Plastic Recycling Issues

[hobbsyoyo]

Here's a small rant: I often wonder if the rich people are trying to push public opinion to shift more of a burden on individuals I'll take two examples, here: Welfare fraud and plastic bags.

Plastic bags & straws: There's a lot of waste and pollution from the corporations, too. Getting rid of plastic bags is a good thing (straws not so much because of accessibility), but why aren't we also going after the industry too? There's a lot of unnecessary plastic packaging, but I don't hear much about them trying to ban that.

Here they passed a series of convoluted ballot initiatives that in effect means everyone has to pay 10 cents per plastic bag at grocery stores and that money goes to the corporation. It makes no sense and wasn't supposed to be this way but their were 4 ballot initiatives on this topic in 2016 and the matrix of passed versus failed of the initiatives wound up creating this situation.

Unless I'm wrong - @Timsup2nothin, do you know how that all panned out?

Moderator Action: Plastic recycling discussion moved from the rants thread to here. The OP was edited by me to remove irrelevant material. --LM

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Here they passed a series of convoluted ballot initiatives that in effect means everyone has to pay 10 cents per plastic bag at grocery stores and that money goes to the corporation. It makes no sense and wasn't supposed to be this way but their were 4 ballot initiatives on this topic in 2016 and the matrix of passed versus failed of the initiatives wound up creating this situation.

Unless I'm wrong - @Timsup2nothin, do you know how that all panned out?

It worked immediately. The ten cent bags are not only reusable, but conventionally recyclable. The bags they replaced were also recyclable, in a very specialized way, but were responsible for massive damage and shutdowns at 'regular' recycling facilities which are not equipped to deal with thin films. All efforts to get consumers to put the old bags in the special thin film collection barrels had failed consistently and completely. All efforts to get consumers to stop being proud of themselves for putting thin film bags in their recyclables had failed consistently and completely. By just eliminating the thin film bags damage and stoppages at recycling facilities was cut by somewhere around ninety percent.

I dunno how the straw thing is working out.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

But don't the fees go to the grocery stores?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

But don't the fees go to the grocery stores?

In an immediate sense, yes. They then go to the plastic bag manufacturers. They then go to recycling centers that harvest plastics. There's obviously diversion flows along the way. Some goes into various paychecks, some does bleed into profits, and unfortunately some does go to suppliers of virgin plastic since I don't think the bags are 100% recycled material yet. But the increased profitability of recycling centers and demand for material to feed them is probably the largest contributor to the current examination of ideas for harvesting the giant plastic island in the Pacific Ocean, among other things.

A lot of people don't know that the recycling industry was stuck for a long time on "we have constant breakdowns because thin films jam our sorting equipment so we cannot function profitably." They either had to pay huge labor costs for people to pick through unsorted recyclable waste and remove the thin film bags, or their down time exceeded their up time...and when their equipment was down they just threw the recyclables into the landfill. The repetitive "well just make a better sorter" chant didn't seem to be making it happen. Now recycling is becoming a profit center for waste management, instead of a headache forced on them by government.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

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.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

They're also good for lining boots when the snow comes up over the top of them.

 

[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.

Just because I'm in California "plastic grocery bag" is a term that requires clarification.

I'm guessing from context that you are talking about thin film bags, which do have all those cool potential uses but tended to accumulate for most people far faster than they could be put to any use at all, then would wind up in either the trash where they sort of belonged, or in the recycling where they would damage the local recycling center, or very rarely in the 'thin film collection' barrel at the grocery store where they would be sent to a recycling center prepared to handle them.

In California those bags are now pretty much outlawed. Grocery stores now offer recyclable plastic bags that are also sturdy enough to be reused if you bring them back to the store on a future trip. If you don't bring bags they get to charge you a dime apiece for the bags you use. I suspect that most people grumble, pay the dimes, and eventually throw the bags away, but hopefully they do throw them in the recycling because they are recyclable at conventional recycling facilities.

For reasons unknown some places are still allowed to use thin film bags; Home Depot comes immediately to mind. Not sure what that's about.

The two biggest obstacles to effective recycling programs are thin film bags and pizza boxes. Well, consumer apathy is really the biggest, and effectively covers the other two as well since if it weren't for apathetic consumers throwing them in the recycling they wouldn't be problems either.

 

[Synobun]

Vancouver's changed its recycling collection company three times since I moved here five years ago. Their policy on pizza boxes changes every switch. I think it's fine to put them in the recycling now, but the last one would refuse to pick up your recycling if they spotted even a hint of a pizza box.

(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!)

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Vancouver's changed its recycling collection company three times since I moved here five years ago. Their policy on pizza boxes changes every switch. I think it's fine to put them in the recycling now, but the last one would refuse to pick up your recycling if they spotted even a hint of a pizza box.

(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!)

Yeah, it's annoying to say the least. Sorting equipment at the typical recycling center is very good at directing cardboard onto the appropriate journey, which goes to a shredder. The problem is that it doesn't identify pizza box cardboard from any other cardboard, and pizza box cardboard is (sometimes) saturated with grease. Greasy cardboard doesn't shred, it just globs up in the blades of the shredder.

If consumers can be relied upon to examine their pizza boxes, correctly evaluate their grease content, and put them in the appropriate container then we have an ideal solution. Until then which container they go in depends upon whether the destination recycling center employs workers who's function is to knock pizza boxes off the cardboard belt into a bin for special handling...by hand.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

At one company I worked at, there was a long running inside joke on the internal message board related to recycling. At some point the company got big enough that single-stream recycling made sense so they stopped maintaining recycling bins as a separate service. This meant that everything got thrown in what looks like an ordinary garbage bin.

The company announced this when the switch happened but new people would start, notice an absence of recycling bins and unleash indignant rage at custodial services on the message board. Then the rest of us would pick on them for not noticing the sticky thread announcing the changeover.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Just because I'm in California "plastic grocery bag" is a term that requires clarification.

I'm guessing from context that you are talking about thin film bags, which do have all those cool potential uses but tended to accumulate for most people far faster than they could be put to any use at all, then would wind up in either the trash where they sort of belonged, or in the recycling where they would damage the local recycling center, or very rarely in the 'thin film collection' barrel at the grocery store where they would be sent to a recycling center prepared to handle them.

In California those bags are now pretty much outlawed. Grocery stores now offer recyclable plastic bags that are also sturdy enough to be reused if you bring them back to the store on a future trip. If you don't bring bags they get to charge you a dime apiece for the bags you use. I suspect that most people grumble, pay the dimes, and eventually throw the bags away, but hopefully they do throw them in the recycling because they are recyclable at conventional recycling facilities.

For reasons unknown some places are still allowed to use thin film bags; Home Depot comes immediately to mind. Not sure what that's about.

The two biggest obstacles to effective recycling programs are thin film bags and pizza boxes. Well, consumer apathy is really the biggest, and effectively covers the other two as well since if it weren't for apathetic consumers throwing them in the recycling they wouldn't be problems either.

Okay, I guess you would call them "thin film bags" (they're not as sturdy as they used to be). To me they're ordinary grocery bags made of plastic, and I do keep several with me whenever I go anywhere. I can't predict how many bags I'm going to need or what I'll end up buying (ie. I put all takeout orders into a plastic bag because I don't want leakage into the rest of my stuff or if any containers accidentally come open at least the contents won't spill out too far); if I buy a book at the library, for example, I'll have a bag to carry it in. Some stores and the library have bins where people can donate clean shopping bags for other people to use.

One problem with the reusables the stores sell is that the handles aren't long enough or flexible enough. With grocery bags I can tie them to my walker handles if necessary, or even to my carry bag or coat belt. The reusables (which are no different from tote bags) just don't have useful handles like that.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I wonder how much plastic waste comes from stuff that is just cheaply manufactured and breaks down quickly. (I've thrown out around 10-15 pairs of headphones that stopped working before I was able to buy a good pair.) Or planned obsolescence like printer ink cartridges, some of which disable themselves after certain dates even if there's good ink still in it.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Okay, I guess you would call them "thin film bags" (they're not as sturdy as they used to be). To me they're ordinary grocery bags made of plastic, and I do keep several with me whenever I go anywhere. I can't predict how many bags I'm going to need or what I'll end up buying (ie. I put all takeout orders into a plastic bag because I don't want leakage into the rest of my stuff or if any containers accidentally come open at least the contents won't spill out too far); if I buy a book at the library, for example, I'll have a bag to carry it in. Some stores and the library have bins where people can donate clean shopping bags for other people to use.

One problem with the reusables the stores sell is that the handles aren't long enough or flexible enough. With grocery bags I can tie them to my walker handles if necessary, or even to my carry bag or coat belt. The reusables (which are no different from tote bags) just don't have useful handles like that.

I do miss the old thin film bags for how quick and easy they were to tie things up with. The new dime bags aren't good for that. They also wouldn't be good for hanging on the handle of a walker, generally.

Most stores in California do offer a pretty wide array of reusable bags though. Even more since the thin film bags got banned and the outrage over dime bags set in. A lot of people bought various under a dollar reusables on the theory that if they were going to bring bags back they'd bring better ones. For me the quality of the bag makes no difference, it's the remembering to bring them that's the problem either way.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I wonder how much plastic waste comes from stuff that is just cheaply manufactured and breaks down quickly. (I've thrown out around 10-15 pairs of headphones that stopped working before I was able to buy a good pair.) Or planned obsolescence like printer ink cartridges, some of which disable themselves after certain dates even if there's good ink still in it.

It's beyond considerable. Somebody noticed a very long time ago that they weren't selling as many things if the products were well-made to last many years, so they started selling cheaply-made, intended-to-break-down/wear-out stuff - ranging from clothes to tools to just about anything else you can think of, so people would just throw stuff away and buy new.

I didn't even consider getting a computer until my old electric typewriter broke down and none of the repair shops in town would touch it because they said it would be too expensive (and ink cartridges were getting hard to find). This was around 1990. That wonderful old Smith-Corona typed a lot of term papers in the 8 years I had it (my own and other people's).

 

[Cutlass]

I wonder how much plastic waste comes from stuff that is just cheaply manufactured and breaks down quickly. (I've thrown out around 10-15 pairs of headphones that stopped working before I was able to buy a good pair.) Or planned obsolescence like printer ink cartridges, some of which disable themselves after certain dates even if there's good ink still in it.

It's large. But the largest part of plastic waste is packaging of all sorts. All those many things you buy that come in plastic packages that are used once, and then thrown away. And in many cases the packaging is quite a lot larger than the product. Those ear buds you buy come in a plastic container 5 times the size it needs to be, because that cuts down on shoplifting.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Those ear buds you buy come in a plastic container 5 times the size it needs to be, because that cuts down on shoplifting.

What's really silly is that a lot of times they put the stuff with plastic packaging behind the counter or a locked case, where they can't be shoplifted anyways.

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

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Should someone make a thread about plastic waste? There's a lot of talking about it here.

 

[Cutlass]

What's really silly is that a lot of times they put the stuff with plastic packaging behind the counter or a locked case, where they can't be shoplifted anyways.

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

I have an extremely heavy duty set of scissors that I use on it. Like $25 heavy duty. Heavy enough that it will cut carpet. Some of those packages can hardly be opened with anything else.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I have an extremely heavy duty set of scissors that I use on it. Like $25 heavy duty. Heavy enough that it will cut carpet. Some of those packages can hardly be opened with anything else.

I use a utility knife.

Overpackaging isn't only with plastic. I have what seems like half a tree's worth of brown packing paper to deal with when getting some orders from Amazon, Walmart, London Drugs, or some of the craft companies where I get my jigsaw puzzles and other craft stuff. So when I get several boxes and a pile of brown paper I offer it to anyone in the building who might be moving, or offer it on Freecycle. There's always someone who can use it.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

At least paper is more easily recyclable (or compostable if it gets soggy). Unless it's covered in wax.