Food Can Technology is Clearly Innovative

BIG question...
Are they recyclable?

Del

Not recyclable if they have had peas in them.

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/97034

The recycling infrastructures in Europe for PET plastics and metal cans are well established. Over 66 billion bottles or 57% of PET is recycled, 74% of steel cans and 67% of aluminium cans. Those pan European figures hide some large discrepancies. While Germany recycles 94% of it's metal cans, the UK only achieves 56%. While polyprop. is fully recyclable there is no equivalent recycling infrastructure for this type of plastic which means that most of it will initially go to landfill. We got it badly wrong when we first introduced plastics. I would favour a ban on these cans until the means to recycle at least 60% is in place.

"I would favour a ban on these cans until the means to recycle at least 60% is in place."

I hate to say it, but you're sounding like the State of California there. They gave tax breaks for companies to come in and set up plastic film recycling centers, specifically so there would be someplace to recycle plastic bags, and the day the new centers were scheduled to open, the state issues a ban on all plastic bags, starving the new centers of the very feedstock they were brought in to handle.

Your 'ban until the infrastructure is built up to handle the input' is another chicken-and-egg setup: no PP cans beans no incentive to build up the recycling infrastructure, no infrastructure means the conditions to lift the can ban are not met. It's the same thing stalling all-electric or hydrogen-fuel vehicles in the US: they won't sell until the infrastructure is there to support them, nobody will build the infrastructure until the cars sell.

Sometimes you need a push to get the ball rolling, you can't just wait for the solition to be completed before the problem exists.

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Now if you'll pardon me, I've got some work to do on my Master Plan to take over England. I'm going to make a few hundred signs that all say 'Que Starts Here' and set them up all over London. By my calculations, the whole city will grind to a halt within 48 hours as everyone will be busy standing in line. Mua-ha-ha-Ha-HA-HA! (My plan is not only Fiendish, it's also Pythonesque.)

Yes, but what is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

Which do you mean, African or European?

Blue . . . . . no, yellow!

The technology already exists to add an FDA approved UV marker additive to plastic that will fluoresce when exposed to a particular frequency of light. It is used in some meat and poultry packaging. If it was mandatory to add markers to all plastic at the manufacturing stage, with each type of plastic responding to a different frequency, then it could be sorted automatically into types. That would allow a low value mixed stream of waste plastic to be converted into multiple high value streams comprising of a single grades of plastic, e.g. PET or polypropylene or polystyrene. Just float the combined stream over a weir so that it falls past sensors while illuminated with the PET frequency. Any PET that fluoresces is flipped out of the stream by a pulse of air and the rest of the combined stream advances to a second weir. The second weir might be set up for polypropylene, and the next for polystyrene, and so on until all the plastic containing markers is separated. Again the technology is very mature, and is used to sort many things from rice to diamonds. Any plastic made prior to the introduction of markers would go the landfill, as it does at present, but all new plastic which over over a period of time all become most plastic will be able to be recycled effectively and cheaply. If you insist that this new product includes a marker before it can go onto the market, the means to recycle as high value waste is built in. Individual Governments could legislate that plastic sold in their country must have markers, so Germany and California would lead the way and the rest of us would drag our heels for a few years and then fall into line.

Wow, that's such a simple, innovative solution, and, as you said, we have all the technology we need for it right now.

This leads to the question "Why haven't the governments mandated this already?"

...

Oh, yeah, I forgot: The manufacturers and resin compounders would complain about the 'government intrusion' and 'over-regulation' of their industry, and they'd buy lobby the lawmakers to prevent such a common sense solution restriction on the 'free market.'

Big Agriculture keeps fighting to prevent 'country of origin' labeling, even though it would help stop 'foodborne epidemics' from spreading. Those in the US may remember the 'E. Coli Contaminated Tomato fiasco' from a few years back, where ALL tomatoes in the supply chain had to be destroyed because they couldn't track which tomatoes came from which fields. Then it turned out that the E. Coli wasn't even on the tomatoes, it was on the SPINACH from 2-3 farms in MEXICO. The US Dep of Ag knew where the contamination was coming from, but to 'avoid a diplomatic nightmare' they LIED to the American People in order to 'protect US-Mexico relations.'

(I'm just glad that I can't stand the taste of spinach, my squeamishness saved me from possible exposure.)

The question of recyclability is very pertinent to the issue. It should be the first question answered and systems in place to handle the material including markets for the recycled product.

I know this may sound a bit socialistic on its face, but it is really realistic. We have long since past the time when we could simply throw whatever into where ever and it not matter. (if that were ever really true that we could do that) We now live in a planet whose systems are stressed if not overrun everyday. The concept that "the market" will fix it is a false assumption proven time and time again.

For mankind to survive we need to start thinking on a global systems scale and not on a quarterly profit/dividend level.

climbs down off soap box.

"I know this may sound a bit socialistic on its face,"

You do realize that every hard-line GOP supporter stopped reading your post right there.

I agree with everything you said, we NEED to pull together, to start thinking of protecting the planet with our decisions, instead of trying to extract every little piece of fracking⁽¹⁾ profit available.

Notes:

1. Used both as a comment on Big Oil's new earthquake generators mining technique and as a reference to that most famous swear word from Battlestar Galactica.