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giant corporation lies it's ass off and pollutes and destroys the world so the CEO and shareholders get a few extra dollars, all without consequences
You don't say!
Wait until you find out about recycling in general!
This is why glass, metal, and paper recycling will always be superior lol.
The recycling movement really ruined any attempt at the federal government regulating/limiting plastic production. Which I have to assume was the purpose.
the recycling movement is, ultimately, a big giant scam designed to shove the burden off onto consumers instead of on the producers.
and most everything but easy and valuable metals still end up more in dumps than being reprocessed in any way, because processing/sorting waste plastic is hard and no one wants to pay the money to do it.. So if they suspect one wrong plastic in an entire truckload of plastic recyclables, the entire truck goes to the dump.
I am curious how much petroleum products actually go into making the plastics vs how much energy it costs to recycle it. Is it possible we will see a boon in the recycle market if Oil prices get high enough?
its not about the energy.
its about the cost.
Lets preface this by saying that "plastics" is just a universal word that describes like half a dozen or more types of commonly used polymer materials.
These materials are generally made from waste byproducts from the oil and gas industry, so the oil and gas industry could literally give these byproducts away and it would still be cheaper for them than having to incur disposal costs. fresh plastic will always win on price, as long as petroleum exists (Which may not be as long as some people hope..but thats another discussion)
meanwhile recycling all these plastics require massive complicated machines (if such machines even exist), or hordes of human workers manually sorting the various types. Which already makes recycled plastic too expensive to be anything but a propaganda tool for companies to slap "MADE WITH RECYCLED MATERIALS!" on their label, usually with an asterisk somewhere that says they only used like 10% recycled materials, because again, the sorting, cleaning, processing is so expensive as to make the final pelletized product magnitudes more expensive than fresh raw plastic could ever hope to be.. so they only use enough recycled plastic to be able to slap that on their label in hopes of appealing to the environmentalist types.
Which is also why most recycled plastic ends up at the dump regardless, because if one person on the route is suspected of putting something they shouldnt in their bin, then the truck is sent to the dump where all the plastic is buried with the rest of the trash, because they dont want to deal with any sorting or processing. they just want to dump the truck into pelletizer and be done with it.
If you care about the environment, recycling isnt whats going to save it. getting rid of plastic and replacing it with something sustainable like glass and wood is what will save it.
I am mostly just interested in clean, baled strapless shrink wrap industry.
Plastic recycling basically everywhere is a scam. It requires direct government subsidization to be cost competitive with new plastic. Companies actually advertising that they do it or could do it are missing the forest for the trees or just greenwashing.
Because plastic is a byproduct of oil production. It is a way to get rid of fractions of oil that are not used as fuel. No matter how efficient plastic recycling gets, it will never be cost competitive with new plastic. Refineries will just drop the price of the new plastic to ensure all of it gets sold, since if they couldn’t sell it, they would have to pay to dispose of it.
The real value of plastics isn’t that they’re good materials for things, it’s that they’re a way for oil companies to push the responsibility of disposing of their waste products on to public waste management by laundering it through packaging and cheap junk.
Is it all made from byproducts or are some plastics made specific from a batch of crude that is refined in a specific way to yield lots of a specific molecule that is needed? I am seriously asking since I dont have a clue.
As in: us there always e ought waste to create plastic no matter what? As long as we refine car propellant, that is.
Because plastic is a byproduct of oil production.
I learned this from playing Satisfactory. I mean, I probably actually learned it in school at some point, but Satisfactory really drove it home. One of the first things you learn after unlocking oil is how to process all the excess oil by-product into plastic... And then straight into the shredder for those sweet sweet Ficsit coupons
Another side of the issue is that recycling is not government mandated - companies can choose on their own to recycle, and this is costly. When we as a society expect companies to maximize profit, it can come as no surprise that they do not voluntarily pay to be ecologically responsible.
This sounds like cardboard propaganda. When everyone knows cardboard is just a way for lumber companies to dispose of their unused tree parts from 2x4 production.
Yah, but hear me out, growing trees doesn’t make the planet get hotter.
It in fact has the opposite effect.
Yeah that just sounds like you'd like humans to live in caves again
Evil corporation is evil.
Allow me to rephrase Starbucks' claim: "the plastic we said was recyclable decades ago but then found to be prohibitively expensive to recycle, information that didn't change our practice at all, is now considered recyclable again and wevre taking credit and celebrating but still pawning the task off on whoever takes our garbage"
Polypropylene is #5, which nearly all takeout containers are made form in my experience. My town hasn't taken any plastic besides 1/2/3 for at least a decade.
1: polyethylene, such as soda bottles
2: high density polyethylene, such as milk jugs (and a pretty good material for flat bearings)
3: pvc, such as medicine bottles
4: low density polyethylene, such as bags
5: polypropylene, such as most food takeout containers
In my opinion, companies should be required to recycle and penalized if they don’t. This word salad of talking about how things are possible is meaningless if it isn’t done.
Some plastic water cups and takeaway containers are 1, but most of them are 5 or 6, in my recent experience.
giant corporation lies it's ass off and pollutes and destroys the world so the CEO and shareholders get a few extra dollars, all without consequences
You don't say!
Starbucks is a shit company and people need to stop drinking their slop.
If there's a local coffee house nearby (there almost always is) then go there instead.
Starbucks is stupid expensive lol.
'Recyclable' just means that you - theoretically - CAN recycle something. Doesn't mean that it's actually done - and never has.
That word has always been the most blatant dogwhistle of greenwashing.
factoid: those recycling symbols on various shit? none of that is regulated and packagers can put any symbol on anything, recyclable or not.
90% of it ends up in landfills anyway.
TIL: it IS regulated in 36/50 US states.
What is your source for that? According to the law, they have to use the correct symbol for the type of material. Are ou saying it isn't enforced enough?
It's not enforced and not everyone lives in the USA.
https://just-zero.org/our-stories/explainer/the-hidden-truth-behind-recycling-labels-revealed/
Those symbols are being put on plastics that no region anywhere can recycle. They either end up in landfill, or moved to other countries to be burned.
1 and 2 can be commercially and productively downcycled ~~recycled (not just downcycled)~~. The others are garbage though, and the biggest con was the plastic companies shifting the responsibility onto the consumer.
EDIT: you were right they are not commercially recycled (instead they are downcycled, because virgin plastic is currently cheaper). https://oceana.org/blog/recycling-myth-month-plastic-bottle-you-thought-you-recycled-may-have-been-downcycled-instead/
Not sure why you're still saying the law is not enforced though. I don't see any evidence for this at least in my country. Companies have to put the correct numbers on their materials, even if they can't actually be recycled. Not sure what laws there are in other countries besides the USA.
Recycling in America is a scam 🎶
Always has been. Make the manufacturers/retailers of the product be responsible for the cleanup.
That means they aren't very valuable even in recycling. Starbucks would not ignore a potentially reliable revenue stream.
Recycling used to be shipped to China. A couple of years ago China made that illegal.
That’s fair. It’s more than a little disgusting to imagine one country exporting its literal waste to an entirely separate group of people… Countries should have to manage their own trash. But there’s a lot that countries should have to do that will never be done, so ¯_(ツ)_/¯
They still export garbage, just not to China. To poorer countries now.
Valuable to say they are recyclable
I'm surprised that this surprises anyone.
Plastics recycling, on the whole, is mostly a scam
The scammers are those who say they recycle but don't. That isn't recycling itself.
Recycling of plastics only happens when it's economically feasible to do so. Otherwise it just ends up in the landfill. More than 90% of plastics end up there
The whole concept of most plastics being economically feasible to recycle, by plastering a recycling symbol on every single type of plastic product, is a facade created by the plastics industry to stem the growing backlash against plastic waste that started all the way back in the 1970s
https://grist.org/culture/recycling-symbol-logo-plastic-design/
facade created by the plastics industry
Exactly, instead of satisfying the actual demand for actual recycling, the plastics industry is scamming people by filling up landfills. The customers will pay for environmental damages down the line, instead of upfront for recycling, which is not what they necessarily want. The scammers are making that decision for them without their consent, by making them believe they're paying for recycling, while they are actually NOT receiving that service.