Info on recycling plastics

[Midpack]

Straws are the new evil because someone got a photo of a turtle with a straw in its nostril. Could have been the turtle has a coke problem.
Someone on NPR last fall said the straw ban is based on a very bad study that was actually conducted by a school children for his or her science fair. The person being interviewed said he found over 80% of the articles he researched cited the data from this kid even though the hard science didn't back it up.

In the US at least, 91% of plastic isn't being recycled, and what isn't recycled ends up in landfills or the ocean. While straws are only 4% of the plastic waste - food wrappers, single use bags, plastic cups, etc. are much larger issues - they've been targeted because a) they are so small they're almost never recycled, b) to make people aware of the rate at which we're disposing of plastics, c) because how many people would truly miss them if they were outlawed (many are thrown out without even being used), among other reasons.

Though the 'data from the kid' was widely shared, it wasn't the basis for outlawing straws in many parts of the country.

I'd post a link, but people pretty much have their minds made up already, often without any thought at all. Anyone who cares will spend 10 seconds doing a search for more info...

 

[Chuckanut]

We need to re-incentive kids to recycle bottles and can for movie and candy money.

 

[JoeWras]

My locality has made a big deal about doing away with plastic straws. When I asked about K-cups, nobody wanted to talk. Disposable water bottles - I might get lynched. But, straws? Now there's a boogeyman.

Welcome to the world of social media. Facts and figures be d*mned.

 

[Music Lover]

Most grocery stores around here charge 5 cents for a bag, but Walmart doesn't. So almost everyone brings bags to the grocery store. I don't refer to them as single use bags as I always re-use them until they fall apart which may be 20 or 30 times or more.

When we were in Florida, no one charged us for a bag and in fact, one grocery store would only fill them a third full. Within a week we had a dozen leftover bags and started taking them back to the store to use. I still have some of them on my bag of bags. Maybe if more stores charged 5 cents for a bag people wouldn't be so quick to throw them out.

 

[samclem]

This is an interesting news report on a newly developed plastic that is designed from the start to be easily recyclable, and the resultant resins to be just as strong as the original ones. Per the article:

Known as poly(diketoenamine), or PDK, the new type of plastic material could help stem the tide of plastics piling up at recycling plants, as the bonds PDK forms are able to be reversed via a simple acid bath, the researchers believe.
"Poly(diketoenamine)s ‘click’ together from a wide variety of triketones and aromatic or aliphatic amines, yielding only water as a by-product," the study's abstract reads. "Recovered monomers can be re-manufactured into the same polymer formulation, without loss of performance, as well as other polymer formulations with differentiated properties. The ease with which poly(diketoenamine)s can be manufactured, used, recycled and re-used—without losing value—points to new directions in designing sustainable polymers with minimal environmental impact."

So, the idea would be: Make as many things as possible with this stuff and replace the purpose-built and unique "#1," #2, #5," etc plastics (including semi-durable stuff like computer monitors, etc). When it is time to recycle them, the base material recovered is useful because it is versatile.


A slightly more technical article here, with additional detail on the problems with recycling present plastics and how this PDK might be an improvement.



Obviously, this is the kind of "breakthrough" that often results in a dead end for technical or other reasons, but it's good to see that the problem is getting attention.

 

[brucethebroker]

I "recycle" a plastic grocery bag every time I take Poochie for a walk....fertilizer included.

 

[brucethebroker]

I look forward to seeing that myself. We went grocery shopping yesterday, and the old guy in front of us bought 3 cans of soup (about 14 oz ea), and the cashier put it in a single use plastic bag. As he walked out he dropped that bag into another bag, double bagging for himself. Completely idiotic, but a common mindset? We never say anything, as it's proven completely pointless...

Maybe he has Poochies at home....

 

[brucethebroker]

Electronic waste is a big thing now. A few years ago you take your old electronics to the county's annual recycling event and drop off anything for free (including tv's). Then they started charging $5 for any size TV. Now they are charging $40 (yes, forty) for any old fashioned TV over 21 inch diagonal! ANd a bunch of different prices depending on type and size, for other screens/monitors, etc. Yagottabekidding me........

Yep, and the higher the price goes, the more you start to see them thrown in a ditch in the country. When the city stopped taking mattresses on trash day, they joined the TV's in the ditch. The same thing happened with used tires a few years ago. When prices to recycle those type items are reasonable, many are recycled. When the price skyrockets, they wind up in he ditch.

For many years I listed and sold foreclosed houses for a couple of banks. You could always seem to find used tires, mattresses or obsolete TV's stashed in garage or in a shed out back-They became part of the bank's clean out cost/

 

[John Galt III]

Yep, and the higher the price goes, the more you start to see them thrown in a ditch in the country. When the city stopped taking mattresses on trash day, they joined the TV's in the ditch. The same thing happened with used tires a few years ago. When prices to recycle those type items are reasonable, many are recycled. When the price skyrockets, they wind up in he ditch.

For many years I listed and sold foreclosed houses for a couple of banks. You could always seem to find used tires, mattresses or obsolete TV's stashed in garage or in a shed out back-They became part of the bank's clean out cost/

I was talking to a lady from Maine about this a few days ago. She said Maine used to recycle electronics for free but then started charging. When they started charging, the electronics would up in the ditch, and state workers would pick them up and take care of them somehow. Since picking them up from the ditches was more expensive than the free recycling program, they reinstituted the free recycling program! Wow.

 

[Smitty700]

I'm saving all my plastic bags. Eventually they will be banned and therefore quite valuable in the future. These bags, along with my Beanie Bear collection will be a tidy inheritance for the kid.

NPR's Planet Money had a segment about plastic bag bans. Turns out, bans can harm the environment more. People buy more plastic bags for home use as a result, which contain more plastic than the store checkout bags. And paper bags have about four times the carbon footprint of plastic bags. Alternatives such as a reusable cloth bag would have to be reused 131 times before it's better for the environment than using a plastic grocery bag once.

Additional info here: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/09/711181385/are-plastic-bag-bans-garbage