Is there anything more pathetic than a used plastic bag?
They rip and tear. They float away in the slightest breeze. Left in the wild, their mangled remains entangle birds and choke sea turtles that mistake them for edible jellyfish. It takes 1,000 years for the bags to disintegrate, shedding hormone-disrupting chemicals as they do. And that outcome is all but inevitable, because no system exists to routinely recycle them. It’s no wonder some states have banned them and stores give discounts to customers with reusable bags.
But the plastics industry is working to make the public feel OK about using them again.
Companies whose futures depend on plastic production, including oil and gas giant ExxonMobil, are trying to persuade the federal government to allow them to put the label “recyclable” on bags and other plastic items virtually guaranteed to end up in landfills and incinerators.
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Life would be so much more awesome if the rest of the civilised world adopted bottle/can deposit systems. Plastic bottles can be washed and reused. Aluminum cans? Melt 'em, reforge 'em, badassery continues.
I’m nervous about reused plastic disintegrating now. Aluminum, glass or wax paper is all we really need. Remember wax paper milk cartons? There are also aluminum “bottle” in the same shape as plastic ones, so preexisting vending machines can take them fine.
Yeah, and I’m also very hopeful about the bio-plastics developments. Right now, a lot of carton cup/food packaging folks are developing bio-degradable/compostable food containers that try to replace petro-polymers. That’d solve a huge swath of plastic recycling problems.
Problem with the bio-plastics are that they’re still plastics. The micro plastic issue is because they degrade over time. The particles flake off of plastic goods over time. Plastic designed to do that might not solve anything unless they do it quick enough that there’s a very small amount of time they’re in the environment before degrading to their elemental components.
Aluminum is really a perfect packaging material. Relatively cheap, easy to form through a number of methods, durable, and the recycling tech is damn near perfect. Something like 70% of all the aluminum humans have ever made is still in circulation because of that recycling. Glass comes in a close second. Neither are quite as easy or cheap as plastic though. And thus in pursuit of the almighty dollar, we poison the planet even further.
Recycling the original greenwashing
Plastic recycling, definitely. Aluminum/aluminum recycling is very effective. Approximately 75% of aluminum that has ever been mined and processed is still in use, and it can be re-used and recycled a functionally infinite number of times. But you’re totally right about greenwashing in plastics. Even the easiest plastics to “recycle” (like PET or PETE) can only be reprocessed once or twice before the polymers break down too much for re-use.
The famous ad with the Native American crying about litter? It was literally funded by the single use plastic industry to shift the blame from them producing trash to people not throwing things away. Also, the guy was Italian.
And yet, it works in that sense. Whatever we’ve done with recycling, bottle deposits, and shaming people has made a real improvement in litter.
Now we just need to finish getting rid of glass bottles and cigarettes. And we have a win, at least in the context of litter
Because by it’s very nature, recycling always costs more than first-round-use products. It takes more energy and more time to recycle goods into something else.
Further, it’s a misnomer, because many, many, many, many plastics flat out cannot be recycled into anything else no matter how much we wish it so.
Which I why it goes REDUCE, REUSE, recycle.
Not always. Aluminum takes a lot of energy to extract from bauxite, but not nearly as much to recycle.
I was surprised to learn this when driving by an aluminum refinery adjacent to a hydroelectric dam in Washington State.
It uses so much power that it’s more efficient to move the ore to where the electricity is.
Household plastic is essentially non-recyclable. No way is plastic waste ever sufficiently sorted by the type of plastic, or cleaned sufficiently from food rests etc. The focus should be on Reduce, Reuse, and properly dispose. That most likely means burning it. Great? No way. Better than in nature? Hell yeah. Better than shipping it to Asia for pretend recycle? Definitely.
The crazy thing is the reduce is so easy. Im just old enough to remember soda being in aluminum cans and glass bottles and nothing else. It worked fine. There are some things were plastic has a significant benefit like medical but man. We don’t need to use plastic for pop. Getting meat from the butcher with butcher paper was pretty good to.
ah but you see, it’s like 5¢ cheaper per bottle to put it in plastic now, so think of the corporate profits that would be lost if they switched back!
Sure they’ll kill an ecosystem, but think of the shareholder value they’ll generate while it happens!
It is annoying as the glass bottle deposit thing was actually the cheapest option. It had a higher up front cost but once you returned the bottles it was cheaper. On top of that the taste is just better from glass as most beer drinkers know. Speaking of which beers should all use a standard bottle that does the same deposit/return thing.
I’m fine with transition away from glass. There’s always some asshole who likes to break them and leave the shards for the rest of us to step on. Nature is so much more enjoyable without broken glass
I get you as I used to walk in a park and used the poopl grabber to grab refuse. Which I could not seperate given my setup so begrudgingly had to go all in garbage. All the same plastic is killing us as a species. Its pain in the but to destroying the world and I hate things that are a pain but I sorta like nature to be present to enjoy.
hey wanted to mention to you may not have realized how that system worked. Its much like oberwiess if you ever used them. Essentially you pay a depost that is like 50% of the cost of the item which means at the register 33% of what you pay will be the deposit. You then get it back when you return the intact, unbroken, empties. The glass is not recycled, instead the recepticals go back and are washed in machines that pretty much sterilize them with the heat they use (if you ever worked in a dishroom with a giant dishasher and seen what happens when the sides are detached when it was just running you would know how crazy hot it is). Anyway anyone who breaks containers running under that system is throwing away a considerable chunk of change.
Yeah, I guess I’m starting from the point that no one around here re-uses glass anymore. It’s all single use.
Given that glass bottles are disposable and there is always some jackass breaking them for giggles and leaving the shards, I’d rather get entirely away. From it. Aluminum is very recyclable and doesn’t cut your feet
The deposit system is way better environmentally though. Washing and reusing is a pittance compared to any type of recycling. I guarantee you would not see as much breaking of them. Oberweiss last I knew the deposit was two bucks but that was before the recent inflation.
Vacuum sealing meat kind of requires plastic though. And that’s by far the best way to keep the meat good / fresh especially for freezing.
I mean it might be good if we went back to an idea of buying what you need for the day or week and not so much for the month or year. At least in general. I mean its not like folks did not eat meat before plastic and without slaughtering it in their apartment.
They said reduce though, not eliminate. I don’t know that we will eliminate petroleum-based plastic until we find a viable, economical alternative, but we can sure use less of it. There’s really no reason for all the plastic soda bottles apart from companies saving money.
Do you remember when Quaker Oatmeal containers were all paper/cardboard? You could pull a paper tab, and it made a little paper lid for the cylinder.
About 10-15 years ago, they replaced that with a plastic pull tab that is glued on to the paper tube.
The paper has to be cheaper than the 2-part plastic, right?
Yeah im not sure if its cheaper. plastic is crazy cheap and paper by and large comes from trees which is its own problem. still I would prefer paper/cardboard. and yeah I remember how it used to be and it did work fine
I have been using solid bodysoap and shampoo now for some years and it has likley saved a solid amount of plastic waste and is super easy.
Girl here, I’ve never tried a bar soap that didn’t absolutely ruin my skin. open to suggestions but not feeling all that optimistic.
after reduce is reuse. Try to buy refills. Its still plastic but if you buy larger contaniers the surface area over volume is smaller so less plastic then hope the next step recycle for your community is actually doing it or better if you can find another use for the empty larger containers but that does get difficult over time.
Yep. What isn’t recycled should be burned for power plant fuel. It’s made from fossil fuels anyway. It doesn’t belong in a landfill.
We really need to tax single use plastic for the REDUCE part. It would make a huge dent.
But that would inconvenience corporations, so it is out of the question. Instead we can just keep using the recycling code that makes you think your plastic is recyclable even though it isnt.
Hmm. The waste-to-energy facility in my town makes a whole lot more sense. Neat
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