The Wall Street Journal chronicles the crisis of a shortage of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) to make recycled plastic containers. The price of PET flake spikes, as demand grows, making recycled packaging more expensive than virgin oil-based bottles, blister-packs, etc. Is it time to profitably harvest the so-called “Pacific garbage patch” in an all new enviro-weenie episode of “The Deadliest Catch”?
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38 replies on “Plastic Garbage Crisis: Prices Spike as Demand Grows Threatening Recycled-Container Cause”
Old closed in oil wells are now found to contain new deposits of oil. This is coming from pools of oil far below where we are technically capable of retrieving it. The pressures at the depths where this oil comes from are a few magnitudes greater than where we are currently working. This is true in quite a number of older wells in the US. The sad thing is that once a well is shut in it requires a new permit to open it up again. Permits are not being given as of late.
I forget what it was, but some 20-30 years ago or so, there was something people were afraid we would run out of and the imagined solution for the future was mining landfills for it. It might have been something in washing machines or some other appliance, but for some reason the plastic in disposable diapers comes to mind.
I love the Epoch Times newspaper. Sometimes it is just nice to handle a paper.
If all the organizations doing local trash pickup in the US gave each customer a recycle bin and offered to cut their garbage bill by X percentage if they’d use it, US recycling would be over 90% within a month.
In Nevada, our garbage fees were increased in order to pay for the extra trucks and totes to pick up recyclables. I don’t know how much they made selling the recyclables, but our bill was never decreased from that, either.
As Thomas Sowell is fond of saying in Basic Economics, stated goals are beside the point, the incentives that are created are what determines the result.
How are the sea turtles doing with disposable masks?
They take them off, shove a plastic straw in their nose, pose for a picture and put the mask back on.
Stupid sea turtles.
Not only was that floating “continent” of plastic confirmed to be actually the size of a “state”, much of the “plastic” had degraded into little balls or pellets now floating in the ocean. Bill spoke of this quite a few years ago on R/A or Trifecta. So the idea of “mining” the plastic gold out there is in reality, a lot more difficult than just gill netting disposable drinking bottles and plastic grocery bags.
Or was it TSL or Hot Mic or Bill Whttle Now…Maybe it was a Firewall or Afterburner or the one hit wonder Speakeasy? So many shows, so many topics!
Speakeasy was great. Orson Bean was a treasure.
Virtue signalling is only virtue signalling if others see you doing it. There’s more to recycling than just showing everyone what a good person you are. There’s the endorphin hit from “being a good person saving the planet” that is at least as much of a motivator.
It’s all BS. Let’s look at some numbers and how they’re played with.
Even if you recycle all your plastics, only so many of them are a desirable type of plastic. Of those, only so many of the desirable types make it to an actual recycling center and are in fact recycled. That percentage is relatively small. In America for the latest statistics available from the EPA regarding waste recycling 24% made the classification as “recycled”.
So hey, that looks like a pretty good number, huh? Not so fast …
That’s the amount of waste that was classified as recycled from municipal and household waste streams. Not the amount of waste that actually went into your recycling bins and came out the other side as a useful product. That’s the number that went into the recycling beast as fodder.
It’s no where near the actual numbers on actual waste.
It doesn’t include the amount of recyclables that become landfill because there’s no market for it. In order to keep those numbers looking happy and productive they also include waste that is “composted” as recycled and that waste is about 10% of the overall. This makes it look like about 34% or so of American waste, a tiny bit over a third, is being “recycled”.
That’s BS too. There are several waste streams involved; industrial, municipal and household. The EPA isn’t a bit above conflating and jiggering numbers from any of them to achieve the result they want.
A big problem is the numbers themselves. Waste stream numbers are very fuzzy. Not every single pound of waste passes across a scale and is weighed as waste every year.
Estimates are as high as 8 BILLION pounds of combined solid waste generated in the US per year. Solid wastes do not include aerosols and things like carbon dioxide. Out of that 8,000,000,000 lbs. +/- only about 300 million are municipal waste. So 300 million divided by 8 billion equals 0.0375 or 3.75%.
Whoa Nellie! Wait a minute. IF we include all waste then it’s not a third or so that’s being recycled, is it? Not by a long, long, longshot. Now consider that only a third of 3.75% is actually even being counted as “recycled” whether it actually gets recycled or not and …
That’s 1.25% of all waste gets called recycled. Suddenly that recycling number doesn’t seem nearly so significant and this is due to nothing more than NOT diddling the numbers.
You have to watch those crafty labels. “Municipal Garbage” is a label referring to a specific waste stream, it is not ALL waste streams. Not even close. But when you see the statistic that nearly a third of all garbage is recycled it makes it look like we’re really getting somewhere. It’s a statistical illusion.
Consider that what is being counted as recycled may or may not actually get recycled to a usable form. Much of what is counted as recycled ends up stockpiled somewhere. If you look it’s not hard to find pictures of acres and acres of baled used/waste paper products on the internet. Waiting to be recycled. Tons and tons and tons of them all sitting in the sun and the rain and decomposing naturally as a wood pulp product will do but … Those were counted as “recycled”, every single bale.
So conservatively it seems fair to drop 1.25% to just 1%. That’s including both things classified as recycled and categorized as composted. It’s conservative and generous because “municipal waste” and “household waste” are not synonyms with actual household waste, the stuff YOU throw in the garbage and recycling cans, being the lesser quantity usually added into the totals for municipal waste.
Which is not nearly so encouraging but we’re not quite finished yet.
When you recycle you’re doing free labor for someone else to attempt making a profit on. If they had to pay for the labor to sort American garbage themselves it would never, ever be profitable. In America. That’s how low margin the “recycling” business is. You have to work for free just for someone else to make it viable.
Ever heard of The Law of Supply and Demand? Yeah, not a lot of demand or it’d pay a lot better, huh?
OK, so you’ve cleaned, de-labelled and sorted your recyclables. You take them to a recycling center, or you put them in your blue recycling bin. They’re gone from your perception and hooray for you, you’re doing your part to save the planet and you feel great about what a wonderful person you are. Out of sight, out of mind and a comfortable smugness as a reward for your efforts. What’s not to like?
But those waste items are not gone yet. They are merely in transit. Depending on where you live they might be enroute to a recycling facility where they will be further sorted and classified (often by the use of large quantities of water, which floats paper, wood and plastics while metals and glass sink to the bottom for further processing). They might be enroute to a landfill, heck you’ll never know. Or the worst possible thing, they might be sold in bulk as reclaimable waste.
Why is that last one so bad? Because then the garbage gets shipped to a third world country where it is sorted by poverty stricken nearly slave laborers (still, some employment is better than no employment at all, even there) and further processed. The stuff that might have any value at all goes one way, the other stuff including the wrong kind of plastics and unsalvageable solids like computer keyboards, fiberglass electric wind generator rotors and used up solar cells goes another direction. To be burned in open fires with no electrostatic precipitators, no filters, nothing but toxic smoke and combustion byproducts slowing killing the people who feed the fires … and the rest of us.
You’d have saved the planet every bit as much by burning your own waste in a burn barrel in the back yard. In fact, moreso because it takes fuel and petroleum products to transport that waste to where it is eventually recycled, burned or buried. A lot of fuel as it turns out, gets burned moving supposedly recyclable waste around.
When considered on a global scale where other nations are not nearly so conscientious about their own waste stream management and disposal that 1% shrinks to an infinitesimal insignificance.
Out of that 1% of actual, real recycling in just the US … your little efforts are meaningless. Except to you. If you’re in a habit of delusional behavior.
You’re not saving any whales, you’re not preventing any sea turtles from a horrible lingering death by plastic straw in-nostril-ization, the sea gulls will not die with an excess of undigestible plastics in their crops because you didn’t recycle your Coca-Cola bottle. 99.9% of that kind of plastic has nothing to do with you at all, the US does not dump garbage at sea and no matter what you do … No Ocean Gyre Plastic Island will grow or shrink from your efforts. You’re not a good person because you recycle, you’re not a hero, you’re not saving the planet. You’re not saving anything.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, what are you? You’re an acolyte of the Religion of Green, or you are a dupe of the Church of Green Religion. You may not know this, it may not be your fault. Because you’ve been lied to. A lot.
Watch this … and start taking your perceptions back. Putting them inside your own head where they belong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTgNtvTuYRU&t=14s&ab_channel=PragerU
You saved me from having to do the same thing, and you did it much better than I. Great post, Acts (TM).
GMTA, thanks for letting me know that too. My posts tend to be more like essays than comments but more than a few people have PM’d me and said they’re worth reading even so. (Shrug) It’s still nice to hear appreciation for my efforts so thank you very much.
Sometimes in here, because we’re here on Bill’s website, all we’re doing is preaching to the choir. That’s OK, the choir needs inspiration and a pep-talk now and then too. But when we can actually resource people with real information they might not be aware of or fully grasp … That’s when we’re making an actual difference to arm our people.
I’m not going to tell you where…..oh, alright…..upstate NY, in rural garbage pickup, our trucks have 2 compartments. One for garbage and one for recycling. They want us to wash it out and separate it so they can see if it qualifies for recycling, then they put it all in one section of the truck to be separated again when the truck is full.
It seems as if there is nobody looking for a particular grade of plastic, they don’t take it. If I do my own oil change, I have to take the bottles and old filter to a service center to be recycled because they won’t take them from me.
Hey, Scott! Thanks for the dark screen! I just noticed that.
Also from Upstate NY, rural community. Many I know here have, as required by law, cleaned and sorted not only plastics, but paper, cardboard and metal and taken it out to the curb on the appointed collection dates, just to watch in disbelief as all is tossed into the main compartment. When asked unofficially, the answer is that there are no purchasers for the recycled goods, so they just dispose of them as regular waste.
Your situation is more common than most people might think. That’s not so bad a thing all considered.
Because at least your local powers-that-be are not trying to virtue signal by contortionist machinations attempting to get the garbage recycled at an economic loss and subsequent increased tax burden to you.
Next step is to get them to rescind that silly “required by law” thing regarding forcing you to provide free labor to a non-existent recycling system.
AH, yes. Going down to the beverage wholesaler with our empties that were well and truly recycled. Picking up new soft drinks for us and a case of PBR for dad. This was the late 60s early 70s, PBR, Black Label.
Then the village started to have a recycling location where we could throw glass bottles by color. Fun for a while trashing them against the metal bins. But that got old, too.
The other thing people need to realize about most plastics, whether used for food industry or clothing or other, most plastic is a byproduct of the petroleum process of turning crude oil into gasoline. I think that is correct but as I get older who knows if what I remember was ever true.
Having worked in an oil refinery for 3 years, you are correct, sort of. There are many products that are byproducts of turning oil into gasoline. Just a few examples: diesel fuel, kerosene (used to make jet fuel), motor oil, methane, ethane, propane, butane, heating oil and so much more. At most oil refineries no plastic is made. But by products can be made into: plastics, medicine, and more, including a mostly carbon product called “coke” that is used in refining aluminum from the bauxite ore. If oil went bye-bye…. YIKES! (Still could do it, but the expense would be astronomic.)
Thanks, Harry. I recall seeing a video several years ago that showed a bunch of everyday products that would be gone if oil refining went away. That needs to be brought up way more often.
IIRC, states that instituted bottle returns didn’t get much return financially. Sure, people picked up bottles from the roadside, but after being collected, reuse stalled.
Also Scott, transporting and reusing glass containers uses more energy than using “disposable” plastic.
Years ago, me & all of my Lefty friends would get a beach house for a week in Delaware. For those unfamiliar, in DE they recycle via many recyclying centers with colored igloos, painted based on the type to recycle.
On one morning after, I was separating the bottles by colored glass (which DE asked us to do), and they started busting my a**, saying stuff like “Hey, what are you doing trying to help the environment? I thought you were a Republican!”
To which I responded, “Republicans care about the envionment too, we just have different approachs. You Lefties show you care by kicking back over drinks and crowing about how virtuous you are, while I show that I care by actually doing somethiung constructive.”
It was one of those magical “…and then they all shut the f*** up” moments
HA! Good one!
I don’t recycle in general but I’d have made an exception just to pull that one off.
My wife has always liked to “recycle” various items in the big, blue bin; however, since Bill mentioned self-interest, I must admit that I see it as nothing but an additional trash can for which I pay no additional fee.
Me, too!
Me too, except we do pay additionally for it anyway. The cost of a whole other set of trucks, fuel, drivers, handlers and facilities is pretty significant and that cost is just shuffled in with your garbage fees/taxes etc. however you pay for trash services.
TANSTAAFL, Dave.
It might not be a separate additional fee but the cost and charges are still there. I’m not contradicting you, I’m just pointing out that the charges are real but not optional.
But being as I have to pay for it anyway, I reckon I might as well use it to make more room in my regular trash can by dumping anything that won’t get me in trouble in the blue one. I’m not recycling, I’m just taking an opportunity to get rid of more trash without paying for another can on top of what I’m “issued”.
Whenever that isn’t enough, I burn a lot of crap like cardboard and such out back in an old barrel too. I.E. the huge boxes that appliances and TV’s and such come in are a PITA to break down enough to put in the blue can and even if I do that, then it’s full. It’s easier to just lay ’em out, roll ’em up and toss ’em in a barrel with a cup of diesel fuel and a match. Makes cool floaty fire things too.
Living in the country has it’s perks.
This is actually where I am somewhat of a “liberal” … kind of in a conservative way. In that I mean, I see giant mounds which I found out were land fills. I see so … so … much … waste. Disposable crap. especially in packaging. And it bugs the piss out of me. I like clean air, drinkable water, and I love our national parks and wild areas. And I’d love a world where we didn’t use more and more of it to bury trash (and we’re not digging a hole and burying it in a place where there is no sign it is there, we’re pushing dirt up over giant mounds of trash now. Not a sustainable direction.)
Regardless of whether or not it is being recycled … I don’t like it. I hate waste. This, again, is a conservative value.
I would love to see American industry… hell, global industry … come up with some sort of standard material and process that recycling is far more viable. Preferably without having to ship it across the Pacific.
I’d love to see a society where we don’t produce so … so much … trash.
What I don’t know is how to get there.
Harnessing the market does seem to solve most issues. But first people have to see the issue and wrap their heads around it.
Here’s just one. It’s been “converted” into a park. But we just make more, and more, and more and more trash…. and there are a lot of us doing it. The scale is mind blowing to me.
So how long did it take to “fill” this one, and how many more will we create in the next 20, 40, 100 years?
I can see it as a backdrop for some dystopian story … a world full of nothing but landfills being mined for … anything marginally useful in a society that has completely broken down. Stuff people threw away.
There’s one of those not horribly far away from where I live. I think they call it “Mt. Trashmore” or something like that. The kids love it. It’s flat here and that’s the biggest, best sledding hill for miles and miles in any direction.
Kids would probably like it even more if we actually had snow on the ground for more than a couple days at a time but you can’t have everything.
Me, too. Wife and I love winter, but we don’t get very much of it here very often.
I come from a northern tier state where winter lasts 6 months and temperatures can get down to between -35 and -50 below zero so I don’t miss winter a lot.
I love playing on my tractor when it snows though. I go around to all the neighbors and plow their driveways for free. At least I don’t charge for it but I do find an occasional $20 or so slipped craftily into a coat pocket.
The last two years we didn’t get any accumulation that was worth firing up the tractor for. I don’t mind that but I’m not upset when we get enough snow to be worth plowing.
The thing I like best is that no matter how much snow we get here, it’s going to be gone in a few days, at most a week or two. Where I’m originally from a snowflake that falls in October can be unmelted until the end of May. I don’t miss that at all.
Reminiscent of this gem from “Minnesotans for Global Warming”
If We Had Some Global Warming – YouTube
EXACTLY! LOL, that was great. Thanks. I watched that and got several good laughs. I also got a reminder of why I hate those winters. That’s where I’m from.
I’ve said for years that if global warming melts the polar ice caps the Gulf of Mexico will expand up the Mississippi River Valley all the way to Itasca. That would regulate the climate and make Minnesota bearable so I’d move home and buy some beachfront property.
I never throw out my aluminum cans. I take them to a recycling plant and get money. Normally I get $9 to 12 dollars depending on how much I bring and cost of aluminum….which is pretty proportional to cost of gas. If I could do the same for plastic, (or newspaper or glass) I would.
I tried that when my kids were growing up. I saved a 55 gallon drum full of crushed beer and soda cans in a year. I had two barrels, one for uncrushed and one for crushed. I’d throw the uncrushed in one and the kids would use a can crusher their grandpa made special for them to squash ’em and put ’em in the crushed can barrel.
I told them if they crushed the cans, I’d drive them and the cans to the recycling place and they could have all cash the cans were worth. They crushed cans faithfully for a whole year and some odd. Eagerly awaiting the day I pronounced the barrel “full” and off we’d go to claim their immense fortune.
I’ll never forget it. They got $7. It kinda broke my heart a little bit.
On the way home, one of them (there are two) said “$3.50? For a whole year of cans? Really?”. The other said “Dad, I don’t think this is worth it, do we have to keep doing this?”
I replied “No, son, it’s not worth it. You don’t have to do this anymore.”
I gave ’em each an extra $5 for being good troopers and sticking the program out. I doubt either of them is very enthusiastic about recycling even to this day.
Hmm. Probably aluminum processing was cheaper then. My trips to the recycling is about 3-4 times a year with 4 to 6 trash bags stuffed with crushed cans.
Wow, that’s a lot of cans. My barrel was filled with crushed cans from the beer consumption of all my friends and myself, all the soda consumption from my household, and any additional cans the kids could scrounge up. I’d estimate that to be no more than 8 – 10 good sized trash bags. Your max of 24 a year is more than I could muster in the same time period. We might be talking about different sized trash bags though.
Either way and in any event that’s fine, I’m not at all saying you shouldn’t do that if you want to. I’m saying that when you take your time, the cost of trash bags, the cost of gasoline and any other incidental expense into account … Recycling is a net loss to you.
I do all kinds of things that are a net loss. I love fishing, have a boat, all the tackle and gear and what I save by catching and eating fish is a huge net loss over just buying them in a market. But I like fishing so I don’t care.
If you like doing that, by all means go for it and far be it from me to say you should not.
Everyone should have a hobby, mine are kind of expensive at least sometimes. If that’s what you like to do to keep busy then good for you.
But you’re not coming out ahead financially on it and as I stated in a very long post above, you and every American who does what you’re doing are not really making any sort of significant difference to the planet either.
I’m not criticizing, I’m commenting on the realities of recycling and the points for objectivity related thereto.
In my case, where I go to recycle cans is about a total of one mile away from where I shop every week. Total time involved is maybe 10 minutes. Except for what I get paid per hour I’m way ahead in money. (Ok, $7-$10) Include that time I’m still ahead about $4-$7. Not much, but if I didn’t do it I’d lose some money I can have. If it didn’t come to a net gain, I wouldn’t do it. The cans would just into my recycle bin that I’d have to lug out every other week. It works for me. Your (and others) mileage may vary. No worries, I’m not taking what you said as critisim. As I said, it may not be worth it for you. (By the way, I normally use it for a meal out at fast food I do anyway. Sometimes it pays for the meal for me and my wife. Normally not, but the net expense is down.)
Seems to me, that continent sized pile of garbage has become extremely valuable. Will we see a Plastic Rush of ’22 to this new land of opportunity? Will we finally see pictures of this continent sized pile of garbage?