EFFORTPOST The Myth of Plastic Recycling

I have long since known about the impracticality of Plastic Recycling, but i found a good video addressing this issue in a comparative short and summarized format. (15 minutes)

The point of this video and my own belief is not to be an anti-recycling advocate or propagate anti-green sentiment propaganda. I and the video creator still believe we should in fact recycle to the greatest extent possible, but that we should also become fully aware of the horrifying reality standing before us - and that is that plastic has never, even since its inception in the early 1920s been capable of being recycled in any economical or environmentally sustainable sense meaningfully.

There are a great multitude of barriers to complete practical plastic recycling - including economical, practical and physical science related impossible reasons.

For economical reasons, it is because most nation states upon the earth subsidize any plastic or fossil fuel industry they may have, since these are astronomically critical sectors of economy and society, these subsidies

tend to compete painfully against any industry which must consider even the feasibly recycled resin or raw virgin plastic, against fossil remains/oil products from which plastic originates, and often recycled plastic (which contains the cost of labor intensive manpower) loses out.

Now there are industries in places like South Africa which have edged out a niche in recycling plastic which can meaningfully be recycled and done so in an economically viable manner. We even have a pretty decent organization advocating this issue- though obviously they sure as shit don't hold any real power or influence. But they do actually highlight and underline the most critical issues we face and actually attempt to offer pratical solutions.

This surprised me as Green hippie types are usually very prone to offer and champion noble but impractically insane idealized solutions.

https://www.plasticrecyclingsa.co.za/

They actually have a practical grasp upon our declining situations and even attempt understand the practical reality where we have lots of "trash pickers" people who hunt in junkyards for plastic, or pilfer through peoples trash bags before they can be picked up by trash lorries, so that they might fill their giant bags with plastic for recycling plants in the big cities.

https://www.news24.com/citypress/news/sas-itinerant-waste-pickers-feel-the-pinch-as-covid-19-lockdown-drags-on-20200423

It's very unglamorous, but many poor safricans make a living from this.

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/how-waste-pickers-are-helping-win-war-plastic-pollution-2023-07-17/

Now I sure as heck won't be like this Reuters article and claim that our "waste-picker" economy is "winning the war against plastic waste" or anything, but it does actually help in the grand scale of things. Where the average plastic by tons on the global stage is recycled at the pitiable 5% on average, south africa has been recycling at between 7,5% - 15% of our plastic waste (still pitafle but above global average)

However, even this recycling economy, supported on the backs and efforts of "waste-pickers", is only really feasible BECAUSE south africa is so brokenshit poor, and has at least a 25% unemployment rate - meaning that because safricans are so poor and desperate, they are willing to do the most unenviable and difficult jobs of being waste-pickers, which is basically the lowest rung of even south african society.

whereas richer places like Burgerland in all its wealth would find it impossible to compete, trash-pickers or trash-sorters would have to be paid at least minimum wages or have safety regulations against them being exposed to biohazards from junkyards or landfills - in safrica we are so poor, the concept of even regulating trash-pickers here in nonexistent because they are borderline beggers.

Thus even with the economic incentive of not starving, safrica still only manages to collect a tenth of our plastic waste - the rest is dumped in landfills if even that.

THE IMPRATICALITY OF RECYCLING PLASTIC: WHY IS IT HARD?

I go on this Safrican tangent to make you guys realize the sheer magnitude of problems involving ACTUAL recycling plastic, and the logistical barriers that would be involved at every step.

Like the video goes on to explain: Why is it so hard to recycle trash and plastic?

1. There are different types of plastic

https://www.plasticsforchange.org/blog/different-types-of-plastic

When plastic products are created, they are chemically created with different additives, to give them specific properties - like waterbottles being watertight and firm. Other plastics like plastic bags are intentionally made to be bending and malleable.

Mixing these different shit into one giant recycling cauldron and trying to melt them together into one magic giant bar of resin is worthless, because the combined product of plastics with different properties or chemical makeup just generates worthless plastic goop and gunk, worth only as burnable coal.

2nd hand plastic will just never have the same versatility as "virgin" resin plastic, or plastic generated directly from oil and other fossil fuel products.

Thus to meaningfully recycle any plastic shit, you need to sort them - which is a logistical task of great magnitude and WILL require human hands, no factory can in any meaningful sense sort plastic magically into the different types and even if those plastic is recyclable.

2. Many plastics are chemically bonded with other material on the molecular level, making them unsuitable for recycling.

https://stories.undp.org/why-arent-we-recycling-more-plastic

Many plastic products also contain metal, carton, paper and polystyrene which are often impractically impossible to separate.

3. Recycling also degrades plastic with each recycling cycle

4. Contamination with food remains and chemicals.

Plastic containers for food and poison or cleaning chemicals also cannot be used in recycling for most plants as there are often no meaningful manner in which to separate toxic chemicals from these plastics which will remain even after the furnace of the recycling plant's processing. So basically bottles holding ratpoison or floor cleaning liquid are for safety already almost never capable of being reused EVER.

https://nilu.com/2020/02/can-we-recycle-plastic-without-recycling-the-toxic-pollutants-as-well/

https://www.sulapac.com/blog/truth-about-plastic-recycling/

"When plastics are recycled, they can contain a toxic cocktail of chemicals that makes them unfit for food-grade and other consumer uses. Dangerous chemicals make their way into recycled plastic materials from a variety of sources. Greenpeace has identified the following three 'uncontrollable poisonous pathways':

Toxic chemicals in new virgin plastic materials: When plastics are made with toxic chemicals and then recycled, the toxic chemicals can transfer into the recycled plastics."

END:

I don't know if I have any grand point to make in this post, and it's not my intention of just putting forth a pessimistic doompost with no viable solutions to our global frickup.

But I did want to talk to you darmatards regarding the mammoth nature of the task before us, if we as humanity even decides to ever make plastic recycling a priority.

I recall a funny story in my time at UCT (Univericity of Cape Town) where every year there were perpetual campaigns by hippes and other environmentalists with new and improved plans involving the University to improve our carbon footprint and lower our waste in the form of recycling.

On campus there would be these fancy multi-bins, divided into categories for waste disposal: plastic, paper, metal, food, ect. There would be Green propaganda campaigns, slogans and posters, encouraging peeps to responsibly think before they threw their trash into the bin, and help sorting our trash for recycling plants in the city.

The end of that year I saw a trash lorry come in and the garbage-men would just simply dump the fricking bins into the garbage-lorry, mixing the carefully sorted bins with apathetic abandon clearly undoing most of our efforts through the year regularly

https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2021-03-05-installation-of-new-bins-part-of-ucts-green-campus-transformation

Later UCT would correct this and make sure to employ palstic/metal recyling collectors to come and pick up the intended recycle shit, and give the food-waste and non-recyclables to the regular trash-lorries

Additionally safrican students tend to be r-slurred and the 4 bin project eventually got scraped for a two bin, for recyclables and non-recyclables cuz students kept throwing paper into the metal bins or vice versa, but even this STILL GOT FRICKED UP

Anyways regular soft drink bottles like coke bottles which are uniform type plastic and don't contain poison are still very practical to collect and recycle just like tin cans, this post is just to highlight the magnitude of the practicality of the recylcing problem.