AI6YR BenIn more "recycling is just shipping your plastic overseas where it actually doesn't get recycled"
LA Times: Malaysia will stop accepting U.S. plastic waste, creating a dilemma for California
Kevin Leecaster@ai6yr
Well, I just saw you'd posted same story so I'm going to link to my two cents on it.
https://mstdn.social/@GreenFire/114750248439152430
Well, I just saw you'd posted same story so I'm going to link to my two cents on it.
https://mstdn.social/@GreenFire/114750248439152430
Kevin Leecaster (@GreenFire@mstdn.social)
Attached: 1 image Good for Malaysia, "bad" for California? I think that we just plain have to switch towards burning our waste in low oxygen environments in order to convert it into safe charcoal that can be buried and to generate electricity from the energy released during pyrolysis personally.
@GreenFire Yeah, maybe, definitely shipping it out of sight isn't exactly fixing the problem here.
John BurnsThis stuff should be compressed into bricks & pavers for light-duty work: sheds, detached garages, patios, walkways.
It's being done elsewhere...
NosirrahSec 🏴☠️ guillotine enthusiast@ai6yr This shit was exposed so long ago and idiots keep falling for it. (by idiots, I mean massive municipalities gulping down hot loads from shitty conglomerate assholes like https://www.wm.com/ <those pricks)
MsMerope@ai6yr maybe we could sneak it onto one of those explodey rockets and burn it all up!
(for the uninitiated: that was sarcasm - it’s almost always sarcasm)
W6KME
HumToTable
me_valentijn@me_valentijn @MsMerope @ai6yr Some of my favorite retailers are guilty as hell of this. Looking at YOU, Trader Joe's.
AskPippa🇨🇦@me_valentijn @W6KME @MsMerope @ai6yr From the business point of view, plastic is preferred because a) it's lighter and far cheaper for shipping; b) less breakage. To change away from plastic packaging, it's something that needs to be legislated. Time to write our reps and push for change.
ts 🚉
🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 🐧 🥦
womble
OhSnap!Dragon@W6KME @MsMerope @ai6yr
It's not that hard. Bring your own cloth/hemp fiber bags to the store. Refuse plastic bags. Buy a few Life Factory glass water bottles, keep one in the car, and stop buying drinks in plastic.
More importantly, put the burden of recycling back on the companies that produce the waste. The bottlers shifted this burden to consumers decades ago; instead of accepting returns, they campaigned for the end user to be responsible for recycling. Sheer madness.
It's not that hard. Bring your own cloth/hemp fiber bags to the store. Refuse plastic bags. Buy a few Life Factory glass water bottles, keep one in the car, and stop buying drinks in plastic.
More importantly, put the burden of recycling back on the companies that produce the waste. The bottlers shifted this burden to consumers decades ago; instead of accepting returns, they campaigned for the end user to be responsible for recycling. Sheer madness.
HalJor 
@ai6yr Paywall bypass: https://archive.is/irUnK
Megan Lynch (she/her)@ai6yr Governments need to be creating rewards/incentives for businesses making and selling sustainable packaging.
We used to have this. I'm old enough to remember bottle returns.
We also have to create sustainable accessible delivery for things - many disabled people can't lift the weight of things packaged in glass, metal, and ceramic. But we do need those packaging methods.
Carolyn
Patch You Up@ai6yr And it's so damn frustrating that so many things we buy are packaged in single-use plastic. No, I don't need my pork buns (which are already in a large plastic bag) to be individually wrapped in their own plastic bags. We really need a tax on virgin plastics.
Qob
dpflug
diana 🏳️⚧️🦋🌱As someone who retired from maintaining plastics manufacturing plants, I can confirm used plastic is not usable for recycling. Sure, it's theoretically possible, but that used stuff damages and clogs up the extruders in very short time, often within minutes. Either it is buried or burned. And burned plastic is worse than dirty coal and that's not even including the lead and antimony required for heat stabilize it and so called "natural" rubbers. Plastics should not be made. The more you know, the worse it gets ☠️
Tacobill
CheriSwears
Aral Balkan
Tuckers Nuts Resist! 🇺🇦 
Cavedale Rhônes@dianea @ai6yr So we recently signed up for the Ridwell service that “recycles” food and plastic shipping (think Amazon) packaging. They claim most of it goes into products like Trex decking and the like. Is this different than the extruders you used to deal with? #HateGreenWashing
Mre. Dartigen [maker mode]@dianea @ai6yr Plastic has its place, in a few applications. (It's useful for storing and working with certain chemicals that will destroy glass and metal, there are probably other reasonable use cases for it where we don't have a good substitute material that's recyclable or sustainable.)
The way it's used now though? There are tons of better substitutes that last longer, tolerate more or heavier use, and if they aren't recyclable, then they can at least be used to make lots of other stuff. And can be produced to as high or a better quality.
But if that happened the plastics industry would collapse, and of course we can't have that. (And I swear over the last 10 or so years it's been getting harder and harder to avoid plastic, especially in packaging, but that could just be me and where I am.)
Sean Fenian@ai6yr Yeah, in practical terms the entire narrative of "Plastic is recyclable" is a deliberate lie calculated to sell more plastic. There are a few plastics that technically can be recycled and re-used, but there are very few things that the resulting low-quality recycled plastic is actually good for, and most of them are cases where it's used in a solid block that doesn't require transparency, flexibility, or any real mechanical strength. There aren't actually all that many such use cases in the real world. The percentage of even "recyclable" plastics that gets meaningfully re-used is in the low single digits.
PursuitOfElysia@PursuitOfElysia @zakalwe The amount of plastics flaking out into my garden is frightening. Trying to reduce as much usage as possible to prevent that, but sometimes impossible.
Aethon
saddest cabbage@ai6yr
Same happened in Australia a few years ago. Too many shit filled nappies and other pollutants ended the RedCycle program.
And theres me - rinsing chip bags, getting all the crumbs from bread bags.
Lazy fucks always ruin it for everyone else
Same happened in Australia a few years ago. Too many shit filled nappies and other pollutants ended the RedCycle program.
And theres me - rinsing chip bags, getting all the crumbs from bread bags.
Lazy fucks always ruin it for everyone else
Urzl
Andrew J Spaulding@ai6yr I don't understand why the US isn't recycling all the plastic waste? During WW2, the US was recycling everything. I don't make sense why we stopped.
@AJ_andrew69 Because most plastic is not recyclable... despite the little symbol on the plastic.
@ai6yr Really? What makes the plastic not recyclable?
John Willis 🔰@ai6yr @aleen 🫗🗑️🔥I live in Japan, and people spend so much time *washing* plastic drink bottles, removing the labels, separating the caps - but over 50% of plastic bottles collected in Japan are “thermally recycled” = burned in the regular garbage incinerators.
Maybe all the label-free, washed, and uniformly clear plastic PET bottles are recycled, but I bet not.
Mister WankoGood sentiment, but with the massive energy needed to re/mold glass, and bottle return & wash so unpopular, I am not sure glass is the best alternative.
Here is a 1.5L Pocari Sweat bottle I bought 3 months ago. I bought several 30 pk cases of sports drink powder at Costco & use this bottle as my reusable bottle at work.
Put ~50 uses on a bottle, and when it is too crumpled to use, discard it. The plastic is safer & the energy expended is less than 1 glass bottle.
Dark Phoenix 🇺🇦🇨🇦🇬🇱🇵🇦🇵🇸🏳️🌈@javbw @MisterWanko @ai6yr @aleen I have two alkalizing bottles. I will buy a couple flip top bottles of Fiji (the square bottles fit the fridge better, and I admit, I love the taste) and I refill the bottles for me and my roommate until that chemical smell no longer washes out. I try to have 6 bottles rotating at all times. (In the desert, refrigerated water is a must.). When they start to smell off, I take them to the recycling.
In the desert, a plastic grocery bag will start to disintegrate Into microplastic dust in a couple YEARS or less. Not decades.
@javbw @MisterWanko @ai6yr @aleen and yes, I do know that there is arsenic in Fiji. It's pretty common in aquifers. That is why I don't drink a lot of it.
@javbw @ai6yr @aleen I did what I could, but I also have learned that, after all the work I did, most was completely wasted.
I have come to the conclusion (possibly wrong) that our only way free of plastic is plasma furnaces for electrical generation. At least that way, the capacity to degrade into microplastics is destroyed as well.
I have come to the conclusion (possibly wrong) that our only way free of plastic is plasma furnaces for electrical generation. At least that way, the capacity to degrade into microplastics is destroyed as well.
Kaito
markc568@ai6yr Just put all your plastics in the trash. It makes more sense than fake “recycling”
@markc568 I have, sadly, started doing this in many cases (though, trying not to buy those plastics in the first place, if possible).
slow learner, deep feeler
scott f@ai6yr I've started replacing the expression "If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you" with "...I've got some plastic for you to recycle"
Jo-chin up, elbows up.
Quercus 🟡⚪🟣⚫@ai6yr whats the over under on year for the first state, presumably Cali, to ban disposable plastic?