Because everyone recycles these days and it's politically unacceptable to see recyclable materials in the landfill - even if it's cheaper to produce new ones.
In honesty, burying undigestible plastics seems like a great way for carbon sequestration.
That's actually where most of the curbside recycling ends up now though - in the landfill. People can still feel good that the plastic container they carefully washed out and placed in the recycle bin like a good citizen is being recycled, but generally it's just going straight into the dump and buried with the rest of the trash, and they wasted even more resources (water) cleaning it out thinking they were doing something good.
That's just it though, isn't it? They don't, really.
My understanding of the "crisis" is that all those well-intentioned recyclers were duly sorting their plastics, which was then picked up by their municipality for "recycling" and then shipped straight to a developing country where it was just dropped on the ground. And everyone felt good about themselves, and nothing was done.
Had recycling not been turned into an "out of sight, out of mind" problem, this whole thing could have been averted and some kind of actual clean disposal or reduction implemented.
In addition, recall that due to some US areas' mandate of "clean garbage" occupying some proportion of landfills, some of the clean recyclables also get dumped in landfills.
I've wondered for quite some time exactly why we don't sequester carbon in this way. Is it really just "we should recycle"? Or is there another (I hate the term but perhaps more "steelmanned") argument for it?
I'm not claiming you're caricaturing the argument, to be clear--I'm just curious if there's another angle to consider.
Why would you do that, releasing carbon into the air? A PVC or PET container is about half carbon by weight and won't decompose in the next thousand years or so we're told.
Right. So its already sequestered as plastic whether its in the ocean or a landfill. Creating new plastic from oil and then reburying it doesn't sequestrate any more carbon.
But if oil resources are nearing depletion, plastic production diverts crude from being burned as fuel, and pushes it's price up since plastics have a much higher economic value.
Comments
Because everyone recycles these days and it's politically unacceptable to see recyclable materials in the landfill - even if it's cheaper to produce new ones.
In honesty, burying undigestible plastics seems like a great way for carbon sequestration.
That's actually where most of the curbside recycling ends up now though - in the landfill. People can still feel good that the plastic container they carefully washed out and placed in the recycle bin like a good citizen is being recycled, but generally it's just going straight into the dump and buried with the rest of the trash, and they wasted even more resources (water) cleaning it out thinking they were doing something good.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/climate/recycling-landfil...
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/china...
That's just it though, isn't it? They don't, really.
My understanding of the "crisis" is that all those well-intentioned recyclers were duly sorting their plastics, which was then picked up by their municipality for "recycling" and then shipped straight to a developing country where it was just dropped on the ground. And everyone felt good about themselves, and nothing was done.
Had recycling not been turned into an "out of sight, out of mind" problem, this whole thing could have been averted and some kind of actual clean disposal or reduction implemented.
In addition, recall that due to some US areas' mandate of "clean garbage" occupying some proportion of landfills, some of the clean recyclables also get dumped in landfills.
I've wondered for quite some time exactly why we don't sequester carbon in this way. Is it really just "we should recycle"? Or is there another (I hate the term but perhaps more "steelmanned") argument for it?
I'm not claiming you're caricaturing the argument, to be clear--I'm just curious if there's another angle to consider.
That's not how sequestration works unless they were burning the plastic before.
Why would you do that, releasing carbon into the air? A PVC or PET container is about half carbon by weight and won't decompose in the next thousand years or so we're told.
Right. So its already sequestered as plastic whether its in the ocean or a landfill. Creating new plastic from oil and then reburying it doesn't sequestrate any more carbon.
But if oil resources are nearing depletion, plastic production diverts crude from being burned as fuel, and pushes it's price up since plastics have a much higher economic value.