<story><title>Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic</title><url>https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled?t=1599932392400</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>blululu</author><text>It is always a little surprising how naive people are when it comes to recycling. 
The majority of the cost and difficulty comes in sorting. Back in the good old days most US municipalities used to require people to sort their recycling by type, but over the years we have switched to a more wasteful system.&lt;p&gt;For aluminum cans the material is valuable and relatively easy to sort. For plastic the material is cheap and sorting is hard (if you can&amp;#x27;t tell what the plastic container you threw in the bin is made out of (HDPE?) in a second then it is trash).&lt;p&gt;FWIW this is also a relatively easy problem to fix. We could look to the brief but successful history of recycling in Taiwan as a good example to copy. (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Recycling_in_Taiwan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Recycling_in_Taiwan&lt;/a&gt;)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>neltnerb</author><text>No, plastic degrades each time it is recycled. They knew that, every materials scientist knew that, and it is just not possible to fully reclaim recycled plastic.&lt;p&gt;What really pisses me off is the use of the recycling number as marketing. Which is still ongoing and being modernized. Leave a complaint card any time you see compostable plastic being used in a city that doesn&amp;#x27;t have specialized industrial composting plants, that stuff is worse than trash because it&amp;#x27;s also misleading about how to dispose of it and makes the store look green when it&amp;#x27;s really just making things worse.&lt;p&gt;In almost all locations, PLA, &amp;quot;compostable plastic&amp;quot; (often labeled number 7 or 0 for marketing) is not only not recyclable but actively contaminates compost and recycling plants. I see all these places using &amp;quot;compostable plastic&amp;quot; because they think it&amp;#x27;s more environmentally friendly. It&amp;#x27;s a noble goal, it makes me so sad to see.&lt;p&gt;The stores that pick those containers do so because they want to project an environmentally conscious image, and the &amp;quot;eco&amp;quot; marketing on this utter trash gets them to pay top dollar for those containers instead of just using paper. I feel so bad for these stores, it takes a PhD to dispose of this misleading and dangerous material properly.&lt;p&gt;As a normal consumer, if I saw that logo and &amp;quot;compostable plastic&amp;quot; guess where I&amp;#x27;d throw it. Compost? Recycling? Probably one or the other right? Wrong, if I put it in the compost I make the compost produced from the food scraps contaminated and unsafe for use. If I put it in the recycling it gets melted in with other polymers and contaminates them, degrading the other plastic even faster if the whole batch doesn&amp;#x27;t need to be thrown away outright.&lt;p&gt;Edit: The one saving grace is that I &lt;i&gt;know&lt;/i&gt; that where I live trash is incinerated. So at least I feel less bad throwing this stuff in the trash. It was just oil that made a temporary detour as a container before being burned for electricity. Still, I&amp;#x27;d rather they just use unadulterated paper (no little plastic spouts glued on), glass, and aluminum which are all easily recycled or burn clean.</text></comment>
<story><title>Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic</title><url>https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled?t=1599932392400</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>blululu</author><text>It is always a little surprising how naive people are when it comes to recycling. 
The majority of the cost and difficulty comes in sorting. Back in the good old days most US municipalities used to require people to sort their recycling by type, but over the years we have switched to a more wasteful system.&lt;p&gt;For aluminum cans the material is valuable and relatively easy to sort. For plastic the material is cheap and sorting is hard (if you can&amp;#x27;t tell what the plastic container you threw in the bin is made out of (HDPE?) in a second then it is trash).&lt;p&gt;FWIW this is also a relatively easy problem to fix. We could look to the brief but successful history of recycling in Taiwan as a good example to copy. (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Recycling_in_Taiwan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Recycling_in_Taiwan&lt;/a&gt;)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hesdeadjim</author><text>I get doubtful looks from friends when I explain to them that the only waste worth sticking in the recycling bin is aluminum and glass.&lt;p&gt;These articles that have popped up on this topic are hugely useful to refer people to. I don’t enjoy being right, I just want there to be an open understanding of the lies that have led us to this situation so new solutions can be developed.&lt;p&gt;It might just be that burying it in the ground for the next few hundred years is the best solution, and through laws attempt to curb the explosive growth of plastic use.</text></comment>