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Comment on Life cycle assessment of enzymatic PET recyclingparent

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It's always been confusing why this isn't as simple as running the dishwasher.

Why would you expect it to be?

I mean there's food-grade paraffin and beeswax wax can act as a polymer that addition of heat will reform. I can remember thinking as a kid, "why can't we just melt all this crap down?"

I guess call it indoctrination since reuse, conservation, recycling is something taught to kindergarteners, but even at face value the lifecycle obviously a cost -- trash management, elegance (due to litter, and bad packaging), the risks of petroleum mining/hydraulic fracturing, presumably greenhouse gas emissions, microplastic contamination, risks of sloppy chemical engineering/benzene contamination... all costs centered on crap that mostly sucks as a product to begin with... an idiotic matryoska doll of nested garbage.

The requirements get tough at those scales, for the full life cycle I suppose, iterating on any component effectively is a lifetime of work. Oh you can melt it, what about nonremovable contaminants? how much energy input did that cost? I don't see any clear-cut solution except to eliminate subsidies at a solution-dependent rate.

Simple things are expected due to a lack of understanding of the complexity of the problem

Funny enough, even supposedly simple dishwashers are already marvels of engineering.

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