<story><title>Recycling Chaos in U.S. As China Bans &apos;Foreign Waste&apos;</title><url>https://www.npr.org/2017/12/09/568797388/recycling-chaos-in-u-s-as-china-bans-foreign-waste</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>oppositelock</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve had the pleasure (joking here) of living in some very poor countries, and people there waste little. Why waste a perfectly good glass or plastic bottle by throwing it away, instead of refilling?&lt;p&gt;Generally, when the cost of a bottle or bag is statistically significant, people care for them. Stores sell more bulk stuff, refill bottles, and offer little in the way of their own packaging. It&amp;#x27;s all a lot less convenient.&lt;p&gt;In the US, various bulk stores have tried to introduce the packaging reuse notion, but all have gone out of business because we take convenience over reuse.&lt;p&gt;This will only change when reuse is equally convenient. If I knew how to accomplish that, I wouldn&amp;#x27;t be pontificating here, but running my own business doing just that.</text></item><item><author>maxxxxx</author><text>Instead of finding better ways to sell ads it would be great if the smart people in SV worked on finding better ways for recycling. This would truly benefit mankind.</text></item><item><author>oppositelock</author><text>Good for China, they&amp;#x27;ve got an environmental nightmare to deal with, and part of it comes from the US offloading lots of &amp;quot;recycling&amp;quot; operations there, and I use that term loosely, particularly for electronics. We also &amp;quot;export&amp;quot; pollution to China by buying cheaper products that would be more expensive if they didn&amp;#x27;t externalize their pollution costs, and it&amp;#x27;s sure better to externalize that pollution abroad than domestically. The US, in my opinion, has been burying its head in the sand about the pollution which occurs when manufacturing everything that we use.&lt;p&gt;Recycling, save for very specific things, is neither environmentally beneficial nor economically viable. We recycle so many things because the operations are subsidized, and we feel good because we assume the recycling bin doesn&amp;#x27;t end up in the dump.&lt;p&gt;Sorting refuse for recycling is a time consuming, tedious process. I hope that automation can actually make recycling more things viable. Reuse is best, but lots of things can be recycled for raw materials, particularly metals. Plastics don&amp;#x27;t recycle very well, glass requires more energy to reprocess than making new glass, and paper can be allowed to biodegrade or mixed into existing paper process.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tempestn</author><text>I would love to see Amazon take the lead on this.  They should be in a great position to do so as they move to doing more of their own distribution.  Ditch the cardboard boxes and bubble envelopes and replace them with reusable bins and pouches that are picked up when the next order is delivered.  (And to start with, at least get rid of those horrible bubble mailers that can&amp;#x27;t even be recycled, and replace them with an all-paper padded envelope...)</text></comment>
<story><title>Recycling Chaos in U.S. As China Bans &apos;Foreign Waste&apos;</title><url>https://www.npr.org/2017/12/09/568797388/recycling-chaos-in-u-s-as-china-bans-foreign-waste</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>oppositelock</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve had the pleasure (joking here) of living in some very poor countries, and people there waste little. Why waste a perfectly good glass or plastic bottle by throwing it away, instead of refilling?&lt;p&gt;Generally, when the cost of a bottle or bag is statistically significant, people care for them. Stores sell more bulk stuff, refill bottles, and offer little in the way of their own packaging. It&amp;#x27;s all a lot less convenient.&lt;p&gt;In the US, various bulk stores have tried to introduce the packaging reuse notion, but all have gone out of business because we take convenience over reuse.&lt;p&gt;This will only change when reuse is equally convenient. If I knew how to accomplish that, I wouldn&amp;#x27;t be pontificating here, but running my own business doing just that.</text></item><item><author>maxxxxx</author><text>Instead of finding better ways to sell ads it would be great if the smart people in SV worked on finding better ways for recycling. This would truly benefit mankind.</text></item><item><author>oppositelock</author><text>Good for China, they&amp;#x27;ve got an environmental nightmare to deal with, and part of it comes from the US offloading lots of &amp;quot;recycling&amp;quot; operations there, and I use that term loosely, particularly for electronics. We also &amp;quot;export&amp;quot; pollution to China by buying cheaper products that would be more expensive if they didn&amp;#x27;t externalize their pollution costs, and it&amp;#x27;s sure better to externalize that pollution abroad than domestically. The US, in my opinion, has been burying its head in the sand about the pollution which occurs when manufacturing everything that we use.&lt;p&gt;Recycling, save for very specific things, is neither environmentally beneficial nor economically viable. We recycle so many things because the operations are subsidized, and we feel good because we assume the recycling bin doesn&amp;#x27;t end up in the dump.&lt;p&gt;Sorting refuse for recycling is a time consuming, tedious process. I hope that automation can actually make recycling more things viable. Reuse is best, but lots of things can be recycled for raw materials, particularly metals. Plastics don&amp;#x27;t recycle very well, glass requires more energy to reprocess than making new glass, and paper can be allowed to biodegrade or mixed into existing paper process.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dazc</author><text>In the UK, back in the 70&amp;#x27;s we had a deposit scheme for glass bottles. And if you couldn&amp;#x27;t be bothered taking your bottles back to the store for a few pennies each you could be sure some local kid would be more than happy to do it for you.</text></comment>