Not Feeling So Good About US Recycling Anymore

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hvizsgyak

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/w...ricas-dirty-secret/ar-AACZkcL?ocid=spartandhp

If this is true, the story really takes the air out of my “I feel good that I recycle” sails. This is pathetic that as a country we would ship our garbage plastic to another country and have their poorest citizens prep that plastic. The people who run these operations probably pay those poor people $5.00 a week to clean and sort 100,000 pieces of plastic. Then to top it off, those countries allow their own garbage to pile up.

My solution (which many people dislike for some strange reason) to this whole problem is pile that garbage on top of a Saturn V rocket and launch it toward either the Sun or Deep Space (from what I heard is infinite). Problem solved. Then take the money saved from all this recycling mythology and give it to those poor people. Next problem.
 
Alright, we’ll scale it down from the Saturn V to a very powerful model rocket. Now we are talking savings.
 
hvizsgyak said:
My solution (which many people dislike for some strange reason) to this whole problem is pile that garbage on top of a Saturn V rocket and launch it toward either the Sun or Deep Space (from what I heard is infinite).
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So it’s not okay to send our plastic to a third-world country, but it’s okay to launch it into deep space where it may impact the universe in unknown ways? Why not figure out how to take care of it ourselves?
 
JanetF said:
Why not figure out how to take care of it ourselves?
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This^^^ Or learn how to do with much less of it. Think of water bottles alone. How many people use plastic water bottles and just toss them in the trash at the end of the day.
 
I didn’t think I’d run into this response already (that’s why I said many people dislike my solution). First, I agree we should take care of the problem ourselves but knowing the way the American public is even contributing recycling (which seems to be decreasing per household) I tried to come up with an easier solution. Unfortunately, a lot in our society don’t understand the vastness of the universe. If one truly understood the vastness of space, you’d realize a pile of garbage shot into space would be comparable probably to a single cell floating out in space. And if you shot it toward a star, when it hit the star it would incinerate. Again though, lets come up with an even cleaner solution like just getting rid of disposable plastic and paper products.
 
Perhaps reducing the types of plastic in circulation would help. If only 1 or two plastics were around then recycling wouldn’t require as much sorting.
 
That would help. Our local recycling only takes Types 1 and 2, anyway. That is certainly better than nothing, and includes water bottles, laundry detergent bottles, most shampoo bottles, etc.
But it excludes probably half of plastics, including things like prescription bottles, butter tubs, and many types of disposable cups.

We somehow need to change so that we aren’t constantly purchasing products packaged in disposable plastic all the time, but I don’t know the solution to getting society’s mentality to change on that. A few businesses (mostly small ones) try to reduce the amount of plastic waste they use, but there are are far more that do not.
 
So after we junk up our own planet we are going to junk up space as well. Not sure that’s a good idea
 
13pollitos said:
So after we junk up our own planet we are going to junk up space as well. Not sure that’s a good idea
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I don’t think it’s the answer to the problem, but it would be an interesting idea if it were practicable and not so expensive. Space is vaster than we can imagine; would it really hurt anything out there? However, since we have more plastic waste than would fit on a thousand rockets, it’s not worth seriously considering at this time.
 
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HerCrazierHalf said:
Perhaps reducing the types of plastic in circulation would help. If only 1 or two plastics were around then recycling wouldn’t require as much sorting.
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The different types of plastics exist because their inherent properties vary quite a bit from temperature, durability, colour and flexibility. What might be safe for food might not be desirable for something else like parts of a machine.
One challenge we have is additional chemicals added for colour, changing flexibility and etc. make the materials for recycling less valuable compared to newly produced ones.
 
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All plastics including Styrofoam are recyclable. The technologies exist. It’s just that it’s incredibly unprofitable for a number of types. Processing and sorting can be an expensive challenge. That’s why most places pretend some plastics are unrecyclable.
 
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hvizsgyak said:
My solution (which many people dislike for some strange reason) to this whole problem is pile that garbage on top of a Saturn V rocket and launch it toward either the Sun or Deep Space
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I prefer sending rubbish to the sun where it will be destroyed and burned up. I would not agree with littering outer space.
 
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I think there are some encouraging signs that more people are changing their thinking, and caring about this issue. Several of our towns, including mine, have banned single-use plastic bags in stores, and it may very well become a state law. Of course, many people complained but most have adjusted and are using reusable bags. It’s been a big problem in the past, especially here by the ocean. Some people dislike the idea of the government banning things like this, but unfortunately it seems to be necessary when seals and other marine life are washing up on the beach essentially choked by plastic. We humans have been poor stewards of this beautiful planet we’ve been given to live in, and we need to do our part to make things better. Even doing a little is better than doing nothing.
 
I think we should go back to the “vintage” days of my childhood and teen years, when all sodas were sold in GLASS bottles (totally recyclable!) or aluminum cans (recyclable) instead of the plastic jugs.

I think that restaurants should serve soda or water/juices in GLASS or PAPER cups (glass would give under-educated people jobs as dishwashers).

I think that plates should be either paper or glass or heavy reusable plastic, and I think that fast food places should serve their products in paper, not Styrofoam (I think McDonald’s already does this).,

And I think that all other products currently sold in plastic should be sold in paper or glass. E.g., there is no reason why cottage cheese and yogurt have to be sold in those little plastic containers–go back to the heavy waxed paper containers.

I think all bags should be paper. NOT cloth–these bags should be washed fairly often, and many studies prove that the phosphates from detergents do more harm to the environment than plastic pollution.

Best of all–more food coops needed! When I was a young wife/mother living in North Carolina, we belonged to a food co-op where everything was sold out of big burlap bags. We had to bring our own Tupperware or other containers or bags from home. It was great because if I wanted to try a recipe that required a half cup of soy flour–I could buy a half cup of soy flour, and I didn’t get stuck with a pound bag that sat in my fridge for a year unused (unless the recipe turned out yummy). And I could buy the exact amounts of good seeds and rolled oats and nuts and raisins needed for my delicious “Crunchy Granola” recipe and just throw it in the bowl and mix it up when I got home (it also has to be baked for several 15 minute cycles–yummy!).

In other words, I think we should go back to the simpler times. We just need to make sure that the lawyers are not circling like vultures waiting for some little kid to cut their hand on a real glass, or a grownup to get sick eating from a plate that wasn’t sanitized well by the restaurant dishwasher.
 
What I don’t understand is that some companies are using recycled plastic to create park benches and playground sets. I’m sure its expensive now to convert the recycled plastic to something profitable but we have people making cell phones more and more incredible yearly eventually, there will be break throughs in processing used plastic cheaply. And there are many places where recycled plastic could be used: siding for houses, countertops, fences around houses, swimming pools, toilet seats and more. It doesn’t need to be used again for the same thing. Dump it all together and melt everything down. Extract the impurities and then mold the plastic into whatever you are selling (siding, fences, benches…). I sure it not that easy but that’s what we should be aiming for.
 
HerCrazierHalf said:
Yea, but only if clean and sorted. Supposedly mixing plastic types cause issues
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Cost and profitability are the problems.
Technically, the dirty waste can be melted and dissolved into a messy mixture and then run it through a chromatography column for industrial use or distill it like oil refining to separate and recover the variety of basic starting materials for making plastics. That’s the theoretical starting point.
Here’s a variation of that idea:


Another company in the UK doing something similar:
(The firm turning plastic into oil - BBC News)
 
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