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Now on to the question - WHY are we not recycling this stuff? Why is it cheaper to make new than to recycle existing?
I think there are two key factors... first, certain form factors are easier to deal with in recycling, so 2L PET bottles are simpler to deal with than plastic food wrap, which may be contaminated by food waste... and some plastic types have relatively simple recycling methods, such as thermal melting, while others may require far more complex chemical processing.
So wouldn't it make sense to concentrate on making just the easier to recycle plastics? And making those plastics replace other harder to reuse plastics? Just thinking out loud.
So wouldn't it make sense to concentrate on making just the easier to recycle plastics? And making those plastics replace other harder to reuse plastics? Just thinking out loud.
Greed enters into the equation. The so-called "green" initiatives are loaded with greed just as any other business and lets face it, green is a business and much of that business has little to do with making the environment sustainable or better, it is about lining pockets with money and power.
Lets take one example, one of many and so common in "green", the elimination of plastic shopping bags. Although I can't say beyond anecdotal examples, most people probably reuse the plastic trash bags they get at stores. They serve as trash bags and other uses involving holding refuse or messy items. Compare the manufacturing costs and toll on the environment compared to an alternative, the paper bag or even the cloth types that are reusable.
The make that paper bag, at some point trees must be harvested. The fact that the material used might be unusable for other wood based products is meaningless, the costs remain attached to the paper bad production. The materials used to make the bad must be transported, usually via a diesel or gasoline fueled truck and then processed into the bag at a plant using fossil fuels. Then the bag is transported to the point is use, again via a vehicle fueled by diesel or gasoline.
That paper bag is not recycled because it is often thrown out as trash or if used to hold trash, contaminated by food materials, greases and so on.
Then we have the cloth type bag. Great until you consider that often, these bags are thrown into some wash because they get dirty. Water down the drain. A small amount for sure but it adds up. The energy used to wash it and dry it all have a huge environmental cost and some might say they can be hung out to dry but really, how many people do that? Furthermore, when dirty they probably get thrown out, in the trash.
As cities adopt regulation prohibiting plastic shopping bags they offer no viable alternatives plastic the feel-good types that aren't often practical.
Far better regulation could be offered such as requiring any plastic shopping bags to be made multiple time reusable. Instead of created smart regulation that improves on something almost everyone uses, a better plastic bag and offers better service and easier reuse and finally recycling, the green movement has figured out that simply prohibiting the plastic bag is the way to go.
Like many "green" initiatives, short of vision and poor implementation is the order of the day. The current administration is a prime example of green hypocrisy. Record oil exports to line the pockets of "energy" companies. How does that work?
Does that mean we should abandon efforts to make the environment better? Hardly but put the word "green" in front of or include it with anything and the results are clear. There is no green except the color of the money.
I think the biggest reason is cost. It takes a lot less energy, and raw materials to manufacture, and recycle plastic. Also using plastic containers is much more profitable than glass. Glass containers are going to weigh much more than plastic, or aluminum, which means higher shipping costs, and if you drop a plastic container chances are pretty good that the container wont be damaged to heavily and you 'll still be able to sell that product.
Going back to the money being green... Read an article that 3D Printer "ink" (which is just plastic) is really expensive. A couple of companies are recycling plastic to make 3D-Ink out of it.
I have already said, I am not going "green" if I can't save money doing it - even if it is years down the road. I will go out of may way to do it, but the ROI on my time is the eventual saving of money. Regardless, I won't pollute to save money. I do like is the Costco/BJs method. You use the same boxes the stuff was shipped to the store in to bring your groceries home. At least these get reused instead of thrown out like they do at the grocery store. And then I recycle the cardboard. And I do use the plastic grocery bags as trash bags. I have a lot of small enough trash cans that I use them as liners. They also make a great used oil filter holders. Especially for the vehicles have replaceable inserts and not the metal lined filters.
So while I have a larger car payment for my volt, the savings is every month at the pump. I don't burn liquid gas and she charges up for free at work. And I don't smell the batteries draining in the morning when you start the car. My diesel truck is a whole different ballgame.
For most people being green is also about saving money. And the companies that bring you green products are also out to make a buck. The problem with the whole climate change argument is that no one on either side isn't in it for something. Subaru touts itself as a very green company - if it wasn't for image and selling cars, do you really think we would know about it?
And to us layman, we can't tell who is lying more. So, I go to the side of wanting a clean, nice, energy efficient place to live. again, what if I made the world, my country, my state, my local area a cleaner better place to live? And using cleaner technology rather than "dirtier" or dangerous technology. However, that doesn't mean I want people to be cut off from power just because you can't generator enough solar, wind, hydro electricity either.
Something has to be done about the pollution in the "East", especially China. I try not to buy "made in china", but you just can't avoid it. Some things are not made in the US anymore, period.
Mack, the nylon bags I use for shopping are six years old and still going strong. Yes, they get washed, but they are tossed in with the towels, which have to be laundered anyway, so there's no water or energy wasted. And because they are 99% dry coming out of my washer's spin cycle, I just toss them directly into the market basket ready for my next visit to the grocery without a trip through the dryer.
As for plastic garbage bags and grocery sacks, it was surprisingly easy for me to give them up. I have a stainless steel bucket under my sink for trimmings and table scraps that I empty into the composter in my backyard every few days. Recycling goes into its own unlined bin. What's left doesn't amount to much and isn't gross or smelly, so it can go into yet another unlined can for pick-up. Yard debris that cannot be composted goes into an unlined green waste bin. If trees need work, we hire professionals who mulch the trimmed boughs on-site for our use.
I certainly accept that those who have small children or pets might want to use plastic grocery sacks for disposal of certain types of messes, but many people can get by just fine without them; however, because they're so readily available there's little incentive for the average person to explore other options.
Last edited by randomparent; 02-20-2014 at 12:35 PM..
I'd never really added things up, but over the past six years, those six reusable sacks have been used once a week for groceries. (I also use them for other shopping trips, but for simplicity's sake, I'll just use weekly grocery visits.) At this point, that's 1872 plastic sacks I have not thrown away or recycled. I also have a set of twelve reusable produce sacks and six reusable bulk bags. All of the bags are in good condition and have many more years of life in them. If I assume that I'll get a decade of use from each of them, I will have avoided 12,480 plastic bags during those ten years.
Mack, the nylon bags I use for shopping are six years old and still going strong. Yes, they get washed, but they are tossed in with the towels, which have to be laundered anyway, so there's no water or energy wasted. And because they are 99% dry coming out of my washer's spin cycle, I just toss them directly into the market basket ready for my next visit to the grocery without a trip through the dryer.
As for plastic garbage bags and grocery sacks, it was surprisingly easy for me to give them up. I have a stainless steel bucket under my sink for trimmings and table scraps that I empty into the composter in my backyard every few days. Recycling goes into its own unlined bin. What's left doesn't amount to much and isn't gross or smelly, so it can go into yet another unlined can for pick-up. Yard debris that cannot be composted goes into an unlined green waste bin. If trees need work, we hire professionals who mulch the trimmed boughs on-site for our use.
I certainly accept that those who have small children or pets might want to use plastic grocery sacks for disposal of certain types of messes, but many people can get by just fine without them; however, because they're so readily available there's little incentive for the average person to explore other options.
That works for you but how many people do that? The whole green thing is admirable but unless you trace the action/material/effect from start to finish, it probably isn't what you think it is.
Take that nylon sack. If it was made from recycled product, great. If it wasn't then it adds to the problem. The same applies to electric cars. If the end use is the only factor considered, that is short sighted. Someone said they charged their vehicle at work. News Flash, many businesses use power from some of the dirties energy sources on the planet so while it makes one feel good the reality is often quite different. Plus, that industry hasn't been around long enough for us to see the effects of the waste from those cars, it will come far too late to do anything about it. When the next new battery technology replaces the current one, what happens to all the batteries now being used? Recycled into what if the new technologies use completely different chemistry. The move is already afoot and the current technology won't be able to compete.
Doing something is not always better than doing nothing, so many mistakes have been made using that excuse because in the rush to be part of something or just do something, planning is often left out. The reason for that is money.
Who doesn't see the word "green" attached to everything these days.
Back to plastic bags. They are recyclable. They are reusable too. They pass the tests to be as "green" as a burlap sack yet are being prohibited in more and more places. My point is that the prohibition is ill conceived and without basis and being done only because something needs to be done. There are alternatives to banning plastic shopping bags. Education is one thing yet no one will spend the money or effort to accomplish that, it is easier to ban them because it is the popular thing to do.
Going "green" is often a knee jerk reaction and when done by government, haphazard at best and when done by private industry, money comes before long term thinking and planning.
The people who truly think end to end and engage efforts accordingly should be applauded but they are not. Instead, people are sold ideas instead of realities and like I said, follow the money. Money and doing what is right have rarely been bedfellows.
How many times can a plastic produce bag or grocery sack be used before it tears? Twice? Maybe three times? Over ten years, every one of my nylon bags will be used at least 520 times, maybe many more times. And, forgive me, but what exactly is so complicated about throwing a handful of reusable bags in with a load of towels?
Most of the things I do aren't complicated or difficult, and over time can make a real difference. I cited some statistics in another post awhile back about how many tons of landfill could be diverted over a lifetime if just one person cut their personal garbage stream by 50%. It's 25 tons! For a family of four, that's 100 tons of diverted landfill material! Small changes really do add up.
Human beings are quite adaptable. Several years ago, when my last garbage bag went to the curb, I found a way to make things work, using bags I already owned (they were a gift from MIL), and it was surprisingly easy. Please allow me to repeat myself: because plastic bags are so readily available, there is little incentive for the average person to explore other options. When the bags go, I think you'll find that human beings are more than capable of using their ingenuity to find a way to get their purchases home. They may fuss and fume a bit over the change in routine, but pretty soon they'll figure it out.
Last edited by randomparent; 02-20-2014 at 05:31 PM..
How many times can a plastic produce bag or grocery sack be used before it tears? Twice? Maybe three times? Over ten years, every one of my nylon bags will be used at least 520 times and maybe much more. And, forgive me, but what exactly is so complicated about throwing a handful of reusable bags in with a load of towels?
Nothing I do is particularly complicated or difficult. Human beings are quite adaptable. Several years ago, when my last garbage went to the curb, I found a way to make things work, and it was surprisingly easy. Please allow me to repeat myself. Because plastic bags are so readily available, there is little incentive for the average person to explore other options. When the bags go, I think you'll find that human beings are very capable of using their ingenuity to find a solution to the problem. They may fuss and fume a bit over the change in routine, but pretty soon they'll figure it out.
If it tears it can be recycled. Did you miss that?
Plastic bag tears, rips or you just decide you don't want it anymore. Recycle it.
Why is it that figuring out an alternative is better than applying an alternative to what already exists? Change for change's sake?
While you can be applauded for your efforts, why didn't you make the effort using plastic bags? If one must be forced to do something, there us usually a better way. Also, if one if forced to do something, it is often because someone else is benefitting from that forced effort.
Incentive is different for each person. It is possible to remove something as an option and someone will always figure out a way to adapt. Most often though, someone figures out how to make a buck from the process and you end up in the same position you were before.
The question is, how is recycling the plastic bag any different that buying one made of nylon and reusing it? If the plastic bags were recycled, they could be made into another type of bag or another product.
Maybe the new bag is more efficient for your needs. Bravo to you but it isn't a better solution than recycling the plastic bag, it is just different and you can't really demonstrate that your solution is better than the other.
Not recycling the plastic bag isn't causing the damage to the environment, people's refusal to recycle them is. Change the behavior and the alternatives become a choice instead of an imperative.
There are lots of people throwing away reusable bags such as the kind you use. One such bag probably equals several hundred or perhaps even a thousand of the thinner bags. Think that through.
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