Plastic Recycling Issues

[Valka D'Ur]

Fortunately, this paper is just paper.

 

[Hrothbern]

It's not only plastic from plastic packagings that pollute land and the oceans.

The four key contributors to microplastic pollution in the oceans from UK sources, according to the report, are:

• Vehicle tyres: 68,000 tonnes of microplastics from tyre tread abrasion are generated in the UK every year, with between 7,000 and 19,000 tonnes entering surface waters;
  
  
• Clothing: the washing of synthetic clothing could result in the generation of 2,300-5,900 tonnes of fibres annually in the UK – up to 2,900 tonnes of this could be passing through wastewater treatment into our rivers and estuaries;
  
  
• Plastic pellets used to manufacture plastic items. Up to 5,900 tonnes are lost to surface waters in the UK every year;
  
  
• Paints on buildings and road markings – weather and flake-off results in between 1,400 and 3,700 tonnes ending up in surface water every year.

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...c-clothes-big-cause-of-microplastic-pollution

A domestic wash is on average 700,000 synthetic fibres.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-45770358

Even at the deepest bottoms of our oceans, like the Mariana trench, fibres are found in organisms.

The deepest point on Earth is heavily polluted with plastic, scientists have discovered, showing how pervasively the world has been contaminated.

The researchers plumbed the depths of the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean, near Challenger Deep, the lowest place on the face of the planet. They found the highest levels of microplastics yet found in the open ocean, compared with surveys from elsewhere in the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic oceans.

“Manmade plastics have contaminated the most remote and deepest places on the planet,” said the Chinese researchers. “The hadal zone is likely one of the largest sinks for microplastic debris on Earth, with unknown but potentially damaging impacts on this fragile ecosystem.”

Other recent studies have demonstrated the reach of human impacts into the Mariana Trench, with “extraordinary” levels of pollutants being found there and plastic being found in stomachs of deep sea creatures. Microplastics have also been found in Swiss mountains, tap water and human faeces.
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...-pollution-mariana-trench-deepest-point-ocean

It is about time that the developed countries replace the traditional economy of exploiting our environment, of traditional growth of GDP by adding a green & sustainable sector to our economy and GDP growth, for green jobs as well.
Renewables etc is urgent, but does not create many jobs. Green & sustainable ecocomy can create new jobs.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Oh how I miss the times 15 years ago when cases of (6 or is it 8?) two liter bottles we're packaged in cardboard. Now they are wrapped in flimsy plastic that doesn't stay stable when putting anything on top of it. The plastic is lighter than cardboard, reducing the weight of the pallet (and multiplied by 50+ cases on a pallet × 25 pallets or whatever fits on a truck), thus saving on fuel costs.

Of course every pallet of any product is wrapped in shrink wrap, but 99% of that gets recycled.

 

[Kaitzilla]

I hate clamshell packaging. I always cut my fingers on it.

I've lost more blood to clamshell packaging than to knives in my life.

 

[tjs282]

(The really nice part about that was that the garbage company would then leave notes on the bin saying to put the pizza boxes in the recycling because cardboard is recyclable, not trash!)

Where I live in Germany, most packaging-waste is expected to be separated by the householder (if they can be bothered) and then re-used/ recycled wherever feasible (or at least, local authorities award garbage-collection/ disposal contracts to companies who claim to do so). All on-street collections happen every 2 weeks.

Most 1-shot (food) packaging materials -- deposit-free plastic bottles, tin-cans, juice-packs, alu-foil, polystyrene trays/blocks, etc. -- go into the "Gelbe Sack" (thin-film yellow garbage bags) for sorting/ recycling. Rolls of these bags are obtainable free from supermarkets, and each bag is printed with list of possible contents (including plastic carrier bags and cling-wrap, so I guess it's hand-sorted here -- or possibly just shipped out to the third world, and/or dumped at sea, until the 'recycling' company gets caught doing so). We usually end up filling roughly one bag per collection period.

Spoiler What else we do... :

Most plastic/glass beer/soda bottles (and soda-cans too, these days) usually have a deposit (Pfand) on them, but a 'Pfand-flasche' doesn't necessarily have to be returned to the shop where it was bought. Most supermarkets have at least one automated return-point (usually for plastic bottles, some also allow glass bottle-returns), which prints out a receipt for the total Pfand-value redeemed, which can then be cashed, or used for further purchases. The Pfand for plastic items is higher than for glass (25 Eurocents per item vs. 8 Eurocents, at least where I live), so going bin-diving for discarded Pfand-flaschen can actually be a useful source of extra money for e.g. kids/ pensioners/ homeless people.

For non-Pfand glass jars/bottles, most supermarkets/ mall-areas usually have a glass-collection-point with the 'standard' triplet of bins (clear/ brown/ green) adjacent to the nearest street; additional collection-points might be located in more outlying areas. Our local supermarket collection-point also has collection-bins for large slabs of heavy cardboard (e.g. IKEA furniture-packaging), and old clothing. Dead AA/AAA/B/C/D/button-cell batteries can be dropped in a collection-box inside the supermarket itself, and some supermarkets also provide collection-boxes for dead lightbulbs/ other electronics.

Kitchen and garden waste go into the "Bio-müll", which is sent to a composting/ bio-gas facility. Though I prefer to compost most of our green-waste myself, and use it to fertilise our garden. I separated our compost-bin into 3 sections, which I cycle through batchwise: each section takes about 3-4 months to fill, 3-4 more months to (mostly) compost down, and then 3-4 months to be used. (I sieve it to separate out anything that needs a bit more time: that residue -- and the worms! -- go back into the 'filling' section instead).

(News)Paper and card go in the paper-bin. But it was only quite recently that I/we discovered that paper/cardboard with food-residue (not just pizza-boxes, but also cake-trays/wrappers, and frozen-veg cartons) is required to go in the 'Restmüll' (='other household waste') instead, which gets incinerated at a plant that (I believe) converts the 'waste' heat to electricity.

Spoiler Minor whingeing about local bureaucracy :

Like the paper-, bio-, and GS-waste, Restmüll gets collected every 2 weeks, but since our boys stopped wearing ('disposable') nappies* about 7 years ago, our (120-liter) bin's usually mostly empty. At the time, we asked the council if we could be issued a 60-L bin instead -- which incurs a lower collection fee -- but were told that as a family of four, we weren't legally entitled to it

I mean, I can see that with a tiered fee-system, there has to be some control exercised over which households get which bin-size, to prevent the lazy/ unscrupulous from just going for the smallest sizes/fees, and then stuffing their excess garbage (quite possibly including stuff which should rather be yellow-sacked or paper-binned) into a more conscientious/ honest neighbour's (larger) bin. But since most people in high unit-density residential areas -- like ours -- don't have much (if any) space available to lock their bins away from the public access-paths, there's nothing to stop that from happening anyway...

*From an environmental-health/economic perspective, neither of us were happy with this choice at the time, but since my better half was the primary homebody, and hence the person who would have ended up dealing with most of the unpleasantness/ hassle of emptying/ cleaning re-usables -- which she was understandably reluctant to do -- I wasn't about to insist too hard on it.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Every plastic grocery bag that comes into my home gets used several times for various reasons - I take several with me when I go shopping, sometimes they're used to clean up after Maddy, I've used them for laundry, to tie door handles shut so Maddy can't get into the cat pantry and tear open her new bags of cat food, and there are still other uses. The only time when they're only used once is if they get torn past usability.

Many years ago there was a local woman who made rugs out of plastic shopping bags. She'd crochet them together and sell them for $5 each. I was given one, and it looked quite nice, having been made from various colored shopping bags. It was hilarious when visitors didn't want to step on it with their dirty shoes or boots because it "looked too nice". They were astonished when I told them to go ahead - they couldn't hurt it because it was made from plastic bags.

I was at the grocery store yesterday and thought of you. They had these insulated reusable bags. Plasticized fabric so they don't absorb condensation, with a zipper to supposedly seal them against the heat so you can take your frozen or cold purchases home. I have serious doubts about whether they would work, and I looked at the handles figuring they were exactly what you said didn't work for you...but they were decorated with very nice penguin motifs.

 

[Synobun]

Where I live in Germany, most packaging-waste is separated at source (if the householder can be bothered) and then re-used/ recycled wherever feasible (or at least, local authorities award garbage-collection/ disposal companies who claim to do so). All collections happen every 2 weeks.

Most 1-shot (food) packaging materials -- Pfand-free plastic bottles, tin-cans, juice-packs, alu-foil, polystyrene trays/blocks, etc. -- go into the "Gelbe Sack" (thin-film yellow garbage bags) for on-street collection and sorting/ recycling. Rolls of these bags are obtainable free from supermarkets, and each bag is printed with list of possible contents, (including plastic carrier bags and cling-wrap, so I guess it's hand-sorted here -- or possibly just shipped out to the third world, and/or dumped at sea, until the 'recycling' company gets caught doing so). We usually end up filling roughly one bag per collection period.

Spoiler What else we do... :

Most beer/soda bottles usually have a deposit (Pfand) on them, which is returned when you bring them back -- important to note here is that it doesn't have to be the shop where the bottle was bought. Most supermarkets have at least one automated bottle-return point, which prints out a receipt for the total Pfand-value redeemed, which can then be cashed, or used for further purchases (so going bin-diving for Pfandflaschen can be a potential source of extra money for kids/ pensioners/ homeless).

Other glass jars/bottles go in the glass-bin -- there are usually the standard set of 3 bins (clear/brown/green) at every collection point, also usually sited in supermarket car-parks; our local supermarket collection-point also has bins for heavy cardboard, and old clothing. Dead AA/AAA/B/C/D/button-cell batteries can be dropped in a small box inside the supermarket itself (some supermarkets also have collection points for dead lightbulbs and other electronics).

Kitchen and garden waste go into the "Bio-müll", which is sent to a composting/ bio-gas facility. Though I prefer to compost most of our green-waste myself, and use it to fertilise our garden. I separated our compost-bin into 3 sections, which I cycle through batchwise: each section takes about 3-4 months to fill, 3-4 more months to (mostly) compost down, and then 3-4 months to be used. (I sieve it to separate out anything that needs a bit more time: that residue -- and the worms! -- go back into the 'filling' section instead).

(News)Paper and card go in the paper-bin. But it was only quite recently that I/we discovered that paper/cardboard with food-residue (not just pizza-boxes, but also cake-trays/wrappers, and frozen-veg cartons) is required to go in the 'Restmüll' (='other household waste') instead, which gets incinerated at a plant that (I believe) converts the 'waste' heat to electricity.

Spoiler Minor whingeing about local bureaucracy :

Like the paper-, bio-, and GS-waste, Restmüll gets collected every 2 weeks, but since our boys stopped wearing ('disposable') nappies* about 7 years ago, our (120-liter) bin's usually mostly empty. At the time, we asked the council if we could be issued a 60-L bin instead -- which incurs a lower collection fee -- but were told that as a family of four, we weren't legally entitled to it

I mean, I can see that with a tiered fee-system, there has to be some control exercised over which households get which bin-size, to prevent the lazy/ unscrupulous from just going for the smallest sizes/fees, and then stuffing their excess garbage (quite possibly including stuff which should rather be yellow-sacked or paper-binned) into a more conscientious/ honest neighbour's (larger) bin. But since most people in high unit-density residential areas -- like ours -- don't have much (if any) space available to lock their bins away from the public access-paths, there's nothing to stop that from happening anyway...

*From an environmental-health/economic perspective, neither of us were happy with this choice at the time, but since my better half was the primary homebody, and hence the person who would have ended up dealing with most of the unpleasantness/ hassle of emptying/ cleaning re-usables -- which she was understandably reluctant to do -- I didn't insist too hard on it.

Here, we have a blue box, a grey box, and a yellow bag for recyclable materials. The blue is for thin aluminum cans, plastic bottles, and general (recyclable) plastic. The grey box is for thicker metal (like a soup can) and glass. The yellow bag is for cardboard and paper.

Then we have a large black bin for garbage and a large green bin for compost.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Here, we have a blue box, a grey box, and a yellow bag for recyclable materials. The blue is for thin aluminum cans, plastic bottles, and general (recyclable) plastic. The grey box is for thicker metal (like a soup can) and glass. The yellow bag is for cardboard and paper.

Then we have a large black bin for garbage and a large green bin for compost.

Good grief. Has your waste management contractor never heard of a first stage sorter? Asking the consumer to perform first stage sorting, and counting on them to do it might work some places I guess, but certainly none in the US. First stage sorting is just about the easiest part of the process anyway.

 

[Synobun]

Good grief. Has your waste management contractor never heard of a first stage sorter? Asking the consumer to perform first stage sorting, and counting on them to do it might work some places I guess, but certainly none in the US. First stage sorting is just about the easiest part of the process anyway.

Back in rural Ontario, we had the same big bins for garbage and compost, but instead of having three separate things for recycling we just had one big blue bin that you shoved anything recyclable into.

I much preferred that approach. Now you have to check against the allowed/disallowed lists, and then also hope that the inevitable contractor switch won't change it up too much.

 

[Bamspeedy]

People are required to use plastic bags to put their recyclables into? There seems to be something wrong with this line of thought.....

I'm sure whenever places switched from 'households have to sort' to 'just put all recyclables into the same bin' the compliance rate jumped significantly. I have left over bins from the old days of needing 3-5 different colored bins to now I need just 1 (maybe 2 if I have lots of cardboard).

 

[Timsup2nothin]

People are required to use plastic bags to put their recyclables into? There seems to be something wrong with this line of thought.....

I'm sure whenever places switched from 'households have to sort' to 'just put all recyclables into the same bin' the compliance rate jumped significantly. I have left over bins from the old days of needing 3-5 different colored bins to now I need just 1 (maybe 2 if I have lots of cardboard).

Some places started pushing recycling before reliable first stage sorters had been devised. Hats off to them, and to the people who complied. Any waste management company that hasn't caught up in first stage sorting by now should be denied all contracts.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

I say discard plastic completely and replace it with things like leather, cloth, wood, glass, metal and carbon fiber. Problem solved. And incidentally we all will know how it feels being rich.

 

[Synobun]

Enjoy your tasty Sprite™ beverage inside one of our Limited Edition Leather Flasks®!

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Sprite could be kept in glass or metal. Just as now.

 

[tjs282]

People are required to use plastic bags to put their recyclables into? There seems to be something wrong with this line of thought.....

I pretty much agree with you. Not least because the Gelbe-Sacken are extremely flimsy, so you can't over-fill them, and you have to be really careful not to bump/catch them on anything while carrying them out to the street. Also, since the collections happen early in the morning, a lot of local households will put the bags out the day/evening before, leaving them vulnerable to being blown into the road by strong wind (being mostly 'filled' with air, they weigh very little), and/or otherwise split open (e.g. by scavenging animals, not that I've seen much evidence of many of those round here).

So it's not ideal, but given the way things currently are, the only viable alternative would be for each individual household to be issued yet a 4th wheelie-bin (apartment blocks usually already get >=1 dumpster per each waste-flow, including "Gelbe-Sacken-Sachen").

Some places started pushing recycling before reliable first stage sorters had been devised. Hats off to them, and to the people who complied. Any waste management company that hasn't caught up in first stage sorting by now should be denied all contracts.

Germany was (I believe) very much a pioneer with respect to mass-recycling schemes, so it's likely that each additional separated waste-stream was added piecemeal to the system(s) already in place, and therefore -- because the German population was likewise 'trained' to separate their garbage over several steps/ decades/ generations -- those systems have just never (needed to be re-)integrated.

Kids here are also taught about environmental issues, including recycling, pretty much from kindergarten onward -- but as everywhere, the lessons tend to stick better with the brighter...

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The biggest issue with bagging the recyclables is that they have to be unbagged to go into the sorter, or whatever process they are going into. My recycling bin says right on the top "RECYCLABLES ONLY-DO NOT BAG."

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I was at the grocery store yesterday and thought of you. They had these insulated reusable bags. Plasticized fabric so they don't absorb condensation, with a zipper to supposedly seal them against the heat so you can take your frozen or cold purchases home. I have serious doubts about whether they would work, and I looked at the handles figuring they were exactly what you said didn't work for you...but they were decorated with very nice penguin motifs.

Thank you for this - it's helped cheer me up a bit today.

Here, we have a blue box, a grey box, and a yellow bag for recyclable materials. The blue is for thin aluminum cans, plastic bottles, and general (recyclable) plastic. The grey box is for thicker metal (like a soup can) and glass. The yellow bag is for cardboard and paper.

Then we have a large black bin for garbage and a large green bin for compost.

Recycling is hit and miss for apartment buildings in Red Deer (mostly miss). The place I live at now has two dumpsters - one for regular garbage and one for paper (they're different colors). Nothing is provided for things like plastics or cans or glass. Apparently everyone in Red Deer drives and can take those to the recyclers themselves.

Any beverage containers I have that are worth money are taken to the depot to get the deposit back. Unfortunately, Maddy's cat milk containers aren't worth money even though it's nearly the same sort of container that is used for single servings of fruit juice, and those are worth 10 cents each.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Recycling is hit and miss for apartment buildings in Red Deer (mostly miss). The place I live at now has two dumpsters - one for regular garbage and one for paper (they're different colors). Nothing is provided for things like plastics or cans or glass. Apparently everyone in Red Deer drives and can take those to the recyclers themselves.

At our apartment, the landlord hires a company to take away the trash. They had to send a notice to everyone because people kept dumping old TVs and stuff that aren't supposed to get in there.

At a grocery store, I saw a reusable bag that looked and felt like fabric, but it was actually made out of recycled bottles. I wonder how that works.

 

[Cutlass]

For grocery shopping I bought these reusable bags.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003B6478Q/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o09__o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

They last a few years before wearing out.

 

[Synobun]

Reusable totes/bags are just awful for lugging, I find. They cut off circulation in my hands and are just generally miserable. The cloth material feels almost sharp against the skin when it's weighted down.

I use my backpack when possible, and just plain old-fashioned plastic bags for when that's not enough. Double bagging is easier with the plastic and the handles are pretty neutral when held. It's also easier to take in some of the bag in your grip with a plastic bag than it is with a reusable tote. My go-to with carrying groceries is to grab the handles, twist once, and then grab the twisted material with the same hand. Can't do that with a reusable tote.