I know I've spent my decades sorting plastics for recycling - just a largely empty environmental gesture orchestrated by the oil industry - man they've got the marionette skills figured out!

Puna Precious Plastics is part of the Precious Plastics system where the plastic is meant to be used locally as feed stock for a variety of projects, not sent off for recycling. I'll see if they've reached the point of making anything yet.

https://preciousplastic.com/solutions/products.html

[terracore]

In the olde daze they made products where the recycling was done at the consumer level. Animal feed bags were made out of linen the farmer's wife could make clothes out of. They even changed the patterns on the bags periodically. Convenience foods were canned in reusable mason style jars that could go into a home pressure canner. Others were styled to be drinking glasses. When I was a kid the milk man would deliver to our house once a week in a big heavy glass jar. When he dropped off the milk he picked up our empties and they washed and reused them. I don't know what they do with "recycle" glass here but in most areas it's ground up. Some of it is used in road beds but most is dumped in the land fill. The only product I'm aware of that is universally economically beneficial to recycle is aluminum. There are others like steel, cardboard, and newsprint but only if it's close enough to the recycling plant you're not burning more energy to transport than you would gain by recycling.

What they need to do is change the distribution system. Like when you're out of Tide you take your empty jug to the store and refill it from a giant tank instead of getting a new jug.

[geochem]

You're definitely being lied to - by NPR/PBS - with their standard narrative: it's the evil capitalist corporations that are destroying the planet - absolutely no responsibility of the lazy, feckless consumer and government agencies who refuse to sort and manage the trash in a way that allows it to be recycled....

[ironyak]

You did did at least read the article right? Former industry insiders explaining the PR push all the way back into the 70s & 80s? Much bigger than people can't sort their trash, which many of us did conscientiously for a long time - just was never a confirmation
/certification process to insure said materials actually ended up being recycled.

From link -
"
A report sent to top industry executives in April 1973 called recycling plastic "costly" and "difficult." It called sorting it "infeasible," saying "there is no recovery from obsolete products." Another document a year later was candid: There is "serious doubt" widespread plastic recycling "can ever be made viable on an economic basis."

Despite this, three former top officials, who have never spoken publicly before, said the industry promoted recycling as a way to beat back a growing tide of antipathy toward plastic in the 1980s and '90s. The industry was facing initiatives to ban or curb the use of plastic. Recycling, the former officials told NPR and Frontline, became a way to preempt the bans and sell more plastic.

"There was never an enthusiastic belief that recycling was ultimately going to work in a significant way," says Lew Freeman, former vice president of government affairs for the industry's lobbying group, then called the Society of the Plastics Industry, or SPI."

Much more at link

[terracore]

There is "serious doubt" widespread plastic recycling "can ever be made viable on an economic basis."

All this means is that is that they knew that it would be cheaper to make new plastic things than to recycle old plastic things. We have known this for a hundred years. No "leaked documents" or whatever required. It wasn't the evil capitalists who mandated curbside "recycling" that amounted to paying China to dump it into the ocean for us.

[EightFingers]

Wasn’t there a place on Oahu that burned plastic to make electricity? Could that be done here? Or could they take the plastics there?

Puna: Our roosters crow first

[ironyak]

It wasn't the evil capitalists who mandated curbside "recycling" that amounted to paying China to dump it into the ocean for us.

Who was it then - Ze Germans? (No seriously, if this wasn't capitalism at work then what was it?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oK_trZhVdk

Wasn’t there a place on Oahu that burned plastic to make electricity?
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/amid-ot...ive-hawaii

Not sure they have capacity for all the islands. Kenoi was trying to set one up here remember? NIMBY / DHHL, etc... cue kalakoa
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/201...-facility/