China Has Refused To Recycle The West's Plastics. What Now?

[MechAg94]

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/28/623972937/china-has-refused-to-recycle-the-wests-plastics-what-now
Interesting.  Cheap recycling destination drops off the market.  Looks like they will need to find somewhere else to ship it or figure out how to recycle it here.

For more than 25 years, many developed countries, including the U.S., have been sending massive amounts of plastic waste to China instead of recycling it on their own.

Some 106 million metric tons — about 45 percent — of the world's plastics set for recycling have been exported to China since reporting to the United Nations Comtrade Database began in 1992.

But in 2017, China passed the National Sword policy banning plastic waste from being imported — for the protection of the environment and people's health — beginning in January 2018.

https://bluntforcetruth.com/news/china-throws-the-recycling-scam-in-the-trash/

California’s trash is going right back to landfills. 62% of exported materials used to go to China. But no more. California’s Department of Resources Recycling sent a letter cautioning that the “economics of recycling” had become “unfavorable” thus “challenging what recycling means to Californians.”

It also warned recycling facilities that, “public health and safety should be their number one priority”.

In Massachusetts, mountains of trash recycling are piling up and there’s talk that trucks may stop picking it up. In Pennsylvania, a “recycling crisis created by China” was blamed for a refusal to accept paper. In Seattle and Phoenix, recycling is going into landfills. Fees are going up in Portland. In Pasco, recycling was abandoned before its start. In a Kansas City plant, one out of four items is going into a landfill. In Sacramento, where all of California’s recycling rules are made, most recyclables no longer are.

[Ben]

I mentioned this in a topic over in Politics. Apparently India is still taking our stuff, but they are getting sick of us too. Our enviro-nazi states have kind of become the snobby country club members of the refuse world. They throw all their "recyclables" into the "green" container and figure the hired help will have no problem separating the baby crap out of the soiled diaper, because that diaper is recyclable, and it's the hired help, so it's their job, right? Go get me another martini.

[zxcvbob]

Reduce, Reuse...  Nah, that will never work.  I'm sure they will just pass a "recycling tax", that's the solution for everything.

[MechAg94]

I mentioned this in a topic over in Politics. Apparently India is still taking our stuff, but they are getting sick of us too. Our enviro-nazi states have kind of become the snobby country club members of the refuse world. They throw all their "recyclables" into the "green" container and figure the hired help will have no problem separating the baby crap out of the soiled diaper, because that diaper is recyclable, and it's the hired help, so it's their job, right? Go get me another martini.

That is what all those illegal aliens are supposed to do.

[French G.]

The whole first world has a trash problem and it is closer to home. Two examples down in tidewater I can think of. First, we the government flatly refused to sell derelict ships to places that wanted to scrap them due to environmental concerns with the ship breaking so they sat rafted up in the James River, threatening the most important estuary in the country. Good call. When ships do get recycled the go to someplace like India with no environmental controls.

Same river, several counties in tidewater make a ton of money by importing New York city's trash by barge and burying it. Sooner or later locals will get tired of being someone's dump.

The end result will always be the same, consumers will pay more, we lived in a world of suppressed prices fed by cheap raw materials.

[HankB]

Just check it as baggage on Delta Airlines - no human being will ever see it again.

[griz]

It's funny that they still use the term "recycle" when we pay another country to dump it for us.  I guess it makes us feel better about ourselves than if we used American dumps.

[HeroHog]

Why not turn the Grand Canyon into a landfill? I bet that would hold us over for quite some time! (No, I'm not serious. I've been there and hiked down into it and would never seriously suggest such a thing)

[Ben]

Reduce, Reuse...  Nah, that will never work.  I'm sure they will just pass a "recycling tax", that's the solution for everything.

That was my biggest pet peeve while living in econazi Santa Barbara. Everybody drove to the Environmental Defense Center wine and cheese deals in their brand New Pruiuseses, or Teslas, if they were wealthy. They of course traded in perfectly serviceable vehicles to get the ones that showed what great environmentalists they were. I recall Honda had (or still has) a Prius equivalent, I think Accord, that looked just like all the other Accords, so it didn't sell. Drive a Prius and everybody knows you're green, Amiright?

They were also good about steel water bottles (I actually use one all the time myself), because it's something else you could see. Reducing and reusing are often anonymous, so what's the use if nobody sees that you're hep to the jive?

[230RN]

It's like a kid's party balloon.  You push it in here, and it comes out there.  Push it in hard enough and it pops.

[makattak]

I would really love the leftists be faced with their hypocrisy and waste, but I'm pretty sure the "What Now?" will be find someone else to pay to take it.

[just Warren]

There's plenty of room still in New Jersey and they probably wouldn't even notice.

[Hawkmoon]

I know of a couple of towns in my state that have organized, direct recycling programs -- meaning a building at the town's transfer station where people can put old stuff that still works, and other people can go "shopping" there. IMHO that's the absolute best kind of recycling there is. Nothing has to be shredded or melted down and then reconstituted for use in another product, the thing just gets adopted by a new owner and keeps on truckin'.

Numerous people have suggested to my town's government that we should do the same thing. Oh, no! Instead, they keep tightening up the rules. Once something hits a dumpster, it's strictly off limits. They've actually had people arrested for dumpster diving.

Arrogant [bleep]s.

[TommyGunn]

They can't find room in Washington D. C. ?    Considering what's already there, no one would notice any extra garbage.

[MechAg94]

I know of a couple of towns in my state that have organized, direct recycling programs -- meaning a building at the town's transfer station where people can put old stuff that still works, and other people can go "shopping" there. IMHO that's the absolute best kind of recycling there is. Nothing has to be shredded or melted down and then reconstituted for use in another product, the thing just gets adopted by a new owner and keeps on truckin'.

Numerous people have suggested to my town's government that we should do the same thing. Oh, no! Instead, they keep tightening up the rules. Once something hits a dumpster, it's strictly off limits. They've actually had people arrested for dumpster diving.

Arrogant [bleep]s.

That is what is always frustrating.  Real solutions are ignored or actively opposed.  All the money spent on recycling could be spent on building a plant to actually recycle it or subsidizing a private facility.  Of course, they would have to relent on the environmental issues or pay for compliance. 

[just Warren]

I know of a couple of towns in my state that have organized, direct recycling programs -- meaning a building at the town's transfer station where people can put old stuff that still works, and other people can go "shopping" there. IMHO that's the absolute best kind of recycling there is. Nothing has to be shredded or melted down and then reconstituted for use in another product, the thing just gets adopted by a new owner and keeps on truckin'.

Numerous people have suggested to my town's government that we should do the same thing. Oh, no! Instead, they keep tightening up the rules. Once something hits a dumpster, it's strictly off limits. They've actually had people arrested for dumpster diving.

Arrogant [bleep]s.

I read an article on how during the Great Depression this group in Oakland, Ca brought together unemployed people with discarded items and set about repairing or stripping for parts these things (the items, not the people) for resale. It was quite successful in both employing people and recycling.  

As your example shows that would not likely be allowed to happen nowadays.

[Angel Eyes]

A lot of e-waste is going to Africa, specifically Ghana:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXDrIvShZKU

[French G.]

Us Hicks in flyover country do a pretty good freecycle, anything possibly useful is left out next to the dumpsters, it is often not there long. This year's tomato cages were sponsored by someone's snap together closet organizer.

[Perd Hapley]

Honest question: need we recycle?

[lupinus]

Honest question: need we recycle?

If recycling is economically a good idea I honestly want to know why I can take metal to the scrap guy and get paid to recycle it, but not plastic. Same dang concept.

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

[freakazoid]

We just need to load it all up in a big spaceship and launch it at the sun. 

[RoadKingLarry]

Honest question: need we recycle?

The way we're doing it now really is unsustainable in the long haul.
I don't have the answer but things will have to change eventually.
Per ton is it really cheaper to mine the ore, transport it, smelt it,refine it, dispose of the waste and process it into beer cans than it would be to take a ton of empty beer cans and reprocess the metal into new beer cans?

[Jim147]

I just burn it all.

[zxcvbob]

The way we're doing it now really is unsustainable in the long haul.
I don't have the answer but things will have to change eventually.
Per ton is it really cheaper to mine the ore, transport it, smelt it,refine it, dispose of the waste and process it into beer cans than it would be to take a ton of empty beer cans and reprocess the metal into new beer cans?

Beer cans are the exception because it takes so much energy to extract aluminum from ore. 

Discarded plastic should be burned; mix it with scrap wood (construction waste and tree trimmings) and use it in coal-fired or similar power plants.

I don't know what you do with glass (I reuse glass bottles, but transportation and storage costs really eat up any savings from the old returnable bottles.  Also the returnables used more glass per bottle to make them strong enough for all the handling.  Maybe grind 'em up and use it for roadbed aggregate?

[AJ Dual]

You can throw it into a pressure cooker and get oil similar to crude out of it. Any carbon organic chemistry waste stream really.  Although it might not always be a net energy gain, but combined with keeping it out of landfills, and from getting into the food chain might be worth it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization