Recycling... Have We Created a Monster?

Single use plastic ban is low hanging fruit, and should be put into effect ASAP...Waste to energy incinerators are a lot cleaner now than back in the day, and is another alternative that should be expanded...Recyclers should be directly paid by plastic producers to provide clean sorted streams that can be recycled by China and other end process facilitators...In the meantime it will need to be stockpiled and landfilled until everything plays out....

https://www.japan.go.jp/tomodachi/2015/winter2015/advanced_waste_disposal_technology.html

http://etc.org/advanced-technologies/high-temperature-incineration/

Wheelabrator has been operating waste-to-energy plants for several decades now. These are state-of-the-art incinerators that reduce landfill volume, provide a source of energy, and do some metals recovery in the process.

https://www.wtienergy.com/

They built one in Millbury not far from Worcester where I went to college. I could see it being built from the Mass Pike.

NASA Langley Research Center partnered with the City of Hampton, Virginia and in 1980 opened a waste to steam plant. It continues to have a proven track record of success by saving millions in energy creation and land fill disposal costs

Click here for more Info

Hooker

If only I could get everything in aluminum cans..

Everything old is new again.

I didn't know incineration was under the umbrella of reuse, recycle.

The styrofoam plate manufacturers must be ecstatic.

JE, there are ways to convert polystyrene foam waste into something useful without any machinery: lunch for mealworm larvae can just happen!

https://cen.acs.org/articles/93/web/2015/09/Mealworms-Munch-Polystyrene-Foam.html

As for recycling other plastics, a local manufacturer of outdoor furniture shut down recently due to insufficient demand for his wood-look recycled HDPE tables and chairs from milk bottles. Maybe there's a social feeling of shame in sitting guests down to a BBQ on plastic furniture? It should be a feeling of pride!

Most milk bottles are made from PET not HDPE. PET is the one plastic that is currently recycled in large volumes and reused back into the original product i.e. milk bottles. HDPE comes from recycling things like window frames.

A few years ago I had a client who incorporates recycled plastics to polymerize bitumen in roofing products. They saved no money on ingredients but the PR value of being able to claim a percentage of recycled materials in their products gave them a marketing edge over their rivals. They used two types of recycled plastic, SBS and APP, but mixing the two in a single batch caused the mix to set solid in the mixer and it had to be chipped out by hand to remove it. (A labour intensive two day job with some of their processing plant standing idle for lack of mixing facilities) Using the control system software I interlocked the storage silos so that both types of plastic ingredient could not be transferred into the same batch with a supervisor key operated override so that if a batch containing SBS had been manufactured the same mixer it could not run a batch using APP unless the supervisor confirmed that the mixer had been completely flushed to prevent any residuals causing problems. Using recycled plastics is not easy. It can be done by using techniques like the ones I employed but these come with a capital cost and plant that has not been specifically made to accept recycled material is often not suitable. Without the plant to use material after it has been reclaimed there is no market for it and no incentive for recyclers to to process it. The reverse is true. I supplied several thousand ABS moulds to the same customer for casting blocks of hot melt roofing compound. Trying to be environmentally friendly I specified a high percentage of recycled ABS to be incorporated into the moulds. Delivery was delayed because not enough recycled ABS was available anywhere in the UK to fill my order.

I have a friend nearby who uses plastic pellets by the ton in the manufacturer of quality tools and equipment. He has had some bad experiences as well.

I haven't had his take on it in awhile. I'm going to have to find out if anything's changed.

In the study 40 mealworms ate quarter of a 6 gram serving polystyrene and then pooped half of it back out with embedded toxins.

If you're suggesting I'm going to eat those mealworms over mealworms fed and organic diet you must be joking?

How many mealworms would it take to eat a styrofoam plate?

It's simply not sustainable as it's not profitable, viable or useful.

Sitting on plastic furniture is just fine. However I'm for a wooden deck. Wooden decks are cool to sit or stand on.

Plastic decking gets very hot in the sun and very slippery in the rain.

In the event of a home fire all those toxins from plastic everything snuff out occupants faster than you can say go low and feel your way out safely.

Just like all start-ups, recycling is a perilous endeavor. And just like the supply-chain, the "un-supply" chain also needs to work. And just like a lot of start-ups failing doesn't mean the whole market failed, a lot of recycling programs failing doesn't mean the whole idea is trash. It just needs to be done thoughtfully, without biting off more than you can chew/handle/have-capacity-for.

Just like most other things, this is not a binary/quantum (yes/no, good/bad, all/nothing, one-extreme/other-extreme) issue.

Start ups?

..."First plastic waste recycling mill in the world was created in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania in 1972, marking the beginning for all future recycling plants."...

...after 36 years...

..."In 2008 only 6.5% (2.2 million tons) of post-consumer plastic waste was recycled, 7.7% (2.6 million tons) was burned for energy and 85.5% (28.9 million tons) went to landfills."...

http://www.historyofplastic.com/plastic-history/history-of-plastic-recycling/

Maybe, but... One example doesn't make a trend, you still need to scale it up for the mainstream. Also, plastic is not the only material. Even iron, copper, aluminum, and lead are not recycled everywhere. There's still a long way to go.

About half of the trash that comes out of my house ends up in the recycle bin.

It seems like it should only be about 6.8%.

Three things JE

DT and his trade war. China had been buying our waste plastics.

China now has a big enough consumer base that they don't need our trash.

Recycling of plastics is not economically viable compared to new production.

Recycling of plastics is not economically viable compared to new production.

Do you have a case studying that backs this statement up? I'd like to read the details.

Hooker

Case study?

How about look in a land fill, is that study enough?

If it were a profitable business it wouldn't be thrown in the trash. That is how the free market works when not interfered with.

I'll give you the part about human laziness or even human ignorance regarding recycling but you are presenting a very narrow viewpoint which varies greatly from locality to locality.

Though I don't have details, we appear to have a very active and viable voluntary (non-curbside pickup) recycling program here in the Shenandoah Valley.

That's why I asked a very serious question about the availability of a case study. I wanted to better understand the scope of your claim. Sweeping generalities don't contribute much of anything here in this engineering forum.

With regards, Hooker

Good read here, it seems to me one of the major problems is purity of the particular waste stream...We need a presorted and residue removed waste stream...the high residue content seems to be a profit killer, and they want to put the blame on the consumer not properly washing out their recyclables....

https://www.plasticstoday.com/recycling/unraveling-economics-plastics-recycling/55070110258784

That's a good read. I know that I too am making sweeping generalities here but it threshes out good information one way or the other.

I'm interested in how much we're going through the motions with a smile verses how much good is actually being done?

Obviously there is much room for improvement. I would like to see more clean incineration implemented to take what's not going into the landfill and what's not being properly and profitably recycled.

I was surprised at the article about Tokyo that's pretty cool. My best half spend some time there for school and the recycling at the time was very well sorted.

I am a fan of how they sort things in California right down to kitchen waste.

I wouldn't have a worm farm out back if I could just send it to a giant worm farm. .... I saw a documentary on that? Very high-tech and very cool.. will have to look it up later.

...But California.

Good article, and after having participated in recycling for many years I have a pretty good understanding of the issues, including cleanliness.

We have, I think, 6 recycling centers around our county with well published and easily understood guidelines and full time caretakers looking over them. The center that I go to is very active and very clean. It seems most of the participants abide by the cleaning guidelines, and sorting to large containers is clearly marked and easy. We even have a used oil drop off tank.

I have lived in communities where there was mandatory recycling with separate bins for curbside pickup. These programs always seemed to end in disuse because of their complexity, though the extra fees never seemed to go away.

From the amount of cardboard I see put out on garbage day around here it seems that there are a lot of households that don't appear to recycle but I try to get those on my street involved.

I know that early education in the schools helps. Get the kids involved and they'll nag the parents to death.

Hooker

No, I hear you, I live in Madison WI. if its progressive we are doing it or started it. We were told that our waste companies would continue to pick up as they had been since ours is single stream and they still wanted the glass and metals, but that the plastics would be going to the landfill as the buyer was not buying anymore. That buyer was a Chinese company that had been buying our plastic for years. They cited orders from their government to source domestically or go out of business issued the day after the idiotic trade sanctions.

Heh, heh, I know little about progressive Wisconsin communities. I used to spend time dining and drinking at Lake Geneva while doing a contract job in Kenosha.

I haven't heard anything here about changes in plastic collection, but I'll ask the next time I go to the center.

Thanks for the heads up.

Hooker

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/03/13/702501726/where-will-your-plastic-trash-go-now-that-china-doesnt-want-it

Thank you for posting that. I know some very creative entrepreneurs here so I'm going to ask around to see if anything is going on to address this. Especially in the Maker community.

Regards,

Hooker

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46566795

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/US-Struggles-With-What-to-Do-With-Tons-of-Recycled-Material-489971551.html

Why on earth would anyone think it was a monster? People are the monsters, not just for each other, but for animals who we share this spinning rock with. A colleague of mine recently returned from a holiday in Vietnam. He stated the beeches were fantastic but swimming was a NO NO. Then he showed me the photos of the water line at the beech. Any swimming was impossible due to the volume of plastics floating and submerged along the coast line. It was not lust its length along the coast, it was how far out it reached and the density of plastic that was diabolical.

It is very sad as to what man has done to land, seas and oceans, let alone the sea life. Glass at least erodes in the sea, "biodegradable" plastic we know, just does not biodegrade.

So is Frankenstein the monster or dr. Frankenstein the monster?

I'm not going to get an argument about semantics. It's obvious that things aren't being done as well as they could be. Before Chicago had blue bins for recycling behind every residence I too went to the local facility and sorted and dropped. those facilities are still open in operable for people that live in multi dwelling units.

However as our cohort from Madison pointed out, our reliance on China to purchase our plastics has hit a major bump in the road. Blame it on whatever you like, but the plastic is still ours and we should be able to do something with it besides dump it in a landfill and say that we're recycling it. that is the monster I'm speaking of considering the volume of plastic that go into everybody's bins on a daily basis.

Blame China blame Trump Blaine Trump blame China.

I'm making whatever small effort I can to cut plastic purchase rather than put my head in the sand.

... And yes I did wake up to a story about a duck flying around in a local waterway with a six pack ring around its neck. People have been following the duck for days trying to save the duck who seems to not care too much. It's been described as looking like a religious event the way people are fanning around edge of the river.

My chickadee cuts my six-pack rings if I fail to do so.

An interesting aside. I read last week or so I read about mixed glass being turned into a slurry that could be made into toothpaste etcetera. And they say it could be done economically.

Yepper JE, Reusable grocery bags, We buy Oui yogurt because its in glass with a foil seal. I installed an RO so I don't buy plastic bottles of water. Shop at Aldi's /Trader Joes as they have upped their game. We do what we can. It is frustrating to see all the stuff in plastics that couold just as easily be in glass or metal or even paper.

Our reliance on plastic is not an accident. It was not some "market driven" change. It was a concerted and subsidized effort after WW2 to keep the companies that grew big and fat during the war happy.

The Spice (money) Must Flow!

I do specifically remember TV commercials in the early 80s where people coming home with groceries would drop their glass bottle of soda and make a mess and then in the next scene they would drop a plastic bottle filled with soda and it would bounce.

At a time when people were paying $0.10 per bottle on a bottle deposit it was pretty good marketing.

I think I remember the same type of add with peanut butter.

It seems to me incinerators are the way to go, if people want to recycle they can work to put these incinerators out of business, but until then, the waste will be handled and we will have another source of energy...

https://sciencing.com/advantages-solid-waste-incinerator-8367212.html

https://waste-management-world.com/a/clean-incineration-fact-or-fiction

I've had a very early interest in recycling. My brother (a year older than me) was a "backyard mechanic" who I learned a lot about cars from. There was a junk yard nearby that had a lot of pre-war cars in it. We went there a lot for parts (it also had newer cars in it). My first car was a 1950 Studebaker Starlight Coupe. This junk yard was also a recycling center for metals with a railroad behind it. We (me) went there a lot. Before I dropped out of High School, the owner/operator was retiring and put it up for sale. At $10 a car and $200 an acre, I tried my best to get it. It was a good profit-generating business. It also included some machinery and equipment. But, the cards were stacked against me. I was just a teenager still in school with no money.And, the High-school I was at wouldn't let me take vocational auto-mechanics because I was taking after my brother too much.Needless to say, I just couldn't get it.

Since then, I dropped out of school, couldn't get anything else going, tried to enlist in the Navy, went back to school, graduated, went into the Navy, came home on leave one time, and found the junk yard closed and being cleaned out. All those cars getting crushed and shipped out on semi-trucks, and everything else being disposed of. (Tragedy). Not only did I not get it, but nobody else got it either. (Real Tragedy).

There's more to recycling than just processing the raw materials. One car that I found at another junk yard, was a Studebaker with a front-wheel drive Tucker engine in it (somebody's project). I never was able to get that either. (Real Big Tragedy).

Now, all that is lost forever.

I will always remember Bert Wilson's junk yard. It could have been mine. Now it's no one's. (Real Super Big Tragedy).

Sometimes I think I would have rather have had that junk yard, than being in the Nuclear Power Program in the Navy.

I used go with a girl that lived near the junkyard.. I took her there once.. she didn't like the place and I didn't go back to the junkyard very much after that.. I should have left her at the junkyard. Ginormous tragedy.

I do love a good junkyard.

That reminds me.. I need to go clean up my junk yard gathering next to the garage.

"the junkyard"? Does that mean "a" junkyard, or "this specific" junkyard? Would you by chance know of this junkyard I'm talking about?

Wrong junkyard in your mind.

High IQ you

No this junkyard was South of Chicago but not that far south.

South Chicago Heights I believe.

I guess it's all in how you define 'monster'. 3 million tons each year. That seems a bit monstrous to me. Now wouldn't it be interesting if companies were penalized for each pound of plastic used not recycled. I'll bet glass and metal would be back in a hurry.

https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-47569233

You said, "Packaging has all the recycling symbols, but if it can't be affordably recycled what's the point?"

To me, It's no different than global warming and ocean rise. Denying the obvious because it may cost money to fix just points out our short sightedness and lust for money today. Our grand children can fix it.

Plastics comes from oil (fossil fuels). Fossil fuels is running the current regime.

Don't worry, be happy.

The point is that there should be a way to stop beating around the bush and pretending the solution to effectively recycle is in place... when it so obviously is not.

For a process that is supposed to produce a positive net result for the planet, I question the logic of relying on facilities halfway around the world to process our valuable waste.

If it's so valuable, then certainly we can figure out a way to replicate those plants in China who further sort, clean, process and stock nurdles (plastic pellets) by the thousands of tons?...in the endless multitude of properties?... at an affordable price to resell it to the current international manufacturers i.e. customers? (quick answer - if we could we would) In that regard you have to question who has who over the barrel?

The old moniker says to reduce, reuse, and recycle. It doesn't mention sweeping valuable valuable waste by the megaton into endless landfills? that does not fall under any term.

Clean incineration of what does not meet criteria for affordable (recycling) should be implemented (by incineration) instead of ignored (cough landfill. cough solution should be here any day now) by those who would rather finger point at the powers that be while looking for subsidies to bail out the lucrative green project of the day. hmmmm..?

As Solar E pointed out. Clean affordable incineration (reuse) can provide hot water, and clean electricity to our communities while we figure out ways to (reduce) overall use.

The solutions have nothing to do with politics, grandchildren, lust for money etc.. Those are just popular terms to throw around by folk's who's shortsighted views on global warming and ocean rise are based on denying the obvious.

Being on an island in the North Atlantic, even the thought of having a buyer you can ship your recycling to is self-defeating. We need recycling or conversion to fuel, at the end point of the package's use. But it would be far better just to stop being the end point for so much wasted plastic. I too am looking for ways to reduce.

So I am not going to say plastic is not evil. It is, in certain circumstances, a game changer and the only thing that works. We all know this.

BUT

Paper, metal, and glass

These need to be incentivized for consumer use and plastic needs to be penalized for use. This is how a properly functioning government would regulate this. With no regard for anyones profits, because governments are to protect people, not companies. That is the whole basis of a free market. Which, I might add is not what we currently have. People need pollution free water, air, land, and that is what a government is supposed to protect. Just ask Teddy.

This should never happen!
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/03/18/dead-whale-found-88-pounds-plastic-pollution-stomach/3201567002/