Posted on 06/17/2019 9:51:18 AM PDT by Hojczyk
A new Guardian series, United States of Plastic, will scrutinize the plastic crisis engulfing America and the world, publishing several more stories this week and continuing for the rest of 2019.
“People don’t know what’s happening to their trash,” said Andrew Spicer, who teaches corporate social responsibility at the University of South Carolina and sits on his state’s recycling advisory board. “They think they’re saving the world. But the international recycling business sees it as a way of making money. There have been no global regulations – just a long, dirty market that allows some companies to take advantage of a world without rules.”
In the past, it made economic sense to ship the plastic to Asia, because shipping companies that transport China’s manufactured goods to the US end up with thousands of empty shipping containers to carry back. In the absence of American goods to fill them, the companies have been willing to ship out America’s recycling at rock-bottom rates
.What is nearly killing his business is the fact that many countries have soured on the recycling industry, after unscrupulous operators set up shop, operating as cheaply as possible, with no regard for the environment or local residents.
“In our industry, if you do it properly, you save the environment,” Wong said. “If you do it improperly, you destroy the environment.”
As far as profits go, the numbers just barely favor recycling.
Wong said he might spend $150 to buy a ton of plastic scrap from a US recycler. Once it is shipped abroad, sold to a processor, turned into pellets and then again shipped to a manufacturer, the seller might ask as much as $800 per ton.
Yet the cost of similar virgin plastic, which is often higher quality, is just $900 to $1,000 a ton.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
It doesn’t matter.
Just America. The other 198(?) countries are all okeedokee.
Yup. Only a little over 11 years and we’re outta here anyway.
The article is really good if you can get by the title...its the rich countries sending there plastic to poor countries so they can say we recycle
Got to love the greens ...send our plastic to Asia...
Should be burned or shredded and put in landfills...
It is now in the Ocean because we shipped it there..
For several decades, Germans have been shipping their plastic to ‘dealers’ which sell (pay) someone else to move it elsewhere. Very little of it get recycled within Germany. I suspect most of the top ten tier countries do the same.
“The planet … is a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, ‘Why are we here?’”
“Plastic, A-Holes!”
-George Carlin
it magically just disappears- just like the left’s trillions of dollars for ‘free everything’ is going to just magically appear out of nowhere
It’s the America-hating Guardian, so they won’t mention China at all.
Was it better with paper bags and glass bottles?
I remember paper drives when I was a child, and collecting bottles on the side of the road for the deposit.
When I got my first job as a bag boy at Publics, they were pushing plastic bags as a way to save the world by saving trees.
A future issue will be mercury in our drinking water from the energy saving bulbs that burn out then deposit to our land fields.
“The article is really good if you can get by the title...its the rich countries sending there plastic to poor countries so they can say we recycle
Got to love the greens ...send our plastic to Asia...
Should be burned or shredded and put in landfills...
It is now in the Ocean because we shipped it there..”
Any number of thermal depolymerization companies can turn (at a reasonable rate of return) feed stocks, tires, cellulose, offal, and especially plastics, into petroleum fuel (Farm diesel mostly). The byproducts are water and dry minerals. There is smoke and measures are in place to minimize outflow from there. BP is mobbed up with a company that does this, and Changing World Technologies was early on able to provide the service.
Better to get more use out of a product than shove it into yet another, never to be sufficiently cursed, government program.
Cheers, .02, YMMV
KYPD
I recycle with a smug look on my face, so I don’t have to worry about it. Everything’s just fine.
93% of oceanic plastic comes from just 10 rivers. One is the Nile. One is the Niger. The other 8 are in Asia.
The entire continents of Europe, North America, South America and Australia are responsible for 7% of oceanic plastic. Combined.
Yet the Manchester Guardian wants to call their article the United States of plastic??? LOL!
When Pennsylvania mandated recycling of old electronics lots of people jumped to get into the business.
Within two years there was virtually no place left to take your old televisions and computers, because they quickly found that the promised profits from recycling materials was not there.
So you can’t put your TV out for the trash and you can’t find a place to recycle it. The predictable result being that people chuck them into rivers and leave them on the porches of vacant homes. Liberalism generating the exact opposite of its stated intent.
Like any other state law here I am sure it was passed with the promise of kickbacks that never materialized.
Facts only matter when you have an educated electorate. Public schools indoctrinate leftist ideology so many kids believe this nonsense.
Public schools don’t teach that 7% is not “most”.
The Gaurdian -read no further.
Good point. Great point. I always forget!
Set your calendar to give you a 30 minute heads up. :-) Yup. Duhmerica is duh onliest country that causes po-lution. Hey guardian. ESAD! Print media. Pfffttttt! That’s so last century.
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