Comment by cdolan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cdolan | Hacker News Reader

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As many comments here point out - you are seen as a heretic for going against the 'recycling gods' in many parts of the world. That is certainly true in parts of American industry as well.

U.S. kids have been conditioned since the 90's to believe everything is recyclable, and you commit a public disservice if you throw things away. Slowly people are realizing that 'single stream' recycling just results in a lot of contaminants and ends up being thrown away anyways.

Up until 6 months ago, one of my party tricks was to explain to people that glass is not commonly recycled, but actually ground up and used as 'daily cover' on a landfill (2-3" of material to help keep down odors, start the decomposition process, and provide long term stability to the pile of trash). The reactions ranged from "ha, I figured..." to jaw dropping denials.

People are finally starting to realize that, hey... Maybe a bunch of 'recycled' (read: shattered) beer bottles of mixed colors (green, brown, clear) present much as much of an OSHA workplace hazard as they do an 'environmental benefit'.

I'm one of those recycling-zealots of some sort, or was. I believed in it but never naively, always actually thinking about consumption and waste. And the first day my town announced single-stream recycling, I was immediately skeptical. In every way it, it seemed like an absolutely awful idea.

There was all this focus on pure weight of recycling, as though consuming more stuff to then recycle more of it was a good thing.

And I bothered keeping all my stuff cleaning, pulling plastic windows out of spaghetti boxes to put in the trash, so the box was just paper. It's trivially easy to do this stuff. Separating the stuff after it gets dumped in a truck in one big mix?? ABSURD

I feel like single-stream as a whole concept was a complete destruction of actual recycling efforts and progress up to that point.

Separating the stuff after it gets dumped in a truck in one big mix?? ABSURD.

Nope. Routine.[1] There are shakers, screens, magnets, blowers, crushers, and optical sorters. It's not that complicated. Mixed recycling goes in, and aluminum, ferrous metal, glass cullet sorted by color, paper, and trash come out. Separation is working fine. The problem is that the markets for waste paper, glass cullet, and plastic are weak, even when fully sorted.

Waste paper, especially. Paper mills in North America have been closing for years.

Plastic bottle recycling is coming along well. CarbonLite has a huge plant near LA, and plants in Denver and Pennsylvania. Recycled plastic bottles go in, and plastic pellets ready for injection molding into new bottles come out. This is the area where things are getting better.

Glass cullet is in trouble. Fewer manufacturers are using glass containers and there's a cullet glut.

All this is at best marginally profitable and tends to need subsidies. Aluminum is the only real moneymaker.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIVKmwzWSuc

[2] https://www.kcet.org/shows/socal-connected/carbonlite-inside...

I'm not actually claiming that all mixing is bad, but the general "just dump it all into one bin" style of appeal to consumers' convenience is the problem. Along with the mixing, we saw widespread advocacy that people just recycle thoughtlessly.

Encouraging such carelessness gives a false impression about the whole system, encourages ignorance…

It's one thing for single-stream to be feasible in terms of a mix of clean paper, plastic containers, and metal. It's another thing to discourage consumer thoughtfulness and end up with all manner of plastics, strange mixes of rules in different municipalities, and tons of problematic contamination — all of which could have been avoided if we didn't aim to make recycling a mindless activity.

Obviously the real problem is the externalizing of the whole waste cost from the manufacturers. If we could make all manufacturers pay for all the recycling and environmental costs, they'd change their products to be more recyclable and less wasteful.

Since glass is just 'sand' essentially and can be broken down and doesn't seem to pose any kind of environmental issue a-la 'plastic oceans' - can you enlighten us as to the problem with glass?

I mean - is it much more complicated than just 'grind it up somewhat and throw it into the a hole' ? Or where do the problems arise?

The problem is that it's not recycling - but the people who put those bottles in their recycling bin did so on the assumption that it would, in fact, have been recycled.

They're being reused, and reuse is typically better than recycling as it's more energy efficient. (That's where "reduce → reuse → recycle" comes from.) Better to put the bottles on top of the landfill rather than in the landfill and have to truck something else in to cover it.

Also, bottle recycling, where there's a bottle bill, has the further desirable externality of reducing bottle litter.

This is really a public education issue. I don't think people would object to stuff like that, when it's demonstrable that it's more beneficial - so long as it's clear.

Ah. I see. Well hopefully maybe instead of 'recycling' we can at least do more effective 'waste management' now that we're all programmed to separate things.

This is one of many areas I wish YC would focus more on.

So many 'big opportunities' in 'real world' businesses outside of SaaS etc..

That kind of is recycling though... Its just not reuse.

Everything is recyclable, its more a question if it makes good economic sense to do so

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