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vga , (edited )

NGL that’s more than I thought, but nevertheless: don’t use plastic if you can avoid it. It’s not easy to recycle.

For instance, for beverages, prefer cans or your own glass / metal water bottles.

That said, 9% is a huge lot better than 0%. edit or considering the amount of plastics we use, a huge lot better than 8% too.

BruceTwarzen ,

The older i get the more disgusting i find plastic. I would never buy plastic tupperware ever again, drinking out of plastic bottles just feels wrong.

TheObviousSolution ,
@TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee avatar

How is it difficult to recycle? The temperatures requires to do so are less than metal, the 3D printing communities has people that recycle them into filaments all the time. I don’t think the problem is the plastic so much as it is how it is still treated as a disposable container and that neither companies nor governments pay for or provide reclamation means like recycling machines that pay for each bottle collected. In other words, the problem is more cultural than material.

HereIAm ,

And how many times do they recycle the filament until it’s too degraded to use?

TheObviousSolution ,
@TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee avatar

Depends on what you consider degraded, the only reason it would stop being recyclable is if it became too contaminated with foreign substances or exposure, which applies to anything.

cynar ,

Repeating plastics tends to damage them on a chemical level. The polymer chains break and shorten. This ends with the plastic being more brittle. Since 3d printed parts have already been remelted once, they have even more degradation than injection moulded parts.

I believe the recommended amount of recycled plastic is around 30% for PLA. Any more and the parts lose significant strength.

I personally would prefer us to accept that plastics aren’t really recyclable. It’s better to move towards renewable plastics like PLA, and treat the waste as biomass (either composted or burnt for energy.

TheObviousSolution ,
@TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee avatar

I personally would prefer us to accept that plastics aren’t really recyclable. It’s better to move towards renewable plastics

Err … getting mixed signals …

What you are describing is exposure. There are plenty of build with 100% recycled plastic, so not sure where you are getting that 30%. I think you are perhaps thinking of the marketing material of PLA filaments that sell themselves as particularly ecofriendly because they include recycled materials, while I’m talking about builds made entirely out of things like recycled water bottles, which are made out of PET. PLA is more susceptible to exposure to sunlight, heat, and moisture, so rather than using it to hold beverages at that point you might want to skip plastic entirely. PLA itself is not recycled that much, but it is more biodegradable.

cynar ,

Exposure can cause similar effects. However, the act of heating the plastic to the temperatures needed to melt it and defirming it also damages the structure. It’s particularly obvious with pla, but all plastics suffer from it, to an extent.

Eranziel ,

Others have pointed out the degradation issue, but you’re also assuming that all plastics are thermoplastics. They are not. There’s huge variation in chemical composition and material properties between different plastics, and most of them can’t be melted and reformed.

TheObviousSolution ,
@TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee avatar

But then the problem isn’t with all plastics, it’s with certain plastics, and around 70% of global plastic production are concentrated around commodity plastics, all of which are thermoplastic. The greatest degradation issue occurs with biodegradable plastics, which is perceived as a good thing for them, though even biodegradable PLA has toxicity concerns.

rekabis ,

don’t use plastic if you can avoid it. It’s not easy to recycle.

Plastic bags, styrofoam, and those hard plastics marked types 1 & 2 are the ones most likely to be recycled into new products. They are easy to break down and recycle into new containers.

Hard plastics marked types 3 through 7 are most likely to be filtered out and either incinerated or dumped straight into the landfill, as it costs more to recycle them than to just create new straight from oil.

SatansMaggotyCumFart ,

I just burn it.

tpihkal ,

I want to hate your comment so much but reality is reality.

Plastics just don’t really get recycled. Despite the efforts made (the company I work for included), recycling is such a joke because it’s hard to even FIND sources that WILL recycle certain things because at the end of the day it likely doesn’t exist because it’s more expensive and sometimes has an even greater impact on the environment to recycle than to just keep buggering on.

That said, I don’t like you burning plastics. I grew up burning paper trash in barrels but we were still mindful of not releasing toxic fumes into the local environment. So, fuck you for that one.

SatansMaggotyCumFart ,

I make sure the chimney takes it out of the environment.

tpihkal ,

How’s that then?

SatansMaggotyCumFart ,

It’s a long chimney.

tpihkal ,

I wonder if it’s anything like this lighthouse I’m showing your mum right now?

SatansMaggotyCumFart ,

My mother just passed away last week and I’m still pretty sore about it.

tpihkal ,

You miss out on a last chance or something?

SatansMaggotyCumFart ,

I missed out on a last chance to say good bye, because I was too busy burning my plastic.

tpihkal ,

Bruh, she told me to tell you she always wanted to love you.

arefx ,

This thread is brutal lmao

Cheems ,
@Cheems@lemmy.world avatar

Oh, I’m sorry. Well, I could put the trash into a landfill where it’s going to stay for millions of years, or I could burn it up and get a nice smoky smell in here and let that smoke go into the sky where it turns into stars.

Canis_76 ,

So. We have been making plastic for something like 75 years now. We have been recycling for about half that. Have the recycling plants ramped up to anywhere near the level of plastic production? What precisely is the point of this?

A_Random_Idiot ,

None of the garbage companies want to spend money processing/seperating plastics, Doesnt matter how much you ramp up recycling plants if the plastic gets diverted to the dump/incinerators instead cause its cheaper/less cost for the waste company.

Especially with how cheap plastic is to make from scratch.

SocialMediaRefugee ,

Part of me thinks we’d be better off just burning most of it at this point. Maybe work on bacteria that can break down the plastics in specific environments like seawater.

allan ,

I’d we could just make it all from 100% bioplastics, we could just burn it for heating/power when done with it and regrow it

Chessmasterrex , (edited )

Probably a terrible idea, but melting the plastic and extruding the plastic in underground abandoned mines, filling up the empty spaces like icing on a cake from floor to ceiling. There are abandoned lead mines in Oklahoma, where the town was vacated because of the toxicity and the ground collapsing underneath. A place like that seems ideal.

lauha ,

In Finland one mine had broken the law and dumped all their waste in the back of the mine and they were ordered to clean it up and they raised their hands up and said they couldn’t because it was too dangerous to work there. Govenment’s mining superviser dude turned out to be paid by the mining company, surprise!

Thorny_Insight ,

That assumes the plastic is already being collected, so why not just make new products from it instead of dumping it into the ground and then using even more oil to make new plastic?

UncleGrandPa ,

Meaning almost 90 percent of everything ever made of plastic is still around

FiniteBanjo ,

The other 10% is also still around just in different shapes.

Gumus ,

Most of plastic trash is burned, so it’s around only in the form of CO2 and other chemicals in the atmosphere.

FiniteBanjo ,

More than I assumed, tbh. We need to start taxing plastic bottles.

Plopp ,

How the hell are plastic bottles going to pay taxes? Let’s not even think about giving them jobs when unemployment is already high.

DJDarren ,

I mean, we can’t even tax billionaires properly!

FiniteBanjo ,

If you make a plastic bottle you get taxed. If you put something in a plastic bottle to resell, you get taxed. If you import a plastic bottle for any reason, believe it or not, taxed.

brb ,

The situation looks better in EU according to this article

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/2750e910-6497-4a58-b21d-d341840ac069.png

roofuskit ,

That’s just waste.

rekabis ,

The upper line has a steeper slope than the lower line, making that spread grow. So unrecycled plastic waste is increasing.

b161 ,

I read somewhere that because recycling plastic isn’t profitable, under the capitalist system there’s no incentive to do so.

Most plastics due for recycling just gets shipped off to poor countries for “reclycing” but isn’t at all, and a lot of it just ends up in the ocean.

So you’re better off just throwing plastics in the garbage where it will at least end up in landfill and not in the ocean.

Thorny_Insight , (edited )

That’s a bit cynical take. In many countries, including mine, there are dedicate bins for plastic waste which is the majority of waste from your typical household. It’s all being recycled into new products, not being shipped anywhere. Also, when it comes to plastic bottles for example, close to 100% of them are returned and recycled into new bottles. I’ve got a tiny-ass bin for the stuff that ends up in landfill because I separate and recycle it all as does most other people.

EDIT: Nevermind then. It’s all apparently dumped into the ocean. Sorry about the attempt in some positivity.

Tiptopit ,

plasticexpert.co.uk/what-country-recycles-the-mos….

Germany has the highest recycling rate for plastics with 65 %. Not everything you put in the recycling bin is being recycled.

Thorny_Insight ,

Seems far more likely that the recycling rate is low because not every piece of plastic waste is put into recycling. Not that they simply don’t recycle it.

Tiptopit ,

The problem is that there are quite some different sorts of plastics and that plastic containers are not standardized. If you mix different kinds of plastics or plastics with other materials you can’t use it anymore in an automated processing and it usually gets burned. Also mostly recycling is a downgrade, so usually if you recycle some packaging, it is not made into packaging again but into things like pallets or construction fence bases.

Deceptichum ,
@Deceptichum@quokk.au avatar

In my country (Aus), last I heard our recycling was mostly shipped off to Indo or somewhere else in SEA (previously China before China banned it).

I suspect very little ever sees recycling, but the neoliberal model means privatised companies paid by government, so they’re out to cut expenses to maximise profits and shipping it off to someone else to do the illegal thing where it’s not illegal isn’t illegal.

Badeendje ,
@Badeendje@lemmy.world avatar

Haha… yeah I live in the Netherlands. And my city started separately collecting plastics.

Here’s the kicker: because there is no more plastic in our waste, the energy value of the waste went down. The city sold these waste “rights” to an incineration plant that reclaims heat and energy who now cannot use the waste. So to avoid contractual fines, our city now imports plastic waste from elsewhere in Europe to be mixed in with the waste and then incinerated.

Well fuck me!

  • This is more expensive for the city (separate bins, separate collection, separate processing, buying plastics from elsewhere and getting it here)
  • All the extra transport and shipping movements is worse for the environment.
  • I’m stuck with an extra fucking bin, and with both a greens bin and the rest bin that are collected once every 3 weeks instead of 2… stinking up the place even worse.

But I’m sure they meant well.

frazorth ,

It’s all being recycled into new products

I’m afraid its not. There are many plastics that don’t have any method of recycling, and plently more that require specific machinery for their “one time” recycling that just isn’t being used.commercially.

when it comes to plastic bottles for example, close to 100% of them are returned and recycled into new bottles

Even the PET bottles can only go through the process once or twice before becoming too degraded. That’s not even taking into account that most manufacturers want white or clear plastic, and recycled does not work that way.

The separation and recycling that you do is mostly gaslighting and green washing.

frazorth ,

Even if you look the Scandinavian countries which generally does better than the rest of the world, you are looking at only a 25% recycle rate.

finland.fi/…/finnish-innovations-for-overcoming-p…

Maalus ,

It’s because you can’t recycle plastic really. Each time you heat it up to melt it it loses its properties. A recyclable material is for instance aluminium, which keeps on being awesome. I tried various recycled plastics for a business I run, none of it was strong enough. Recycled lego, recycled car bumpers, nada. And then the question is - why would I buy the recycled plastic that doesn’t work when it’s like 30 cents cheaper. Pellets are so cheap in fact, that I could buy a tonne, use up 100kgs, throw the rest away and still be fine.

PrimeMinisterKeyes , (edited )

Once they touch the factory floor’s floor, plastics become filthy and cannot be used for high-quality applications - food wrappers, anything with body contact. Oils and heavy metals are the biggest contaminants, a plastics-producing company I used to work for concluded. They either sent it all to a recycling factory or used it for very low-quality stuff like trash bags.
Now with post-consumer plastics, not only are they extremely heterogeneous, they will also have even worse contaminants like mold which proved to be very resistant to cleaning, a EU study concluded. So you might want to pyrolyze them like you do with crude oil, but there’s just too much O, N, S and halogens, so the output will be too corrosive, but also too heterogeneous for it to make economic sense.

Classy ,

What was it like working in plastics production? I imagine you were breathing in vapors all the time?

MonkderVierte ,

Maybe with some additives? Or removing them, in the first place? But expensive i guess.

Maalus ,

Maybe there is something, but tbh why bother when virgin pellets are better. The best plastic recycling strategy is to not make it in the first place. Or just use other types of packaging - alu cans, glass bottles, paper containers, whatever.

Also additives soak water like crazy. Moisture is a huge problem when making parts - you need to dry some types of plastic pellets in industrial dryers, which eats up a ton of electricity - since they are often running off of compressed air out of a compressor. Most plastic comes in natural colors to which you add additives to change to the color you want. Simply doing that (2% by weight) is a difference between not having to dry at all (since some plastics just don’t absorb water - i.e. polyolefins - which high density variant is what bottles for shower gel, shampoos are made of) and having to dry it for like 6 hours before use.

MonkderVierte ,

Gets burned here, same result like with oil it is made of.

Blackmist ,

It’s just a bad material that’s cheap to make things out of.

Once used, to my knowledge, it can’t be reused as the same thing, so they “recycle” it into road surfacing etc, which I’m sure doesn’t end up fragmenting into tiny bits over the years and ending up in water sources…

And I’m not sure there’s a good way to get away from it completely. Even drink cans have a small layer of plastic inside to stop it reacting with the metal. Glass is probably the most environmentally friendly (if you just wash and reuse), but a bitch to get it back in one piece.

Time to tax the ever loving shit out of plastic tbh. And yes, prices will go up, but you know what? They go up anyway. They can only take as much as we have, and they’re already taking it.

roofuskit ,

Most glass is recycled into asphalt. Until fairly recently that was the only way to recycle glass.

vga ,

I read somewhere that because recycling plastic isn’t profitable, under the capitalist system there’s no incentive to do so.

Not just unprofitable in a capitalist sense, but inefficient. A typical plastic beverage container can be recycled two or three times before the plastic degrades too much to be usable.

Socialism won’t save you here. Unless said socialism bans plastic products.

roofuskit ,

Those countries stopped accepting it.

Carighan ,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

I’ll be honest, that’s actually more than I would have guessed (ballpark would have been 5% or under), sad as that is.

Badeendje ,
@Badeendje@lemmy.world avatar

I’ll bet the term recycled is actually open for interpretation, and the official use differs from our (pleb) expectations.

randompasta ,

The recycling symbol for plastics was a great bit of marketing for the plastics industry. ‘Just buy a new thing and no worries you can just recycle it.’

Future geologists are going to see a marine deposit of plastic and be able to date exactly the age of the rock layer.

Usernameblankface ,
@Usernameblankface@lemmy.world avatar

They purposely made their symbols for non-recylable types of plastic look like the recycling symbol.

blimpkun ,

Don’t forget nuclear fallout. There’s even a term for when humans started to irrevocably fuck Earth: the Anthropocene.

makingrain ,
@makingrain@lemm.ee avatar

Don’t forget nuclear fallout. There’s even a term for when humans started to irrevocably fuck Earth: the Anthropocene.

Semi_Hemi_Demigod ,
@Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world avatar

And heavy metals from burning fossil fuels.

Just a thin, oily, radioactive, toxic smear in the record.

Ensign_Crab ,

Followed by the layer of shoes, then nothing.

weariedfae ,

The committee recently pulled the plug on the Anthropocene unfortunately. It was never official and they just rejected it this year.

Ephera ,

Yeah, I feel like this Wikipedia graphic puts it quite well why that was rejected:

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/9c98bce8-569b-4fbc-b4c3-679a8238fc11.png

You see that “Pleistocene” vertical bar? And you see that tiny sliver of “Holocene” at the top. Yeah, the Anthropocene folks were basically arguing that so many riveting things happened in the Holocene already, that we need to declare a new epoch for what’s happening now.

Besides, if we do continue to irrevocably fuck Earth and the current mass extinction event continues to wipe out a big chunk of life on Earth, then a future sentient species might declare our entire existence as just the geological event that ended the current era (Cenozoic).

echolalia ,

Survivors of the resource wars will send their children to the plastic mines to work for bottle caps

apfelwoiSchoppen ,
@apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world avatar

Almost like plastics recycling has been a scam all along perpetrated by the corporations to greenwash their business.

Reduce, then reuse, and if the other two cannot occur; recycle.

Repelle ,

This is absolutely correct but still not the whole story. Recycling for glass and aluminum and steel can be done essentially infinitely creating a largely closed loop (though for glass in particular we really need to return to our old reuse practices). By using the same language for plastic as we do for better recycling methods we still make plastic recycling sound better than it is, even when reduction and reuse are emphasized.

grue ,

I imagine that goes the other way, too: by conflating the scam of plastics recycling with recycling in general, some people are probably discouraged from recycling anything at all, including aluminum.

EldritchFeminity ,

Plus the whole system was created with the idea of getting people used to recycling so when better, more efficient forms of recycling came into use, people would already be recycling.

Too bad that whole “better, more efficient” part never really happened.

wafflez ,

Can’t find for total glass but just current rates for glass: “US’s roughly 33% glass-recycling rate” “90% recycling rate in Switzerland, Germany, and other European countries”

cen.acs.org/materials/inorganic-chemistry/…/i6

paraphrand ,

In my area they don’t recycle glass. I was so surprised when I moved here and learned that. Glass and aluminum are the two most worth it/possible afaik.

Ensign_Crab ,

9 percent seems high.

Fuckfuckmyfuckingass ,
@Fuckfuckmyfuckingass@lemmy.world avatar

The other 91% is in my balls.

TehBamski ,
@TehBamski@lemmy.world avatar

You’ve got some pretty big balls then.

agamemnonymous ,
@agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works avatar

Mom said it’s my turn with the testicular microplastics

AlexWIWA ,

No that’s where pee is stored

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