Where does your plastic waste end up?(nationalgeographic.co.uk)
nationalgeographic.co.uk
Where does your plastic waste end up?
https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conservation/2018/11/where-does-your-plastic-waste-end
28 comments
Article connects the plastics ending up in the ocean to the exports to recyclers, but it never shows how that would work. Are the recyclers dumping the stuff they don't want into a nearby river?
This article did not help me to understand the economics of recycling.
If you're truly interested in the economics of the waste industry, the book Junkyard Planet by Adam Minter was a good introduction:
https://www.amazon.com/Junkyard-Planet-Travels-Billion-Dolla...
May be not relevant but somewhat related to the title -
Some plastic ended up at the bottom of Mariana Trench
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48230157
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48230157
In general, anything that is billed as a low-effort way to accomplish X that anybody can do is probably not very useful. You see this in health scams, financial scams, etc. It is likely the same way with the environment. We are now finding out that encouraging plastic recycling was probably environmentally worse that if people had been allowed to just throw it all away in a landfill.
Other well-intentioned efforts that resulted in bad outcomes:
Discouraging plastic bags -> Increased CO2 for cloth/paper bags Banning DDT -> likely millions of deaths from malaria over the years Opposition to nuclear -> more dependence on carbon heavy sources of energy (see Germany)
Other well-intentioned efforts that resulted in bad outcomes:
Discouraging plastic bags -> Increased CO2 for cloth/paper bags Banning DDT -> likely millions of deaths from malaria over the years Opposition to nuclear -> more dependence on carbon heavy sources of energy (see Germany)
I live in Indonesia, here people don't even separate compostable, recyclable, and junks. Everything is just mixed and piled together like a man-made mountain at the central garbage dump site. One day there was even a homeless trying to make some money out of picking up recyclables who died from getting avalanched by the trash... It's really disheartening to hear..
Does anybody know any resources on the economics of trash processing? I wanna explore the possibility of doing such a business in a sustainable way
Does anybody know any resources on the economics of trash processing? I wanna explore the possibility of doing such a business in a sustainable way
I have some contacts in the industry and, as far as I know, sustainable waste processing is expensive and people are always trying to avoid it even if legally mandated. It is down to government regulation to force businesses to process waste in certain ways.
I think you'd have to find what your government legally requires in a certain waste management area and work within those parameters
I think you'd have to find what your government legally requires in a certain waste management area and work within those parameters
Thanks for the insight!
Makes me rethink my use of plastics....
I didn't realize that it's cheaper to export used plastic than process it within the country.
I'd imagine minimum wage has something to do with it. Plastic is cheap, labor is not. Most west coast states are over $11/hr. Of course that is not a lot of money, but it is when you're paying that labor to recycle pennies worth of plastic. It's not economical because the plastic has to be (mostly) clean of contaminants in order to recycle it without lowering quality too much. So there's also a lot of water involved. Diminishing returns.
According to the article, there's a huge disparity just in transportation costs, before wages even begin to factor in:
> Today, Recology, San Francisco’s employee-owned recycling company, pays £230-to-£390 to ship a container of recycled plastic across the Pacific–a fraction of the £2,700-to-£3,100 price tag for transporting that same container across the United States to plastic processing plants that are mostly located in the South, according to Robert Reed, a company spokesman.
> Today, Recology, San Francisco’s employee-owned recycling company, pays £230-to-£390 to ship a container of recycled plastic across the Pacific–a fraction of the £2,700-to-£3,100 price tag for transporting that same container across the United States to plastic processing plants that are mostly located in the South, according to Robert Reed, a company spokesman.
Transportation costs most likely include labor costs.
I am betting the crew on the container ship do not make US wages.
Similarly, why there are no cruise ships that only stop at American ports, so the labor can be foreign. Also, why American river cruises are so expensive.
I am betting the crew on the container ship do not make US wages.
Similarly, why there are no cruise ships that only stop at American ports, so the labor can be foreign. Also, why American river cruises are so expensive.
If the cost of labour is what makes local recycling impossible, wouldn't automation with AI and robots (or maybe something like plastic-eating bacteria?) be the only possible solution?
Of course bypassing the problem by reducing plastic waste is always preferred and so much more elegant a solution, but provided that would need to be done across all the globe, including so many different cultures and governments, and with such poor inherent economic incentives (plastic is still too cheap), I'm not really confident that'd be possible within a reasonable time-frame, or at all.
I feel like a breakthrough in recycling technology by a small team and some investors would be much easier to achieve than global alignment in law making and enforcement. Is there anyone achieving significant progress in that area?
Of course bypassing the problem by reducing plastic waste is always preferred and so much more elegant a solution, but provided that would need to be done across all the globe, including so many different cultures and governments, and with such poor inherent economic incentives (plastic is still too cheap), I'm not really confident that'd be possible within a reasonable time-frame, or at all.
I feel like a breakthrough in recycling technology by a small team and some investors would be much easier to achieve than global alignment in law making and enforcement. Is there anyone achieving significant progress in that area?
In terms of a political solution, why aren't there some kind of subsidies to these bottling companies for using another material that is more recyclable?
Why is it that labor is cheaper elsewhere?
There are plenty of empty containers heading back to Asia, I would imagine it’s very cheap to send plastic there.
Just so counterintuitive that it's cheaper to send something halfway around the world than 5-20 miles away.
"To cite one example, American recyclers sold 101 tons of plastic waste in Thailand in the first six months of this year–a 1,985 percent increase over the 4,409 tons sold during the same period in 2017."
Hmm.
Hmm.
[deleted]
Complete sidebar here, but that domain made me think that maybe the name needs to be changed to International Geographic ;)
"Where does your plastic waste end up?" is the title of the piece and while it seemed to be on the UK edition (.co.uk domain and "UK" selected in the top right), it opens with "When President Donald Trump signed legislation", also after a not-too-deep skimming of the article it seems to mostly revolve around the US.
And now I'm confused. Is it really about the UK? Is the title just bad for this edition (should be on .com). Was the story planned to be for the US edition and then just moved to the other one? Nitpicking, I know - but this is what I noticed first and even after a little digging I'm none the wiser.
And now I'm confused. Is it really about the UK? Is the title just bad for this edition (should be on .com). Was the story planned to be for the US edition and then just moved to the other one? Nitpicking, I know - but this is what I noticed first and even after a little digging I'm none the wiser.
From the article:
“I hate seeing my country as the dumpsite for the developed world,” said Yeo Bee Yin, whose full title is Minister for Energy, Technology, Science, Climate Change, and Environment. She declared that “no developing nation should be the dumping site for the developed world.”
This hypocrisy is appalling. They just have to stop importing those plastics with the false promise they are going to recycle it or dispose of it properly while they get paid for it.
Nobody is forcing Malasya to take anything, in fact Malasya is happily engaging in a bid with other countries to import that garbage for the best price.
If these countries weren't lying this all time and only took the plastics they can actually cleanly dispose of or recycle, the West would be (at a greater expense is true) getting rid of them properly during all this time.
This hypocrisy is appalling. They just have to stop importing those plastics with the false promise they are going to recycle it or dispose of it properly while they get paid for it.
Nobody is forcing Malasya to take anything, in fact Malasya is happily engaging in a bid with other countries to import that garbage for the best price.
If these countries weren't lying this all time and only took the plastics they can actually cleanly dispose of or recycle, the West would be (at a greater expense is true) getting rid of them properly during all this time.
According to the article a large number of the plastic recycling plants in Malaysia are operating illegally, and Malaysia is trying to regulate them and/or shut them down.
And yet, who introduced the plastics to begin with? Plastics that find their way into the hands of consumers are intended to land deterministically in the the garbage.
Manufacturers of plastic packaging and products are the origin of the problem. It is the source of the plastics that is the root of the problem. Where plastics end up is the fault of those who profit from their production.
Manufacturers of plastic packaging and products are the origin of the problem. It is the source of the plastics that is the root of the problem. Where plastics end up is the fault of those who profit from their production.
Did you even read the article?
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