Plastics: Which Side Are We On?

Ever wonder what drives recycling versus new material? The underlying cost of new material versus the cost of recycling is paramount. A very high % of gold is recycled, same for copper. As you reach plastics you need to compare the oil source(for most plastics) cost versus the cost of separating the waste plastic and making it like new again.

When you get the multilayer foil-plastic drink packs with 3-4 layers of different materials you find few economic methods. The only drive to recycle is to get them out of landfills/roadsides. An incentive is a return deposit on packages, but if this is taken to it's extreme the grocery store will be selling the same number of full packages as it is taking back for the deposit = a huge logistics problem from the former one way path from kelloggs to you to trash. Then there is the sorting problem....too many different plastics cartons etc. So we need a method to mass dump stuff. Possibly RFID will help if they can get it to a cent a package then readers can machine sort items into many streams of waste to go to a recycler for that material. The high price of oil is our friend here as it makes it economic to recover these items.

I pretty thoroughly sort my garbage for recycling. I'm retired, so I have the time. And it does take time. I easily spend an hour a week on this and the larger part of that is paper and cardboard recycling.

Plastic food household cleaner containers all get rinsed or washed in the dishwasher (oily foods usually). These plastic bottles look a lot like PE or PP. Steel and aluminum non-CRV cans get washed also. Plastic sheets and films (mostly PE) get put into a plastic grocery bag which gets packed and tied before it ends up in the weekly recyclables bin. There are other plastic sources in my waste stream; but the containers from the supermarket and the bag of PE plastic sheet and film make up about 90% of my recycled plastics. Paper/plastic composites (some food wrappings and cushioned paper shipping envelopes still go to the landfill.

CRV bottles of course represent real money and go separately along with their PE (I think) caps.

Point here is that a large part of the plastics in the waste stream are polyolefins. These are crystalline plastics and lose their properties substantially with each remelting. That greatly limits their use as recycled material. I think most ends up as building materials. This stuff isn't cheap. And it's a new onetime use for the material that doesn't help the demand for fresh polymers for the first use consumer applications. But the uses recycled plastics go to are pretty neat. I'm thinking of Trex decks, pilings and bulkheads for harbors.

Now with the country into deep recession there are lots of indications of a sharp decrease in value of the recycled material to the point where it is having to go to landfills for lack of available storage facilities.

Another problem is the confusion and lack of information on just what to recycle and how to separate it. My California county is pretty good on this and there still is a lot of confusion.

And now some of the local cities have gotten it into their heads to prohibit the sale of plastic shopping bags so that a perfect container for PE sheet/film is going away.

Another issue is that PS low density foam packing block material still goes to the landfill. Fortunately a local packing and shipping retail store takes the flowpack (peanuts) that I save in a large garbage bag off my hands.

You are shoveling against the tide, my friend. Good luck.

Ed Weldon, Bay Area, California

I saw a recycling firm in Asia that used these hard to recycle plastic and paper containers to make roof tiles. They used a high temperature press to produce them. The mix of different materials made the tiles more durable. The metal layers became sun blocker to protect the underlying plastic.

Talk about turning a problem into a solution.

Right now a stock pile of waste plastice would bring a good price. There is a shorage of Asphalt so plactice could be used as an additive and extend what raw materail there is.

Mining of trash dumps for raw materails rises and falls with the demand for metals and prices. Too bad the can mine the offshore areas where they big cities in the east dumped trash for so manyhundred years using barges.

Having grown up during WWII, I am confused by why we have not yet returned to the direct reuse of bottles, cans, etc. During that time frame we all managed to handle our garbage without huge problems. Other than the desire for convenience by the customers, the desires of the manufacturers to foist the disposal of the packaging on to the customer (or local disposal agencies) and the desire of the packaging industry to justify it's continued existence there is no insurmountable problem here.

What am I missing here? It just requires government to require the manufacturers to take care of the mess they create and require bottle/can/palstic recycling.

think of wage costs and unions in these industries and the civic collecors. They have driven up the cost of recycling at the same time the cost of oil had fallen in real terms = trash more stuff.

One of the solutions is the use of cellulose and chitin(shrimp, insect and other custaceans exoskeletal base) as a feed stock to make diverse plastic and products.

Both of these have great potential as we run out of oil, and with care in the design they will be able to engineer bio degradation.

Make landfill 100% biodegradable, plastics and metals that do not must be otherwose dealt with.

Plastic always hazardous of all. This should be prevent properly.Instead of plastic begs one should take use of jute begs. Because it harms another animal and peoples.So this plastic should be banned.