Does anyone still recycle?

So you are okay with more than tripling the tare weight of nationally distributed beverage and paying the difference in fuel?

 

I like your optimism, but an aluminum can from beer weighs almost nothing, a bottle able to contain that same beer is heavier than the beer inside, I think. The devil here is in details and I am afraid it will not work out. Energy to move stuff around is not free (economically or environmentally). It is still 99.999% diesel fuel. Perhaps when those 100% solar electric semitrailers come out we can revisit this, but until then I think we are definitely saving resources by using (almost weightless) aluminum cans to transport beverages.

 

I can recall the gas station up the block, had this big pop bottle dispenser out front, the size and proportions of a good sized deep freeze. You lifted the lid, and the bottles were in some sort of tracks inside, partially immersed is icy water, and by putting in coins you were able to slide them along and release one. There bottle cap remover at one end, when you used it the cap stayed in side, the could collect them up.

These were the same guys that just dumped all the used oil out back, though.

 

Bottle is sexier than can...

 

I'm remembering that very same setup, in the shop next to the vet clinic. Bottles hanging vertically from horizontal tracks.

Still using oil spray to control dust on gravel roads back there. But a least a few of them are now paved.

 

I thought that aluminum was one of the SUCCESS stories with recycling - or am I misinformed?
Even here in the deep South the ALCPA is so thorough at collecting discarded cans that sometimes when they're thrown out somebody will catch the can before it hits the ground.

Plastic bottles and the Kentucky State Bird (Walmart plastic bag fluttering in the wind) are probably the two worst offenders for environmental impact according to what the bunny huggers keep telling me.
I can very much understand why plastic bags in the ocean can and does cause much mischief....but direct burial seems to be a more eco neutral solution. I'm told that these bags are completely non bio-degradable and they they will be in the same landfill 125,000 years from now, which tells me also that they won't cause much in the way of ick in the local food chain.
Right?

Plastic in the US is probably made from natgas more than oil - not that there's much of a difference on the production end of the equation other than transport costs.
Having traveled abroad as I have and knowing that many of the socialist-leaning US states are in our coastal areas, I'm thinking that the marine plasticky thing is one of the few global eco-disasters that the US is not a leading contributor to and we're getting less plasticky every year as more and more areas make the paper vs plastic argument moot.

Still.....I try to lean away from plastic bottles except for water storage for storm prep, and I pretend to recycle.

 

Global recycling rates by material would be good to know but I do not quickly find a compilation. Welcoming any assistance.

Metals in descending order: Lead, aluminum, copper, steel (I think). Considering who we are, wonder about nickel and lithium.

Plastics: ??? Many different chemistries but perhaps data only available in aggregate.

Glass: Somewhere in 20s % range

Paper and fiberboard: 60s % and ???

 

Annual plastic to oceans seems to be about 10 million tons out of global production of 380. So, it could be worse.

380 million tons is 380 billion kg. That's almost 50 kg per capita. Amazing, I'd say. Positively interferes with my ability to hug bunnies.

 

The glass bottles still used in America are thinner, and breakage on the production line is a regular occurance.

The discussion isn't about replacing aluminum with glass, but plastic with glass. Yes, the extra weight of glass means higher fuel use going both ways, but most plastic just ends up in the landfill or out in the wild.

Lightweight isn't always an advantage. Styrofoam is too light to bother with recycling. On its own, it costs more in fuel to ship than it is worth. A recycling center has to invest in a special compactor before it becomes viable to ship.

Someone posted that recycling aluminum uses about 15% of the energy to smelt ore into the metal. Reusing a beverage can isn't likely because they are crushed for shipment back.

My win the big lotto idea is to build floating thermal conversion factories to convert that plastic to a syncrude at sea.

Please feel free to pass that idea on to anybody who could make it happen.

 

One global ocean cleanup effort.

The Ocean Cleanup

For doing catalyzed chemistry at sea, interactions of chloride with catalysts will be a problem and perhaps a killer. Do make sure your venture capitalists hire a chemist

 

When I was a kid in Powell River, our garbage was collected by these two guys with a big dump truck, run down to a spot on the edge of the river downstream of the dam, backed up to this gate at the edge of the ravine over the river (there was a chute for the first bit, going down the bank), and they let'r rip.

I recalled that a few years back, and was thinking was that maybe a false memory, couldn't be.... But then yeah, reading some history on the place: that's how it was. There was a comment that the garbage was mostly organics and papers in those days.

Any way we can give the take-out and fast-food industry the boot, because I think that's what it'd take. Starbucks for example, they serve nothing but take-out cups, in house?

 

This is a Prius forum. By default, doesn't that mean most everyone here recycles?

 

Be careful about how far you push your stereotypes.

 

Justin Case anyone wonders how recycling goes in China.

Most urbanites live in apartment buildings in larger complexes. 'Your' trash bin is nearby. Put your glass&Al&plastic&cellulosics near that, with confidence that a recycling professional will soon come by.

What happens next is unclear but we can assume these folks are not in this low-revenue business by choice.

 

On initial question, many anybodies throughout the world do recycle and depending on items, rates are 10 to 90%. Low rates mean items don't generate downstream value (now).

If you want to play into environmentalists' scary plans for world domination, learn what items you cannot recycle and try to not buy much of those. What you can recycle, buy those instead I guess.

Or if you don't care, there must be other threads to participate in.

 

SIngle-use polyethylene bag bans expand to other countries but not always happily:

Plastic bags: Shop assistant 'grabbed by throat' as Australia ban starts - BBC News

Don't recall when this 'ban' came to China but I can say that it is mostly imaginary. If you want to buy good reusable bags they cost between a dime and a dollar in US currency equiv.

 

Blue states or regions within states that have recycling have elaborate recycling centers, bins and collection rules. Who cares if they start tossing recycling? It's the thought that counts.