Burning plastic is very efficient. The stuff is "solid ...

Burning plastic is very efficient. The stuff is "solid ...
by Barney68 (2019-07-15 16:20:20)

In reply to: Reuse, Reduce and Recycle. posted by TWO

gasoline" with lots of hydrogen bonds. The problem with other recycling processes is that each plastic molecule has specific advantages so the plastic involved in each application has to be separated from all the others for efficient recycling. With bottles having multiple layers with different plastics in each layer, especially in the fizzy drinks, that get's real hard.

Paper is a similar issue. Newsprint is a specific product. Printer paper ditto. In both cases, there are tight requirements on the finished product that contains the recycled fiber that are real hard to meet if the percent of reused material gets very high.

Aluminum and copper are the most advantageous to recycle. Iron/steel is good. None of those are quite as easy as might be hoped, however, because even the metals are very specific alloys. You can't just melt all the iron together and end up with something that's ready for the next step unless it's a low-value application.

Glass doesn't really work at all well. One bottle the wrong color screws the batch up.

Plastic ain't plastic; paper ain't paper, metal ain't metal, glass ain't glass. Those generic categories are meaningless from a resource recovery point of view. Separating the waste streams into very specific materials is the first step to actually reusing stuff.

The Chinese got tired of using our trash, in part at least, because the waste stream was extremely unreliable ... they never knew load to load what would be there and so were having more and more trouble with it. Rising wages made separation more expensive. Add trade wars to that, and you lose the customer.

Bottom line is that the religious view of recycling everything is economically a problem and one that destroys the economics of the process.

What about what WA state has done regarding composting?

How does this stack up against recycling? I haven't done any research yet, but it seems like a better solution. I am shocked that California hasn't gone this route yet.

Composting is very popular there but as far as ...

I know, very few plastics are compostable. The problem is that the molecules are long and composting really only attacks the ends of the chain. Thus it takes a very long time for the entire molecule to degrade.

There are bioplastics but, as far as I know, they don't offer much improvement in this area as it is the length of the molecule that matters and it's long molecules that give most plastics their strength.

My county burns the trash & generates electricity *

It may be efficient, but without appropriate controls can

also lead to the creation and emission of dioxin.

The same is true of burning 'most anything.

Coal is loaded with toxins. Depending on the source, oil has lots of sulfur.

There are a lot of good regulations out there ...