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China Earth Science

Plastic Recycling Is a Problem Consumers Can't Solve (bloomberg.com) 251

Posted by BeauHD from the Recycling-101 dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: University of Georgia engineering professor Jenna Jambeck said that indeed, part of the reason China is now refusing to process American and European plastic is that so many people tossed waste into the wrong bin, resulting in a contaminated mix difficult or impossible to recycle. In a paper published last week in Science Advances, she and her colleagues calculated that between now and 2030, 111 million metric tons of potentially recyclable plastic will be diverted from Chinese plants into landfills.

Jambeck said that China used to turn a profit by importing the stuff from American and European recycling bins and turning it into useful material. But as other countries attempted to simplify things for consumers with "single stream" recycling -- think of one big blue bin for paper, plastic, metal and glass -- the material reaching China became too contaminated with nonrecyclable items. The instructions to put everything in one bin seemed appealing but made it much easier to do recycling wrong.
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Plastic Recycling Is a Problem Consumers Can't Solve More

Plastic Recycling Is a Problem Consumers Can't Solve

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  • Easy solution: AI (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @07:34PM (#56856624) Homepage Journal
    Obviously, AI can solve this problem. It can't be hard to switch one of these Go playing AI machines to handle sorting recyclables.
    • It would work spectacularly well if AI is the entity throwing away the trash... if humans are involved in any measurably incremental way, the probability of contamination rises exponentially.
      • Surely it is trivial for an AI to separate recyclable things from a contaminated waste stream. It can beat the best Go masters on the planet! Surely, this would be much easier problem for it to solve?

        • Surely it is trivial for an AI to separate recyclable things from a contaminated waste stream. It can beat the best Go masters on the planet! Surely, this would be much easier problem for it to solve?

          Not really, game theory and visual recognition are two different things. The first has a specific solution that takes a ton of processing and machine learning can simplify this processing, the second is hard enough that humans can't even figure it out some times, much less train a machine learning program to a high degree of accuracy. Machine learning should reach this level but we have a lot of work (and $s) before it is there.

          • Oh.

          • Not really, game theory and visual recognition are two different things.

            You assume a visible light camera is the only sensor possible. Chemical "sniff" sensors, spectrography, infra-red cameras, soft laser desorption. I don't think it would take long to construct a rather long list of possible avenues to research for their effectiveness versus cost. A multi sensor system will have much better probabilities, and that really matters for deep learning and neural net training. And even if such a system is instead done heuristically it can be helpful to use multiple kinds of sensors

            • a useful solution is a dissertation away for PhD candidate.

              Hee hee. "Useful solution" and "PhD candidate" in the same sentence. That's funny.

          • the second is hard enough that humans can't even figure it out some times, much less train a machine learning program to a high degree of accuracy.

            The bot doesn't need a high degree of accuracy. If it can pull out, say, 80% of the recyclables, that will be a "good enough" solution, and a big improvement over the status quo.

          • Not really, game theory and visual recognition are two different things. The first has a specific solution that takes a ton of processing and machine learning can simplify this processing, the second is hard enough that humans can't even figure it out some times, much less train a machine learning program to a high degree of accuracy. Machine learning should reach this level but we have a lot of work (and $s) before it is there.

            Go and Chess are good because we spent time and effort to make it easy. The c

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by djinn6 ( 1868030 )
              QR doesn't work if you have soft materials or something that could be damaged. Plastic bags of all kinds can fold up onto itself. Paper is the same and it can also tear. Packaging is usually damaged when the user opens it. Water bottles and cans can be crushed. There are simply too many ways for a label to become unreadable after it's gone through the hands of a consumer.

    • Obviously, AI can solve this problem.

      As long as it is synergised with BlockChain.

  • commons tragedy (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rmdingler ( 1955220 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @07:37PM (#56856644) Journal
    If it behooves one consumer to empty all his household trash into one bin, even to the point of saving the poor bastard a mere 27 seconds at the County Landfill, some selfish bastard will ass it up for all humanity.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • I propose a $102 annual refuse service tax, with a $100 refund for recycling. Each instance of placing garbage into the recycling stream would receive a fine, and repeated infractions would result in a multi-year recycling ban. Serious intentional infractions would be criminal.

      • We have a system like that. We pay a reduced price for garbage pick up, with an additional per-container fee for general waste. There is no additional fee for paper, metal, glass, yard waste or plastic, as long as it's offered in the right bin at the right time.

        It's a mess. I've seen people dump their bags with dirty diapers in the park garbage can, for instance. Who are you going to fine ?

  • Robotics (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @07:47PM (#56856686) Journal
    Seriously, now is the time for Robotics to be brought up to speed on separating goods. All metals are easy to take out but then you are still left with plastics, glass, and paper as well as items made from assortments of these (think TV). Robotics can solve a lot of this,with a bit of human labor to act on QA.
    BUT, what is important, is to keep the items HERE. We paid for the elements. Keep them here to produce with.
    • Exactly. So why hasn't anyone created an AI robot that can do this? I'll wait for an answer.
      • Ask, and you will receive.
        and here [bfy.tw]
        are just a few. [bfy.tw]
        • Whew! Problem solved then? Apparently the Chinese don't have Google!

          • Whew! Problem solved then? Apparently the Chinese don't have Google!

            And I'm sure the GP's response also includes industrial capable solutions with near perfect accuracy, plus a cost analysis to show that the operating cost of these robots will be notably lower than the profits of recycling these materials. Google is indeed the solution to all! ...sorry, the snark is strong tonight.

      • Because China still generates plastics from raw materials cheaper than recycled plastic can be processed. If it was cost effective (with AI / robotics or otherwise) then someone would be doing it.

      • Exactly. So why hasn't anyone created an AI robot that can do this? I'll wait for an answer.

        You are anyone, maybe you could start us off with your reason?

    • +1
      This is the only real solution to the problem. Lots of us, me included, are VERY careful to recycle correctly. But no matter what we do, we will never get EVERYONE to do it correctly.

      Automation and technology can and should be applied to the problem to help to clean up the stream even more. I have seen some impressive automated "single stream" recycling sorting, but they aren't "smart", they just use physical mechanical methods- magnets, ripple currents, compressed air, flotation, screens, etc. That i

      • We also need to put deposits on metal, glass, and plastics. If we did, then ppl would actually recycle the main core.
        As to paper, and some of the plastics, bio-waste it. The paper comes from trees so not a big deal if we burn it. Some of the plastics can be burned cleaned, or recycled.

        Robotics really is here and it is long past time to put it to work on things like this. Esp. with taking apart TVs, Computers, and all electronics. Hell, we sell MILLIONS of iphones. They are ideal for robotic recycling

    • The problem with any automation strategy is that if only 70% of the material from single-stream recycling can reasonably be recycled, 30% is simply garbage and too little is sufficiently high value to warrant the investment.

      Hell, most people don’t realize they can’t recycle their coffee cup from Starbucks.

      • If you get a cold drink, then everything but the straw is recyclable. Just tell everyone to get cold drinks and avoid #6 plastics.

    • Seriously, now is the time for Robotics to be brought up to speed on separating goods.

      Cardboard made from plantation trees and stored in landfill is actually a form of carbon sequestration which a good for the environment. It just makes it hard to process when the paper/cardboard is glued to plastic or glass. Simplified packaging would go a long way to solving this issue.

  • It is solvable (Score:5, Informative)

    by Strider- ( 39683 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @08:05PM (#56856758)

    By getting rid of single stream recycling, as well as deposits on beverage containers.

    The primary recycling organization in British Columbia, Canada, and still sell this stuff to China. Why? Because the level of contamination is within their standards.

    This is achieved through a couple of mechanisms:

    First, we do not have single stream recycling. People are forced to sort their plastic containers from their glass from their paper from their organics. It's easy, wherever you are in public that has recycling bins, there's always a bin for each.

    Secondly, there are deposits on all non-essential beverage containers. Pretty much everything other than milk has a deposit ranging from $0.05 for a 355ml pop can to $0.20 for 2L pop bottles. There's also an environmental tax that's collected at the time of sale, ranging between $0.01 for the can to $0.16 for a gable-top juice carton. This also extends to the stupidity that is bottled water, and so forth, and represents an enormous portion of the plastic waste.

    Thirdly, beer bottles are collected, washed, and refilled. Breweries big and small can all sign up for the program, and get clean Industry Standard Bottles delivered to them. They paste on their labels, fill, and cap with custom twist-off caps, and sell to the consumer. On average, a bottle will make it through the system 10 times before it breaks or is lost.

    So yeah, it can be done, people just need to get off their asses and do it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ichijo ( 607641 )
      How are recyclables collected from the home? Separate trash barrels for each material type?

    • Re:It is solvable (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @08:42PM (#56856926)
      I *want* to separate my recyclables into metal, glass, paper, and plastic. That's the way I was taught to do it. It takes almost no additional effort for me to throw my recyclables into one of four boxes I used to have set up for these categories, versus a lot of effort for some poor schmuck who has to be paid to sort through a huge mount of mixed recyclables.

      My trash hauling service (who has a monopoly service contract with my city) however insists on mixing them all up. If I give them three boxes with the recyclables all sorted, they simply dump them into a single bin on the collection truck. The story they told me is that they pay prisoners to sort it for them, as they found that was cheaper than designing hauling trucks with 3/4 separate bins and making sure the curbside recycling bins were dumped into the correct bin on the truck. (Which if true should make you think twice about recycling old paper bills and such - they go into my shredder now.)

      So no, it's not just a matter of people getting off their asses and doing it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by 4im ( 181450 )

        Where I live, this is solved by picking up the different bins on different dates. At my place, non-recyclable trash is collected on Tuesdays, plastics (bottles etc.) are picked up every 2nd Monday, organics are picked up on Fridays. No special trucks required.

        There are containers for paper, glass and clothes in many places around the town, so you just deposit those there when you've collected a bunch.

        Other recyclables get collected in a larger center - you drive there, deposit whatever it is (electronics, w

    • By getting rid of single stream recycling, as well as deposits on beverage containers.

      The primary recycling organization in British Columbia, Canada, and still sell this stuff to China. Why? Because the level of contamination is within their standards.

      This is achieved through a couple of mechanisms:

      First, we do not have single stream recycling. People are forced to sort their plastic containers from their glass from their paper from their organics. It's easy, wherever you are in public that has recycling bins, there's always a bin for each.

      Secondly, there are deposits on all non-essential beverage containers. Pretty much everything other than milk has a deposit ranging from $0.05 for a 355ml pop can to $0.20 for 2L pop bottles. There's also an environmental tax that's collected at the time of sale, ranging between $0.01 for the can to $0.16 for a gable-top juice carton. This also extends to the stupidity that is bottled water, and so forth, and represents an enormous portion of the plastic waste.

      Thirdly, beer bottles are collected, washed, and refilled. Breweries big and small can all sign up for the program, and get clean Industry Standard Bottles delivered to them. They paste on their labels, fill, and cap with custom twist-off caps, and sell to the consumer. On average, a bottle will make it through the system 10 times before it breaks or is lost.

      So yeah, it can be done, people just need to get off their asses and do it.

      We have the same recycle thing here in the murricans wasteland, other than the deposits. But the metal gets mostly recycled anyway. A truck comes around once a week, and if you don't have things separated correctly it won't pick it up. It's towing a trailer with around ten different bins. Plastic - different types, brown glass green glass clear glass Newspapers magazines - small cardboard.

      There are types of plastic that need segregated - but the local conservancy has bins for that.

      But all in all, how

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        There are a lot of ways to sort different plastics.

        Why bother? Add enough heat, and they all turn back into short hydrocarbon chains that you can reform into whatever kind of plastic you want. :-)

    • Americans really, really don't like being told what to do. It's a cultural thing with us. It's pounded into our skulls by media from the time we grow up. This isn't to say we aren't constantly told what to do or that we don't listen. We do what our bosses say and overwhelmingly identify with hierarchical religions. But that's sort of the problem. In all the major aspects of our lives we have to do what we're told. That means when it comes to stuff like recycling where we're given leeway (since it hasn't rea

    • "getting rid of single stream recycling"

      One of the problems cited is "so many people tossed waste into the wrong bin", which implies systems where there is not single stream recycling. You propose no solution for this, since you didn't seem to notice that they're already doing this.

      This can be solved by having the collector sort the recyclables, which means that not having single stream recycling offers no benefit.

      • This can be solved by having the collector sort the recyclables, which means that not having single stream recycling offers no benefit.

        This is what happens locally to me:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

        It's Southwark waste management facility, which is basically a massive sorting machine that takes in single stream recycling and further splits it up into glass, paper, mixed plastics, aluminium, steel and non recyclable rubbish.

        There's quite a lot of benefit: you don't need to trust people to sort peoperly

    • People are forced to sort their plastic containers from their glass from their paper from their organics. It's easy, wherever you are in public that has recycling bins, there's always a bin for each.

      I'm curious - do you have separate bins for these at home as well? In Australia we already have 3 large bins per household; green for organics, yellow for recycling and red for waste. From your post it seems like we'd need 5 bins as the yellow would have to split further into Plastic, Glass and Paper.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Strider- ( 39683 )

        I'll be honest, I don't know much about what happens in single family homes, as I've lived in condos for the past 20 years, but in our underground parking, there's the landfill bin, the corrugated cardboard bin, two glass bins, two paper, two containers, and an organics, for a 43 unit building.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by twosat ( 1414337 )

        Sounds like my city of Christchurch, New Zealand, has copied our rubbish bin system from Australia.

      • In Germany, there are usually three glass containers for a city block, one for clear glass, one for brown and one for green. When it comes to paper, it differs from town to town since waste management is a municipal responsibility, hence some towns use household bins, others use containers similar to the glass containers and usually at the same site.

    • ...and get clean Industry Standard Bottles delivered to them. They paste on their labels, fill, and cap with custom twist-off caps, and sell to the consumer. On average, a bottle will make it through the system 10 times before it breaks or is lost.

      So yeah, it can be done, people just need to get off their asses and do it.

      First issue, why bother with a label? Surely that adds energy to both add and remove that isn't really required?
      Second, I realise this won't work for everyone, but with the explosion in microbreweries I now have 5 of them within walking distance of my house. Most of them do takeaway Growlers [wikipedia.org] so you simply use your own vessel, vastly reducing waste.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vlad30 ( 44644 )
      BC Canada is a little smarter the NSW Aus here they only accept cans/bottles that are intact and can be scanned by the machine which are few and far between see https://returnandearn.org.au/ [returnandearn.org.au] but realise that the number of claimed depots are BS many closed when they worked out it wasn't worth the space or employee cost very fast. The places that don't have machines still won't accept them as they have to take them to a machine. Of course people who like to throw their trash now make sure no one wants to coll

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by swb ( 14022 )

      I love single stream, I don't care how inefficient it is. I follow the recycling guidelines closely. Everything that is recyclable per our regulations get recycled.

      With pre-sort, I only bothered with the newspapers and aluminum because my kitchen didn't have enough room for 4-5 separate bins for different kinds of containers, and I didn't generate enough glass for it to be worth it.

      What I don't get is, why don't we have more packaging regulations? Why can't we get rid of all plastic bottles and make bev

  • Incorrect (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @08:10PM (#56856776)

    The Chinese Recycling industry was born from the trade imbalance. The shipping container industry needed to offset the cost of return trips to Chinese ports to offset the inbound goods, which depressed the price of outbound trips (like what happens with Uhaul trips out of Florida or into California). At the same time, you had municipal recycling programs with too much trash, so it suddenly became real cheap to âoeoutsourceâ and donâ(TM)t ask questions. The trash ended up in landfills in some other country, but the munis didnâ(TM)t care, they were getting subsidies for their recycling programs. Now that the US imports are in decline, the logistics donâ(TM)t make economic sense anymore, so itâ(TM)s time for the programs to scale back.

    • Now that the US imports are in decline, the logistics donâ(TM)t make economic sense anymore, so itâ(TM)s time for the programs to scale back.

      Yes that must be it. That is exactly why china is refusing to take any waste from specific nations only which have high level of recycling contamination.

      Seriously you're right about why it started, but you're wrong about why it ended. If your scenario made even remote amount of sense then it would follow a supply and demand pricing adjustment. But it didn't. What it did do was change the quality requirements which affected different countries completely independently of trade imbalances, and resulted in oth

  • JOB FOR AMERICANS! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hackingbear ( 988354 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @08:23PM (#56856826)

    Sorting out valuables from trash should take a lot of labors, right?

    So we have been blaming the Chinese taking over all of our American jobs. Now, the Chinese don't want these garbage scavenging jobs, then my question is why don't Americans take these jobs if they are so desperately trying to win back jobs from China.

    Stop blaming others when you are being picky! Hypocrisy at its most ugly form!

     

  • Stop recyling paper (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Spazmania ( 174582 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @08:24PM (#56856836) Homepage

    The non-obvious solution: stop recycling paper.

    Metal and plastics are relatively easy to separate.

    Paper = wood = carbon. We keep talking about carbon sequestration. How about burying it in a landfill and planting replacement trees to cycle yet more carbon dioxide in to oxygen?

  • I used to have curbside recycling service. I'd separate my recyclables and put them in paper bags in a bin, and someone would come haul them off. Then we went 'single stream' and for some reason I can't have curbside service anymore. Annoying, but whatever.

    So I bring it to the recycling center myself. I used to put my #1 plastic in one bin, #2 in another, and so on. The number is printed on the item, so it's easy. But then there were opaque rules about certain kinds of #1 in this bin and other kinds in tha

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ledow ( 319597 )

      It's quite simple.

      Recycling is a con. Most of the UK recycling ends up in foreign landfill. That recycling that can be done easily costs us millions of pounds, on top of council tax, often to a "declared interest" of a senior figure in local government who cherry-pick the easy (paper, metal) and landfill the rest. They may even "get the right documentation" from the people in question, but several tracking projects have proven this stuff just ends up in landfill.

      It only works because you're spending YOUR

  • Require bio-degradable packaging. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by willy_me ( 212994 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @08:37PM (#56856898)

    For starters, apply a tax to items packaged with non-biodegradable plastic. Exceptions for certain types of products as required. This will encourage packaging to be redesigned to utilize plastics that can be processed along with compost. Gradually increase the tax until biodegradable packaging becomes the norm. For those non-biodegradable plastics that are still required, a tax / refund-upon-return should be applied to assist paying for post-consumer recycling. Adding design elements to make such plastics easy to identify, such as a specific color, would also be a good idea.

    Some packaging would no longer be available. Oh well, it is just packaging and does not represent much of a loss. For example, consider plastic retainers for 6-packs of canned beer. We would just have to revert back to a cardboard box - only a small sacrifice.

    Note that I am referring to packaging - not final products. Such requirements on final products would unnecessarily restrict innovation. Packaging represents the majority of waste and is where we should start.

    • For starters, apply a tax to items packaged with non-biodegradable plastic.

      And please make this tax massive, and scale it according to absurdity. Maybe add a few cents to the cost of a plastic sealed container containing spices, but make sure you charge $10 fucking dollars a pop to idiot companies that individiually wrap avacados in plastic.

      Bonus points for making the package difficult to open, like those hard formed plastic packaging, and an extra penality for using that to wrap around knives or scissors. If I could open that damn package I wouldn't be in the shop buying scissors

  • Nobody could do the reducto et absurdum like Penn & Teller, and here's their episode on Recycling.

    https://vimeo.com/216389085 [vimeo.com]

  • I live in Howard County, MD. Originally the recycle stuff was to be sorted by us in separate bags and picked up that way from the blue recycle containers by the county. A few years ago they went to "All Together Now" which meant all the stuff was mixed up together in the recycle containers. This devalued the recycle stream to the point where the recovery companies that were supposed to be able to sell the recycled items as a product couldn't. Most went out of business. It probably sounded great to the polit

  • Wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Thursday June 28, 2018 @04:17AM (#56858212)

    They could easily. In Germany recycling is something of a national pride thing. Everyone recycles and those who don't are broadly considered low lifes and are sometimes even publicly shamed, whether they look like a bum or wear a tie and suit.

    Collecting bottles is a thing for lowest income people and the homeless and it adds a strange sort of social integration. People leave their bottles standing next to the rubbish bins (which are often recycling bins) do that those who need the few cents can pick them up without having to go through the garbage.

    Everyone, and I mean everyone serrates paper from organic from plastic waste. Even the kids learn it in school.

    Truth is, Germany could go from this to a near zero waste society in a matter of months and not even skip a beat because of this broad spanning awareness.

    So recycling is a thing consumers can easily solve, they just need to be aware of it. This is by and large a environmental awareness thing and in Germany lefties/greens and conservatives are pretty much on the same page with this issue.

  • Instead of taking a bottle made of recyclable plastic and wrapping it in a non-recyclable label, just print it on the label because I, like most consumers apparently, won't be doing extra work just to throw something out.

    And what about sorting at the recycling center? Can nobody come up with a process to sort out problematic material at the recycling center?

    Recycling is good. But let's face it, if you add to many steps to what would otherwise be just dropping something into a can, people won't do it

  • consumer (Score:3)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Thursday June 28, 2018 @08:49AM (#56858852) Journal

    Expecting the consumer to do it is pointless. There's no way you can have a system of the consumer carefully sorting and separating materials, without mistakes or laziness. And expect it to work.

    I'm not sure what the answer is (Wall-E? Robots maybe?) but this ain't it.

  • I would imagine plastic waste would make excellent fuel for incinerators. i doubt the incinerator would care if it's number 2 or number 8, it's all hydrocarbons.
  • AI and Robotics take time to make. America has an excess of H1B engineers. Offer them citizenship in exchange for sorting garbage. These are all geniuses, the incentives offered should reduce project turn around time.

  • > "... part of the reason China is now refusing to process American and European plastic is that so many people tossed waste into the wrong bin, resulting in a contaminated mix difficult or impossible to recycle"

    Baloney - it's about their costs based on how they set up their operations. Take plastic bags for example - these CAN be recycled but they have so much trapped air it makes the process less efficient and less profitable. So they throw it in the dump and this is why only something like 10% of all

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