This Is NOT A Recycling Symbol
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- Опубликовано: 19 май 2024
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For decades, we’ve been told that plastic waste is recyclable, and have been encouraged to recycle our plastic bottles and packaging. And yet, we somehow only recycle around 5% of the plastic waste we produce every year. And we keep producing more plastic every year. Why isn’t this working? Maybe it’s because even the plastic industry knows that plastic recycling is not technically or economically feasible. And they’ve been lying to us about it the whole time.
A lot of the quotes were sourced from this report by the Center for Climate Integrity: climateintegrity.org/uploads/...
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TIMESTAMPS -
0:00 - Recycle Your Husband
2:00 - Plastic Recycling
7:00 - The Boom of WW2
10:27 - Tangent Cam
11:15 - The Problem
17:30 - Introducing RIC
20:38 - What's The Solution?
29:00- Sponsor - Nebula 
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I want to point you guys to ColdFusion's video on Microplastics because I kinda hint at that problem and he goes deep into it. It kinda points to the reason why all this plastic build-up is really a problem. And it's a good video. :)
ruclips.net/video/4XDLSqn0dCk/видео.htmlsi=wUTgo6DkUTV_3FjA
Hi man, if you know about Project 2025, and what it means for the US and the world if trump is re-elected... seems it would be a good video to make on what it would mean... because it seems a lot of people dont know about it and its basically cataclysmic for the US if it happens. With your channels reach and views, it would be amazing...
My friend, if you had an individual around all the time who made jokes that lame, you might not recycle him, but similar thoughts might cross your mind.😂
Yes, Dagogo is hard to beat! You and him are two of my fave YT people. Going to watch this one right now. Got as far as, "Will you recycle my Husband?" LOL!🤡
Fix your fence. Makes your backyard look like a junk yard. Maybe you can recycle some of that metal from the fence.
As a species, we just have to come to grips with the fact that the post WW2 life style is just not sustainable. GG humanity.
I swear, growing up is all about finding out all the ways you were lied to
I was 50 before I realized my mom was 5 months pregnant with my sister when she married my dad! Also there is no permanent record! The more you know 🌈
People who love me tell me that I have become increasingly negative in my outlook. I have. I hate it. I hate being lied to constantly. Kinda like the mushroom analogy about being kept in the dark and being fed a diet of feces. But my anger hurts only those around me, not the sources.
If you appreciate knowing the painful truth then check out Billy Carson. The man is such a beacon of light on my daily life. He is a superhero 😎😊
@@gaywizard2000why didn’t she tell you… and how old is your mom if you were 50?
were? As adults, we are still constantly being lied to. :P
The comment about plastic packaging is so spot on. We wrap things in plastic that have no reason to be wrapped in plastic.
it's like putting anti-biotics in soap...like why? just why? not needed
… as far as you know.
There was a comment on Reddit today, someone decided to buy some bamboo straws to reduce the plastic they use, the package arrived in a load of bubble wrap and then each straw was wrapped in plastic that was bigger than their hand and appeared to be more plastic than is in an actual straw!
I recently bought a new set of flatware to replace the really cheap set I've had for the last ten years because I got sick of fighting the rust and bending.
This is how the 45-piece set was packaged:
Outer box
Inner box
Brand vanity insert
Two identical care and warranty cards
Bubble-wrapped bundles of every category of utensil (forks, spoons, knives+misc.)
INDIVIDUAL PLASTIC SLEEVES FOR EVERY SINGLE UTENSIL.
I get that they don't want the stuff arriving scratched but come the hell on. 45 plastic sleeves, 3 sheets of bubble wrap, and about a dozen rubber bands is absurd.
@@grug_son_of_thogyep we recently bought 3 metal shelf stands and each shelf had multiple plastic protectors on tops/bottoms and each wire etc.
We bought metal shelves instead of plastic for a reason.
We had two FULL size huge trash bags of the plastic coverings! I was like COME on!
I miss the days when pop/soda/soft drink and milk came in glass bottles, you would go to the butcher to get meat and they'd wrap it in waxed paper. Appliances were made from metal and made to last. Clothes and shoes were made to last for years, not months. Things like pencil cases were made from wood or cotton fabric, and the zippers were metal. Hardly anything was plastic. Sure, things were slower but there was a sense of excitement when the Pepsi guy would come into town with his truck of soft drinks. My brother had a job on the milk run where he'd count the metal tokens, pick up people's empties, and replace them with full bottles of milk. Empty milk and soft drink bottles were returned to be washed and sterilised, and filled again. Milk and soft drink caps were recyclable steel or aluminum. It worked when there were fewer people and less expectation for speed.
You must be as old as I am. Those are some of my fond memories.
And you must be as old as me😮 my favourite toys - a wooden block construction set, a wooden bow and arrows, and a rubber-band powered balsa wood plane ... Shopping bags were paper, bottled milk had a bit of cream on top of the milk, we'd buy lollies in paper bags, and most houses had a wall of empty beer bottles in the backyard! 😂
I am not sure why, but I know that some Mexican Sodas like jarritos and the coke sold there are still sold in glass bottles
Ok boomer
@@Nahx8CatFan
😆
X-er.
When I worked at Starbucks we had a trash bin and a "recycling" bin in the lobby for customers to use. Except, we didn't have a recycling service, so the stuff in the the "recycle" bin just went in the same dumpster as everything else. That was every Starbucks I've ever worked at, in multiple states. Some of them had a special cardboard box dumpster that was recycled, I'll give them that, but that was essentially dependent on the town itself
People should bring their own to-go cup to Starbucks. Starbucks should build an automated robot to rinse and clean the cups.
Yeah there’s a subway by my work that has recycling and trash holes in the garbage bin and both holes lead to the same bin.. dumbfounded me when I saw it
@@skierpagewhat ???? starbucks should clean YOUR cups? the laziest generation wants someone else to clean their cups??? how about you make your own coffee for 30 cents and don't go to starbucks?
Lmao nice virtue signaling from starkunts
I think this happens at schools too.
“Humans ingest the equivalent of one credit card’s worth of plastic per week”
*puts down the credit card I was munching on in disgust*
Guys we found him. Credit Cards Georg
*swallows third credit card since breakfast*
Hmmm… maybe I should cut back too.
Isn't that how you are supposed to dispose expired ccs?
It is what the modern body needs, can't only have iron in your diet.
We have to stay modern, so we need to chew on plastics, aluminum rods and stainless steel rods to keep a modern body up to the new code :D
I don't know how I can be expected to make one of these last a whole week.
I work as a receiving clerk. I open 50-80 boxes a day. it’s insane how much plastic is used when it comes to packaging materials. However, a lot of companies have started using crunched up paper as packaging material, as well as paper tape to seal the boxes. It’s nice seeing companies using paper as a packaging material
My cynical side tells me they do it because of societal pressure or to greenwash themselves, not because they actually want to be eco-friendly, but hey, if it helps it helps.
Landfill or deforestation
@adambastien3635 the US farms trees for paper
@@runningsandwich better than plastic
@@mrtheitalian2538 Not really unfortunately, the underlying problem is overpopulation and resource the intensive-lifestyles of basically everyone in first-world-countries.
Getting a handle on plastic packaging excesses would be GREAT but one area where plastic use is rampant that I feel goes unnoticed a lot actually pertains to that carrying case for your boom pole--textiles. Polyester is a petroleum derived plastic, and is EXTREMELY common in textiles, for everything from the clothes we wear, to our shoes, to boom pole carrying cases, to carpets, and much, much more. Polyester is ubiquitous. And it sheds. It sheds when it's worked into products, it sheds when it's worn or walked on, it sheds when it's run through a washing machine. I have no idea what to do about that or even if it's as much of a problem as I fear it is, but I felt it was worth mentioning because most people don't know what polyester actually IS. But I can't imagine that the environmental impact of this particular plastic product could possibly be any less than, say, water bottles or drinking straws.
When I hear people talk about moving away from oil dependency, I think about all the plastics. No oil….no plastic for cell phones, vehicle interiors, clothing, etc…
good
@@terranhealer Plastics or any hydrocarbons can be made from any carbon-containing feedstock. Tech for this have existed for almost a century now but was more expensive than refining fossil fuels.
@@terranhealer there are alternatives.
I'd add carpeting to the list.
A furniture store was having problems with all of the styrofoam from the manufacture. They employed a device that melted down the styrofoam into bricks that could be used for building materials (they sold the bricks to other countries). The other countries could either build with the bricks, or reverse the process and remelt them while injecting air, turning them back into styrofoam 😮
My county banned "single use" plastic bags. So what did Walmart many others in the area do? They started using much thicker plastic bags instead, and called them "reusable". Problem is nobody re-uses them. Now we have the same problem as before, only it's worse as each bag that's thrown out has five times the plastic in it as before.
I use my backpack when shopping.
How did it happen that the plastics industry had to market and campaign for people to *stop* trying to reuse plastic bags, but now they won't reuse them even when they're specifically marketed and designed for the purpose???
Now we just pay for them 😂😂😂.. You know plastic bag companies definitely secretly made that law 😂😂
@@FronteirWolfReusable bags need thorough cleaning to help prevent transfer of mold, toxins etcetera to your food surfaces as well.
I bring my own throwaway single use plastic bags that I buy in bulk on Amazon, much cheaper than in-store bought. 😊
I tried for many stressful years to BE THE CHANGE and now feel an uncomfortable amount of despair every time I hold an empty plastic container in my hand and wonder if I should just chuck it isn’t the regular bin because the system isn’t working and I’m tired of the ever-moving targeted “best” option in our sea-of-micro-trash solutions. But I am truly grateful that you’ve laid it all out so plainly. You are appreciated.
Me, too. I might have been 1 of the first million people to start recycling in my country. It's hard to throw it in the trash. I still recycle. 😞
Recycling was sold to us in Florida about saving landfill space. I have heard the complaints how recycling doesn't work, and a lot of valid arguments. My presumption is one by one somebody would find a use for recycled items. So, Joe's presentation is a real kick in the nards. Quite frankly, it sounds like the best idea is to boycott plastic containers by favoring glass. I am doing this anyway to mitigate ingesting micro plastics. In fact, I have discovered food products in glass containers generally have healthier ingredients. So, that's my current solution-go back to glass. I quit using a Keurig and now make coffee by just throwing the grounds in a pot of boiling water-just like John Wayne on a cattle drive. As far as the energy to recreate plastics, theoretically that should become viable as solar generated electric becomes more practical. As technologies increasingly eliminate livelihoods, the recycling industry can help offset that, especially for those of us that are not likely to become software engineers and such.
You were gaslit by corporations into thinking its your responsibility. It isnt. Its theirs
Ok, personal opinion, I reckon it's gotta be a lie that plastic can't be melted down and recycled , it's probably just cheaper to make new stuff
Most things that can be recycled but isn’t is entirely a business decision. When recycling is more expensive than just making more of the material and companies aren’t forced to recycle they just don’t.
As a Brit I know the companies (and more including the public) aren't doing anywhere near their part to actually help in this problem, but what has really shocked me was my visit to the US recently.
In one single night stay in a hotel, I used more plastic than I'd used back in the UK in a year, the US really has a problem (from straws to plastic cutlery both wrapped in plastic etc oh and also a trip to walmart where I walked out with about 15 bags for 20 or so items). It honestly blew my mind how much of a sticking fingers in the ears and screaming it appeared to be compared to the rest of the world.
It's really weird here, and the regions have major differences about it. I live in Oregon, and we've had a beverage-container recycling system for a very long time which is a model for the nation, but the nation hasn't adopted it, and likewise we actually have real recycling centers where they recycle glass, metals, paper, and some kinds of plastics. I've seen our local facility so I know it exists, so it's appalling to find out how much of the country doesn't have the real thing, and they just use the 'recycling bin' as a secondary trash can. Even where I live, there's a lot of lazy recycling efforts by individuals which cause their stuff to just be dumped in the landfill rather than clean it up for them-- they do SOME cleaning at the recycling facility but you can't give them a bunch of plastic covered in dried ketchup and oily pizza boxes and expect they'll take care of it, so the consumers here deserve a fair share of blame for being lazy like that)
The plastic food service got even worse after Covid. IMO. The ramp up to plastic started earlier. When I used to stay in motels the water glasses were glass. But you never knew if they had been washed and sanitized and the plastic ones are cheaper.
Funny thing about Plastic vs Paper Straws. Plastic Starws are recyclable while paper Straws with all the glue and stuff in it measn it isn't recyclable, yet Paper Straw packagine says it is which is flat out wrong.
"more than I'd use in a year" I literally do not believe you. I need proof, studies, articles, etc. I want stats if I'm gonna take a fucking brit at their word (I'm not American, I just live here)
@@prich0382So you're telling me my hatred of paper straws is objectively correct?
Across EU states the recyclabe bin are color coded, green is glass, yellow is plastic, brown is for compost / food waste, grey is for non Recyclabe, blue for papers, there are battery bin across the town, there are used vegetable oil bins, if you have a broken eletronics you biring to the near eletroncs shops and they will bring to the recycling center.
They used to have us separate recyclables like that, but people were too lazy or whatever, so they stopped. It’s all ”single-stream” recycling now. Even that seems to be beyond many peoples’ capacity at this point. 🙄
I used to work at a plastic recycling plant and probably 95% of the plastic bottles we took in went right into the trash. Worst $8 an hour job I ever had.
Why? What disqualified so much of it?
I can only imagine the soul crushing experience that must have been.
@lijohnyoutube101 wrong color, wrong number, etc. I think there were only three types of plastic we could actually recycle. That was on top of all the actual garbage people mixed in. All these years later I can still smell that job.
@@bradley-eblesisor if I've had worse jobs, I can't think of them at the moment.
@@wolfcat1998 I have done some shitty jobs.
I've done factory work, i've had to hand clean big boy air filtering systems for entire production lines, did a really short bit in drain flushing... Truly disgusting shit.
I can tell you first hand i would not even consider working in plastic recycling. I have nothing but the deepest respect for you mate. I question your life choices, but i ain't one to judge. :P
May your nostrils be ever free of 'i have no idea what can even smell like this' stink.
"Imagine what it was like going to the doctor before plastic"...
I don't have to, I remember it. Well, not BEFORE plastic, but before plastic EVERYTHING.
I worked in a hospital in the 1980s. It had a sterile supplies department, which had several massive autoclaves. After instruments and instrument trays were used, they'd be taken down there, cleaned, sterilised, and re-packed. Like those drink bottles with a deposit, they were re-usable not disposable.
It was great
When ever I come across someone talking about the recycling scam I think of the little only ladies of Kamikatsu Japan lovingly sorting their trash at their town’s 45 bin recycling center every week. It claims to be a “zero waste town.” It’s a town of about 2000 people with one collection center and each household gets a big booklet explaining the recycling process and what the collection center sorting system is. They center also has a “zero waste academy” a non profit set up to teach you. Their paper category has 9 subsections, for instance. I’m unclear where their recycling goes now but I recall they used to incinerate their trash before this center.
The reason for the switch from glass to plastic soda bottles is simple: with larger format bottle sbeing introduced, it was found that accidentally tipping a flass soda bottle could cause it to explode with glass shrapnel causing major injury on people. The industry was VERY VERY quick to change the large formet to plastic to avoid being sued whenever such a bottle exploded.
In Australia, there was a soft plastics recycling program called RedCycle where you could drop off soft plastics like plastic bags, wrapping and films.
But turns out they were lying and just stored it in warehouses.
Yeah ~~~ they be doing that over & over & over. There are literally hundreds of these warehouses filled to the rooftops with COMPRESSED PLASTIC.
What a shock.
@@Australian_Madename checks out!
In my town you have to pay $7 per garbage bag full of "plastic film" to "recycle" it. I just skip the payment and toss it in the garbage as it all ends up in the same landfill, if you're lucky and it's not burned or shipped overseas.
Tbh it's good thing then being all around us or burning it
The other problem is that large tech companies have started using "reducing plastic use" as an excuse to not include things like chargers or cables in their packaging so they can waste even more plastic by selling it to you separately!
100%
Well, in the EU, you have to use USB-C as a charging port for your phone. And the cabels usually last longer than the phones, plus you get a cable for almost every other device, so it really doesn't matter because you always have 4+ USB cabels lying around.
Disagree. When i brought new phone/gadget/electronic toy and there is a type-C cable with a charger included - I already have like over 9000 of them laying in my drawer. And actually using only 2 to charge all my stuff (and sometimes just using the one usb cable permanently attached to a PC).
Included cables and chargers are excessive and they are not free - you paid for that junk.
So not including cable and charger does help with less plastic waste. A little bit.
@@midnight8341 we have mandatory USB-C, so we can increase the amount of waste by dumping the still operational but obsolete micro usb and iphone cables and officially feel "green" while doing that 🤪
Uh no that's them being more responsible imo. I have bins full of extra cables that came with devices over the years. It's a reasonable expectation that the consumer has aftermarket cables or chargers. That saves huge amounts of plastics and other materials we should conserve too.... Like copper.
The best part about glass pop bottles was that one night every fall, forgetting it was going to freeze overnight and not bringing the pop in from the garage. Or when Dad put a bottle in the freezer to cool faster and forgot about that. Yay shards of exploded glass! The best thing about the old-style pop tabs on cans (the ones that were designed to come off) was the giant hill of them next to the pop machines on the golf course. And stepping on them, hidden in the grass, in bare feet. Why yes, I am using “best” sarcastically.
Joe, I don't want to throw cold water on your excellent presentation but... I applaud you for this well needed video and the discussion it helps generate. It was many years ago when I was involved (on the BOD) with a plastics recycling company and I've worked with plastics throughout my career. While I wasn't involved with the chemistry, I was involved with all of the people who believed wholeheartedly in what we were doing. We watched, with wonder, at how the machinery could detect the type of plastic going through a fast conveyor belt, kick out the different plastics into their separate bins, go through shredding, washing, more shredding, more washing, and end up in fully separated bins of different plastics. These plastics would then be mixed together to produce pellets of particular characteristics which would be sold to manufacturers of plastic products to their specifications. The input was from plastic post office bags, laundry detergent bottles (which lent a "pleasant" odor to the factory), and a few other types of product. The plastics were purchased for the typed of plastic we needed so we couldn't take all recycled plastics.
We believed that we were helping to reduce the overall amount of plastic in our environment. Over time, I've been an avid recycler, separating out all the numbered items, putting them into plastic containers or plastic bags... and imagining that they were ultimately going to the same kind of facility that we had in the '90s. However, I started hearing about how such a small percentage of recyclable plastic is actually recycled. Is this true? If so, why are we still recycling? Is recycling doing any good?
I've been hearing about all the microplastic in the oceans, etc. The amount of plastic that we use is astronomical as you so elegantly showed. I certainly understand that there's a problem and that the "plastics industry" could be avoiding taking responsibility for the problem as well as the consumer agreeing to continue to use plastics. There are so many advantages of plastics over the use of metals and leather (though there are advantages to metal and leather over plastics). Our society has chosen plastics partly for its disposability and partly for its easy moldability. As you say, plastics has made a lot of people and companies a lot of money.
But, the fact is, we will likely not stop using plastics for a long time or until something better comes along. And, of course, that something better may generate its own set of unforeseen problems down the road. There are just so many factors at work - our population explosion, addiction to a throw away culture, etc. We're all looking for better ways to accomodate the status quo (better sources of energy, establishing a colony on Mars, etc) that haven't yet yielded answers. In the mean time, I'm not convinced that we shouldn't continue to recycle as best we can.
From what I've learned, the amount of plastic that is recycled varies widely depending on where you live. Most "third world" countries hardly recycle at all. Many of them don't have any sort of waste collection at all. When people are struggling to survive, they can hardly be expected to worry about their trash. Most of the plastic waste in the oceans comes from rivers in these countries.
In developed countries, plastic recycling varies a lot also. Some localities do very well, but others just burn the waste. Some have even shipped their trash overseas, with the intention of it getting recycled there, but that rarely happens.
So long as you accept that you're doing it so that you feel better, and do not lend support to legislative expenditures and enforcement of the practice, then it is possible that by continuing to recycle you're not actively harming anyone.
Thankyou, the whole "only 5% is recycled" is random crap that I don't even know where it came from. China recycles their whole type 3 and even imports (ever wonder where the plastic barges go to?). Also, the tech is there and they are recyclable, it is people, companies and governments that don't want to invest in the cost of recycling. What people thought, that collecting, cleaning, separating and recycling was going to be cheaper than simply throwing away? of course its costlier. The point is not profit, its to avoid waste. Legislation also make a whole lot of difference, someone said third-world countries don't recycle? BS, it depends on the laws, some third-world recycled it all, others part, it depends on their laws and will to clean up. Brazil recycled most of its type 1 and 2 and is poor as heck, but you can be fined. China isn't exactly first world and still managed to get the huge facilities to recycle type 3 up and running. In Brazil, homeless people go through the garbage of buildings to pick plastic and paper to sell to recycing plants. I worked in an IT company that stored every plastic, cans and paper and would sell directly to recycling companies and divided the (tiny) money with all employees.
Wanting to have all plastics recycled and still get a profit is the main problem with people who make this type of video. Recycling was never meant to be profitable. Cleaning up is always costlier than leaving it, and as we can't live without some plastics, we should pay the price to recycle them.
I don’t know if anyone’s posted this yet but an easy way to ID Bakelite is to rub it until it’s slightly warm and smell it; if it smells a bit like formaldehyde, it’s probably bakelite. We do that to check jewelry at estate sales and thrift stores and stuff.
I wonder how many people would recognise formaldehyde's smell, though -- I certainly have no idea how it smells.
It smells like bitter almond, i have heard.
A lot of bake-lite products contain asbestos, so best not to do anything with it .
@@cherylcampbell9369 No, that's cyanide that smells like bitter almonds.
@@cherylcampbell9369 I don't know what bitter almond smells like, but because of the age of my building and stove, I sure know the smell of hot or burning bakelite (fuse box and stove parts).
Finland is pretty good at recycling plastic. For bottles it's over 90%, and it's been recycled for decades. Rest of the plastics is way lower, but we sort the food plastic packages and all sort of wrappings and plastic bags now, and they get reused quite a bit. Some plastics will be burned for energy, apparently it is cleaner than regular oil.
Burning stuff is a last ditch effort to prevent pollution, but even then somehow government fucked this up and we have landfills instead.
EU banned plastic food containers, they are now from paper or other organic matters. this is only way.
The general issue with burning plastic is more of the toxic fumes it spits out. Which is more of a problem if your burning it in like a fire pit rather then on an industrial level where its in a furnace and the gases are expelled away from where the people physically are like though a exhaust stack.
Are you talking about the rate at which it actually gets recycled, or the rate at which its collected for recycling? Because those are not the same thing. Every type of plastic needs its own facility with its own processes, which is incredibly ineffective because it needs to be centralized and transported on top of the ridiculous energy requirement to perform the recycling at all. If we are talking about plastic bottles, those are usually made from PET, and last time I checked all of the nordics shipped theirs to a PET compatible facility in Sweden for processing where they process whatever they have capacity for and ship the rest to Australia for some ungodly reason.
I mean, this might be outdated at this point, I dont know. But the point is just that the nordic countries like to tell both ourselves and everyone else that we are much better at this than we really are. We are for sure better than alot of places in the world, but theres plenty of lies and coverups here too. Even though if anyone should have made it, it should have been our tiny countries with almost no population to produce the waste.
Edit: typos
Burning many plastics containing PVC means that, in addition to producing lots of dioxin, you also create hydrochloric acid, which is absolutely going to result in acid rain, or you have to scrub it out, making you now have a bigger problem to dispose of. In addition the acid will destroy the furnace fast as well.
around 5:06 i was just thinking that same thing, thats probably the motivating factor for most advancements most of the time.. not because its better for the animals..but simply because its cheaper..
Our company worked with recycled PP or at least with a manufacturer that recycles them.
In a meeting they stated, that if you use new material, you can have every color you want. If you recycle the material for the first time, the best they can do is gray and starting with the second loop it gotta be black. Otherwise the color would be all over the place since the recycled material (even if the pellets are from the "same" color) is not uniform.
So, let the color be all over the place. Must be some more folks like me that say "Who cares?"
I've noticed that shippers tend to aggressively wrap glass bottles (which have been transported by truck over bumpy roadways for more than a century without much problem) in bubble wrap as if they're fragile, expensive glass figurines.
Once, I even got a package of mixed glass bottles and metal bottles. The less-wrapped metal bottles were dented... by the much more aggressively wrapped but stronger glass bottles. (Didn't wrap the hard corners though, I guess.)
Just throw in some crinkled paper that takes up space so they don't roll around lol.
in the olden tymes, there were wooden strips to separate the bottles in the crate. Problem solved.
Packaging is a dying art, people really don't get how to properly wrap and ship stuff.
@@asteroidrules Honestly, lots of things are a dying art... as the Venn diagram of "Jobs That Are Useful to Society" and "Jobs That Pay A Living Wage" continues to diverge.
In 2022, New Jersey enacted a ban on bags used at stores like grocery stores, hardware stores, garden stores, virtually all stores with few exceptions. This included the one time use plastic bags and even paper bags. It did cut down on the use of one time use plastic bags by about 80%, but it also banned paper bags which actually ARE recyclable and are often even made with recycled paper, and are also quickly biodegradable. Reducing plastic use was a good idea, but banning paper was a bone-head maneuver. Also stores began to sell polypropylene bags, which made the use of plastics go up by three times. In addition these heavier bags had a higher carbon footprint to manufacture, and in almost all cases are not even attempted to be recycled (even if it is a scam). So, I guess it falls under the category of “ no good deed will go unpunished”, or “be careful what you wish for”.
Any place replacing plastic grocery bags with plastic bags that you need to buy is a scam
That's not how a ban works
Industries have yet to be 'inconvenienced' with replacing all that plastic packaging
Here in the UK shops are required to make a nominal charge for a plastic bag. The proceeds usually go to charity and plastic bag use has gone down by a lot.
I don't think that it really helped. Now people dispose of cloth bags, and use produce bags to carry things that typically were not carried in such bags.
Stating facts is now offensive
My comments keep getting deleted smh
I've been using reusable plastic bags from my nearest grocery store for 19 years now, and I've used them for all the shopping I have done. Hardware store? I bring that bag. Picking up takeout food? I tell them not to bag it (it is already in a container anyways?) because I've got my own. I've been on my third bag for a while now, and with the condition it is in, it has a lot of life left. Would it be better if they were made of some plant fibre instead of plastic? Yes. But in 19 years I have had to throw out two worn out reusable plastic bags. Tell me that isn't a multiple orders of magnitude reduction in harm to the environment. The demand for perfection can be the enemy of progress.
I learned a lot of this when researching why I can't just reuse failed 3D prints to melt it into filament. I now keep track what manufacturer I've used for what part, which is a major pain in the arse, AND I haven't gotten round to making the recycler yet.
This should be talked about more! Everyone should consider the container their food comes in when making a purchase. My wife seeks out glass and metal containers, I seek out bulk food so the packaging is less, and find ways to use extra big chip bags and containers, like garbage bags and shop storage. I hardly use ziplock bags, and use bags food comes in for packing sandwiches and chips for lunch. My in-laws even washes bags and plastic silverware to reuse. Make food from scratch, less packaging! Plastic and rubber does have a shelf life, a mechanic told me 7 years is the shelf life they use for car parts. And I seen a pair of rollerblades fall apart after siting in box, hardly used after 15-20 years. The oily film on plastics and rubber is the material braking down.
In Germany and Holland, the deposit model for cans and bottles is still there, its a bit random seeing homeless people picking through bins for the cans and bottles, but you get the money back at supermarkets and you don't even have to use the same one, so that can only be a good thing. I think Scotland is also trailing it. Going back to glass and aluminium has got to be better as they really are recycled ♻️
We do the same thing in Quebec, Canada.
Same in Lithuania.
Same thing in Austria, most supermarkets have a machine where you can put your bottles in and then it prints a little coupon which you can use at the cash register.
I imagine it's the same system as in Germany and Holland.
Iowa, Michigan, and California also has a $0.05 surcharge for aluminum cans, although they have to come back uncrushed (at least in Iowa) to show they all have the correct code printed on them. Which means it's often more hassle than crushing all the cans and taking them somewhere in bulk.
California has that system without, just without the redemption part. You technically can get your money back from reclycling centers, but that's not practical or even financially worth it, unless you're a heavy bottle/can user.
As someone who lives in the Netherlands studying environmental innovations the 5% recycling is wild. In the Netherlands about 40%-50% of all plastics collected to be recycled actually gets recycled and municipalities can be really strict about separating certain types of trash, since they can get fined by the waste processors if the waste they collect is too polluted. There are also laws which state that manufacturers need to recycle a certain amount of their plastic packaging (for example: a minimum of 90% of plastic bottles which hold over 3L must be recycled by the manufacturer).
We also have deposits on plastic almost all plastic bottles, beer bottles, beer crates and also drink cans. You pay a deposit of around 15 cents extra when you buy it (if it's a bottle and it will be per item which is withing that 'deposit system') and when you've finished using it you can hand it in at a supermarket, get a receipt with the money you get back from your deposit and when they scan that receipt at the cash register you either get that amount of money discounted from your purchase or just get the money back. All the bottles and such that got handed in are picked up from stores to be recycled, which gives pretty clean waste flows of plastic and glass bottles for example to be recycled, since they tend to be the same kind of plastics (or glass). This system is pretty common in Europe from my experience and it works pretty great.
Also, hearing about burning the plastic to get energy out of it would be another form of recycling hurts me. RIP the waste hierarchy T-T
The sketch was really funny, especially the 'recycling symbol' and the 2 in the middle of it, more of those!
I also want to say thank you for this video and all the other video's you've made over the years! Your channel really got me into sustainability and environmental stuff, it's one of the biggest reasons I chose this study (together with a guaranteed job lol) and I'm really happy I did choose this, it's so interesting!
I'm assuming the recycling number here in Denmark are the same. I'm not in the industry so it's an assumption.
13:50 I and my sisters would walk along the side of the highway picking up glass bottles to turn in. We could get enough just walking 2 miles to buy snacks and cokes at the Shell station closest to our house.
I didn’t realize that so many of those resin numbers weren’t recyclable. My municipality accepts more than just 1 and 2, but who knows if those others get used.
I applaud you for bringing this to the attention of your audience. This elephant hardly ever gets addressed. 👏👏
Denmark recently banned recycled packaging plastics for food items for long term studies have found recycled plastics release carcinogens. PET bottles can't be recycled as such since they can't be decontaminated enough for reuse (without damaging the plastic). So they are used to create fabrics or mixed in with other plastics to make roadside posts or park bench seats. After that it becomes landfill.
The solution would indeed be to make less disposable plastics to begin with (along with countless other disposables or things we regard as disposable (like clothing and consumer electronics)).
I was felling the opposite, I feel like many people have made a recycled plastic is bad video years ago
And he didn't include this fact: The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) reports that nearly all of the current demand for elephant ivory comes from the Chinese market.
People now often say "recycling is a scam", removing the "plastic" part from the headline. I've seen tons of these comments and headlines.
But that discourages all recycling, and the alternative to non-recyclable plastic packaging is recyclable packaging, which still requires the end consumer to separate their waste. There's no way around putting this on the consumer in some way; there is no other way to recover materials from the waste stream. So please still separate your waste. And yes, still separate your plastic waste, as otherwise this just ends up in a landfill. 5% of your plastic being recycled is better than 100% being dumped into a hole in the ground or into the ocean. Long term, the solution HAS to be a all-of-the-above approach: 1) reduce single use plastics, 2) stop dumping trash into oceans and rivers, 3) more r&d to find economical solutions to end-of-life plastics
Even if all single use plastics were banned tomorrow, we'd still need to deal with the stuff that already exists. So practical solutions need to be created either way.
Seriously, it's appalling how many videos about recycling, even those that get in-depth about it, go the lowbrow clickbait route and kowtow to the 'angry at recycling' crowd by mentioning plastic and mindlessly pretending like 'it's the only thing that gets recycled and it doesn't even get recycled' and no part of that is true but people who just want to be lazy will invent reasons to pretend their laziness is 'intelligence' and it's pathetic.
He did mention this in the video, that we should keep recycling for the small benefit. It is on the consumer to do that part it's true. But being mislead leads to this backlash and mistrust; thinking that we had made a larger impact in the problem and didn't have to worry or get in the way of they industry's profits. People were raised on this lie and put in a ton of effort and money, *That* is the part we're all angry about, and this willful deception and hiding of the problem for decades is why at its core it's the fault of these mega rich chemical companies. We need to ban single use plastics wherever possible without a major impact on quality of life, and we need to take the money for disposing of it safely and for the coming decades (or centuries) of cleanup of what's already in the environment from the companies that profited off of purposefully doing it (instead of from the taxpayers). If this leaves them with no profit then that's their punishment, no more of these fines that are a vanishingly small % of the profit they made from the crimes, deception, and flaunting regulations and ethics for decades. It's practically impossible not to contribute to this problem as a consumer, and short of violent action there's no way for an individual to make a meaningful difference. These companies need to be forced to reckon with the problem with more than PR lies and executives behind it need to face jail time (I know that part will never happen because our injustice system is designed to favor the rich). To be clear, I still recycle as much as I can for the slight difference it makes, but I know it's not even a decent mitigation let alone a solution when it comes to plastic.
I'm not surprised people don't bother to recycle, it's psychologically similar and relatable to the oxycontin conspiracy leading to broader distrust in medical science. To the layperson it all seems the same, and since it was a real conspiracy it lends credence to BS conspiracy theories about vaccines that are dangerous. Those of us who know more about it can see through those as BS, but can we really fault their distrust after big pharma purposefully started the opioid epidemic for profit? I think the same is true regarding the loss of recycling motivation. I focus on recycling materials that I know have a much higher percentage, like paper & aliminum, but I still do try to recycle as much plastic as possible of the types that are locally accepted. But all the single use plastic wrap isn't even stamped with a mark lol, don't kid yourselves about where that ends up.
13:55 - We do that in Europe. For example, here in Croatia stores are obligated to "buy" every liquid container over, I think, 200 ml for 7 Euro cents (it is more elsewhere in Europe), sort them and recycle. The material is usually PET, glass and aluminum. (Of course, they charge those 7 cents when you buy your drink; they even have to state that on the receipt.)
When _I_ was young, 50 years ago, we would just swap empty bottles for full, or, if we didn't have an empty one, pay some small refundable amount for the bottle. Same princople, but more complicated than today.
I don't return my bottles to stores, but collectet them in large bag (more often paper than plastic) and, when full, deposit it next to the plastic recycling container. Somebody always collects them within perhaps an hour, often sooner. It is a sad that quite a few people live off this.
Hey Joe, I'm a newcomer to the Answerverse and I gotta say I really like the cut of your jib, so to speak. Your narration style and nuance is excellent, please keep the good content coming! Also, I subbed to nebula and it is excellent so thank you for the disocunt
Celluloid is also why something like 90% of all silent movies ever made are now lost movies; those films caught fire and if one film in a storage facility caught fire, well... the other highly flammable rolls of film werent not gonna join in the party now were they.
I go to a university where they have recycling bins located all around campus, and they posted these signs right above them telling us what items are recyclable. Due to this, I would be extra cautious about what items needed to go in the recycling bins and what items didn't. One day when I was about to recycle some of my items, however, a friend told me that they don't even recycle those items at all. Instead, they just toss all of them into the trash with non-recyclable items. I know this is probably common on other college campuses, but it still makes me upset that they would do something like that where they try encouraging students to recycle when in actuality they don't even recycle the items in the first place.
That's really depressing - especially for aluminum cans or glass - those are the two materials that are the best recycled and the material doesn't degrade as it is continually recycled. 🙁
@@i_love_rescue_animals Definitely agree!
@@i_love_rescue_animals glass isn't recyclable. At least most colors aren't.
Virtue signaling says what 😂
Yea, but is it true? Some places do recycle. You need to check it out!
I have a bag full of plastic grocery bags that end up being used for any number of things. Weather its carrying something somewhere. Cleaning up a mess like broken glass. Or even just as a garbage bag in the small garbage cans. They are perfect for taking cat litter out
Great video. Plastics go back to at least ancient Egypt which used linseed (flax seed) oil. Upon exposure to air, this forms a clear cross-linked plastic you can find covering some ancient coffins, for example. Linoleum flooring is a 19th century invention using hardened (polymerized, plasticized) linseed oil and sawdust.
While you were ranting about the multiple layers of plastic, I was unboxing parts at work. They were in zip lock bags, and instead of putting the part tags in them or getting wild and sticking the adhesive part tags to the bags, they put the bagged part and tag in another larger zip lock bag.
Sounds like Digi-Key?
This reminds me of what happened in Australia. They banned plastic shopping bags that were reused by most people as garbage bin liners afterwards. Instead people need to buy reusable plastic shopping bags now and buy plastic garbage bag liners for their tiny bins.
Your mileage may vary, but compostable bags do exist as an option at least. Their long-term lifespan is a bit questionable (since they're supposed to decompose within months) but for single use cases, it might be viable.
Watch you on Nebula a lot. Great subject I remember the TV ads in Australia in the 70s Telling us to save the trees use plastic bags. It's just bs after bs when you start digging deeper into just about any subject. It all traces back to someone making money and profits.
I'm 52, when I was little, in the 1970s, I remember on the side of any highway/freeway/interstate/major road was so much sh*t it was insane. People just threw everything out of their car windows. Done with the fast food? Chuck the containers out the window, I don't want it in my car. Done with that beer? Toss the bottle out the window, I don't want empties in here, it'll stink (a lot of stuff happened back then that wasn't even frowned on much that would get you, rightfully so, in a lot of trouble today. Ask anyone my age or older lol. That was your last cigarette? Chuck the empty pack out the window, dumbass, what am I going to do with it? (back then, vehicles didn't have power points, they had cigarette lighters. In the ashtray. That the vast majority of people used. With the babies and kids in the car. No one thought twice. In fact, up to the late 1980s a lot of high schools in the US had smoking areas between classes. For the students. Told ya it was different, didn't I? Don't let middle age and older people tell you stupid shit like it was some wholesome, wonderful golden age. It wasn't. It was just what we had and a lot of people only remember the happy memories and not all of the dumb stuff that happened on a pretty much constant basis.) I do remember, when I was really little, the "Crying Indian Commercial" and a lot of other anti-litter campaigns (thank God. It was nasty af. Seriously UGH). Over probably a decade, litter became less and less on the sides of the roads and signs appeared stating how much of a fine you'd get if you were caught littering. Today, you don't see much on the road sides (yes, there's always exceptions. That one road that's all f*cked up. That neighborhood that looks like a dump. I know. I mean, overall, the roads today look so, so much better than they did then.
Also, when I was little, I remembering flying to Los Angeles from Pennsylvania and approaching LA, it looked like a giant dome of dirt because of the air pollution. That doesn't happen anymore either. Thankfully.
I'm amazed I didn't die of lung cancer at 19.
Awesome to see this being brought to public attention! I’m a consultant packaging and process engineer and talk to companies about this everyday…It’s seldom to find one who knows half of this. This is what the public needs to understand for real change.
I work for a plastics recycling company in New Zealand. We recycle hundreds of tonnes of polyprop (5) and low density (4) every year. Mainly from companys who manufacture products from said plastics that didn't pass inspection.. so small win🎉
I work at a company called efs plastic where we recycle all types of plastic. All of the listed types are recycled at least to a point they cannot be done any further
Profitable? Or subsidized?
Looking forward to the Nebula video for further exploration. Having worked in plastics, I was thrown by the suggestion that Low Density PolyEthylene and PolyStyrene, 4 and 6, were considered non-recyclable. Sure they are sensitive to heat, low temperature required, but still useful. Number 5, PolyPropylene, is uncertain for me. But quite curious as to the excuse for 4 and 6 being considered non-recyclable.
Anywho, great video! Thanks! Will see this Nebula video.
As someone who does sell things online, I wish I could reduce the plastic, but here are some of the issues I would face:
1- Customers will complain about the protection of the item (and still do, despite there is more than enough)
2- Shipping companies UPS and FedEx handle the packages worse than an airport worker handling your luggage
3- Every complaint will end up with losses in business and bad reviews
So till customers start understand why, and online platforms like amazon take some measures to protect the sellers, and the shipping companies be responsible for their handling the goods, people will continue doing this
Use cardboard.
Your example is very interesting and shows once again that we live in a really complex world...
Thanks for not putting any music in your video while you are talking to us. I wish other YT hosts would stop doing it. I would not have lasted more than 30 seconds here if I heard any 'background music.' As for the 30 or so minutes of actual informative content, thank you for that as well. I'm older than you, but yeah, glass bottles were a real good thing. The bottle deposit laws though really helped reduce the amount of flat tires I got while bicycling. And, yes, they help with the litter problem as well. And I am now a subscriber.
Great content! Due to my line of work I see the actual recycling of plastic/ electronics etc and as an end user i see the work involved in recycling. That small percent is tremendous but we should use it up, make do, or do without
The lid on a bottle (ABS) is more useable than the bottle. But a hatereraid bottle is a great water bottle many times over and if u lose it no biggie compared to the one users.
There was something I read a while ago, and I believe it might be true:
Whenever Fuel use dips, more 'disposable plastic' turns up in shipping....
Joe, I have been watching your videos for several years now but I’ve never commented. I just want to thank you for sharing your knowledge and research with the public. We need more critical thinkers who have open minds and kind hearts. People like you, who do their research instead of spouting off their unfounded opinions. Your content is highly educational and I truly appreciate you. Thank you for contributing to the wellbeing of society.
I've never seen "actors" in any of your videos before, Joe, but these two were great. The husband was genuinely hilarious.
Wonderful, informative video. Just one little error at 21:08. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch isn't a big pile of items. The stuff has lots of water between each item, which is why it takes The Ocean Cleanup so long to scoop one area. It's more like a soup with floating rice.
This topic deserves a series... That way you can tackle a lot more. Such as recycling not just plastics, but metals, glass and so on... Probably include different industry issues and companies / organizations attemping to deal with the dilemmas involved.
I was looking into the issue of wind turbine blades.
I found several companies saying they were recycling them to make concrete….
Turned out they burn them to produce the heat to make concrete!
The volume of waste from turbines is extremely low. For 20 years of your electricity consumption you'd get like 10kg blade waste total. Its literally nothing, especially if you compare it to single-use plastics
@@E1Luch not 100% sure where you are coming from here.
Turbine blades get replaced every 20 years or so.
The blade assembly of the GE 1.5MW turbine (one of the most common) weighs 36 tons.
So every 20 years around 36 tons of non recyclable waste is being produced per turbine.
Times that by the number of turbines around the world and the numbers get ridiculous.
I get that is does not compare to single use plastics, but it is still massive contributor to our waste production.
And ultimately not all that green in my personal opinion.
If the only solution at present is to incinerate them for energy then that makes it even worse!
@@rossgirven5163 I think my reply got deleted for some reason, but again, the volume of this waste is relatively low. Its 4-8 metric tons per year at most, if all 8 billion people used wind for all their energy needs, and they all consume like an average european. We can realically landfill it all for the next 100 years if we wanted. Even if we burned it, we will have way less pollution because of low volume, because it replaces fossil fuels, and because proper incineration plants should have good exhaust filters. But I also think we will use it for something else eventually, and I think converting it into some other carbon-containing molecule is also a good option
When you said most importantly (@ 29:20) I was hoping to hear 'what we should do with these classification differently to help solve the problem' rather than what harm they bring. I get that, and like many who watched your video for longer period of time than we usually spend on making a meal, the take away is depressing and most will do nothing about it. May I suggest that you share more findings about the benefits of the system that we can do differently within our household level of effort? Any effort helps to encourage others to look further into a solution rather than a problem. Thank you for your work and time. You have a way to captivate audience, thanks for having it do good. Be Kind...Mankind
It's honestly concerning how many comments are talking about throwing plastics in the trash based on this video. Do your research, find out what is recyclable in your area (because it does vary but all 7 numbers exist for a reason) and recycle the right things. Just because a system isn't as effective as it is sold as doesn't mean you shouldn't participate
Your mention of the boom pole reminds me of my horror at the amount of plastic used in move logistics, such as the transportation of pallets (which are also often made of plastics) of goods to stores, such as supermarkets and various stores. They're wrapped and wrapped and wrapped again in plastic, which is cut off and put in the bin. The amount of plastic used on one measures around 2m (height) x 15m (length) for a 1m x 1.2m pallet. I just typed into google 'pallet wrapping' and was astounded, and yet I dealt with these things on a thrice weekly basis at one point. At xmas time, the problem tripled.
Plastic pallets are great though. Durable, highly reusable, and basically mandatory for international shipping. If I want to ship a pallet of freight from the US to Canada I either have to use a plastic pallet, or a wooden pallet that has been chemically treated and certified as such. This is to prevent the spread of wood-born parasites, disease, and insects.
@@Rocketsong I think their point was more that the pallets, which are already plastic, are wrapped in a ton more plastic that just gets thrown away.
@@grn1 yeah. The pallets get used over and over and over. The giant rolls of cling wrap type plastic are pretty much mandated by shipping companies.
@@RocketsongPlastic palets are garbage, if they are damaged, they can't eaily be repaird, wodden ones can have planks or blocks replaced
@@Rocketsong We've had to add extra packing to some stuff at my job because the receiving company had problems with stuff falling out, a problem we never had in house or in transit so you can probably guess where the issue is. We do sometimes use the plastic wrap as a temporary wrap for coils that we have to rewrap (I work at a press shop), usually it's not too much and we only use it on super lightweight stuff where a metal band doesn't make sense. Fortunately most jobs we run until the end of our last coil (rewinding a coil can be a major pain).
Ok, am I the only one who felt sorry for the husband at the opening sketch? You just know the poor guy is kept chained in the basement and fed leftover cat food.
He’s also impotent
I skipped it. Couples "comedy" is cringe.
Oh no. That scenario calls for a strict diet of fish heads.
Karen was quite harsh.
Yeah, swap roles and suddenly everyone wouldn't think it is funny.
It may relieve some to know that here in Zambia, major Global North drinks companies including Coca-cola never stopped doing returnable glass bottles. They became far less common after about 2005, but you could always get them by the crate if you were early to the depot, and in some smaller towns they remained pretty common even before about 2020, from when a few half-hearted laws and public awareness seem to be giving them a bit of a resurgence even in the cities.
There is a oil refinery in Philly that closed recently. It opened in the 1850s as a whale oil refinery. Oil refineries take a 42 gallon barrel of crude oil and produce 45 gallons of product. Only approximately 30 gallons of that product is motor fuels, gasoline jet fuel and diesel fuel. The rest is chemical feed stocks for things like plastics, home heating oil(diesel), ethylene (ethylene oxide, chip manufacture), engine oil(they used to have their own canning plants) ECT. They are really chemical plants that use crude oil as feed stocks!
That's what's funny about oil haters. Gas and fuel it's 1 small part... Literally fucking everything is made from oil even medications lol... The car tire is made from oil.... Oil literally is never going anywhere UNLESS something MAJOR can replace it for everything it makes... Also a person with extreme dry skin, I'm thankful for petroleum 😂
Even though recycling is a huge problem we even wrap potatoes in little plastic covers these days
28:44. I sell old books online. I wrap them with one layer of paper (or more if a long trip, newspapers work fine as cushions), one plastic bag for impermeabilization, and the cardboard envelope required by my post office - recycled boxes. When I buy anything online, it indeed comes buried in a Napoleonic system of plastic sepulchre.
I wrap all the clothing, etc as well, I found a company that does biodegradable plastic bags....I think it's made out of plant material. It's a little more expensive, but worth the piece of mind.
Tech needs to make an edible 'plastic'.
I do remember that tv commercial from when I was about 10, and it had an impact on me then. I learned as an adult that he wasn't native, but his message was powerful. I'm a recycler in my own ways. I make art and functional items from all sorts of waste. I even papered a huge wall in my house with brown paper bags. I make handmade books from cereal boxes and potato chip bags. I reuse bags and plastic containers for food storage, seed saving. Cardboard goes in the compost... Someday, I'd love to be able to aford to buy a machine that remelts plastics into creative useful items and art.
Fun little side note: HDPE can be used for rocket fuel. Housemate does hobby rocketry and was experimenting with it as an alternative to importing the normal motor types. Pretty rad stuff!
That transition back from the tangent cam was so smooth. I see the little things that have improved on your channel over time and want you to know that the work doesn't go unnoticed! The videos you put out are so high quality these days, especially compared to just a few years ago! Super happy for you and your team (someone there should probably get the credit for that transition, I see you unnamed hero!) Wishing you guys all the best!
Here in Denmark, we are by law required to sort our trash into 10 categories, one of which is plastics. A professor claimed on the news that his research team could extract more plastic from incinerator smoke than could be extracted by sorting the trash.
Not idea how that would work though.
I can just about guarantee it wouldn't. It would be cheaper for his corporate sponsors to implement though.
A note on the "5 g or one credit card of plastic per week": That stat is incorrect. Hank Green did a great video on how that claim spread. A WWF study once estimated that people ingest 0.1 - 5g of plastic per week, as a very rough estimate based on summing estimates from other studies. Through a long game of telephone, the upper bound of that extremely wide range ended up being reported as the conclusion of a study.
What's funny is that you know most of this if you've gone to someplace that recycles your plastics. It either doesn't care and is throwing all of the plastic away (maybe shipping it somewhere first) so they have one giant bin for all your plastics. Or there's a bin for Pete, a bin for the H one (number 2) and a trash bin, usually labeled "colored plastics" or maybe 3-7 plastics
regarding packaging, we have improved a lot with plastic use. I remember as a kid there was the thick molded plastic packaging that needed scissors to get inside and then within that would be more of the same plastic to support the product. The amount of plastic for that one product could probably make hundreds of plastic bags. We still see plastic in packaging a lot but the volume used is much less I think. Still hope we can minimize even more though.
In the UK (I don't know if it is still the case) recycling companies were able to claim tax credits for recycling waste. The catch was, if the company processed it in the UK, it could only claim for the material it successfully recycled, having to pay to dispose of anything it couldn't. Meanwhile, a company that just exported the unsorted waste could claim 100% of the credit. It didn't even have to go to a recycling plant abroad, it just had to *leave* the UK. Of course, if the exporter could sell the waste, even better, but it could still make a profit just loading up a container, picking somewhere on the map and shipping it out.
The government wanted to claim recycling was going up but didn't want to invest in the infrastructure required to do so.
Let me guess: this was under the Tories, right?
Joe, I'd like to hear your comment on creative ways to "recycle" plastic. For example, in Brazil and in Quenia, there are startups and cooperatives that aim to compress plastics and turn it into bricks for construction, or even mixing it up in concrete.
I think it's an interesting idea if you think that plastic, theoretically, lasts way longer than conventional concrete. What do you think about it?
Love your work, by the way!
I wanted to add, I've worked a convenience store job for the past 5years, at two popular chains along the east coast US. the recycling cans outside for customers are completely fake! Or if they are real, management has absolutely no idea how they're supposed to be used, so we just dump it in with the regular trash. the only thing we recycle is cardboard.
I was very disheartened to learn that both employers seemed to do this.
I remember some years ago an investigative news crew followed a recycling truck and learned all curbside recycling in that area was dumped in the dump along with the other trash.
Silver lining (but not yet a ray of sunshine) is the research being done in Japan with engineering bacteria that can break down plastics.
...and by engineer, I mean, randomly stumbled on, and trying to improve.
Still, it's going to be a bit, but this is probably our best hope for dealing with the plastics issue any time soon.
Also read researchers at Rice University have found a way to separate hydrogen from plastics...and the carbon to make graphene (to which there is a ready market). They may be able to even use plastics from the environment.
Scaling this up is always a challenge, however and there are energy concerns. That's one of the big hurtles with recycling...energy. With more, cheaper viable energy our recycling efforts for anything would explode. After all, our World is not made of virgin material but rather recycled from dead stars.
Imagine this bacteria runs wild and starts eating plastics that are still in use
@@E1Luchit is begging to be the headline you see in the movie's opening credits, right as the world's ended by the plastic eating bacteria as it goes amok/mutates into eating everything else.
@@E1LuchThere is an old (1971) book "Mutant 59: The Plastic Eater"
@@E1Luch That was the first thing I thought of when I first saw that headline... One lab leak and we could have a global incident where plastic just no longer is viable anymore.
I was crazy for polystyrene #6 for a while due to it having same composition as ShrinkyDink craft plastic. It came out of the oven a little thicker than the real stuff, but that was fine by me. I'd look for the stamp with PS6 on it and harvest the plastic. It was used as crystal-clear packaging on baked goods, salads, and to-go containers, so I could find a lot of it. A cover on a big sheet cake gave me a huge sheet of PS6 to make particularly large pieces. But PS6 had a certain brittleness to its matrix, so it's been replaced with more flexible PETE plastics. So, dang it.
Hey Joe,
A few questions and comments...
1. In the Nebula video, you weren't sure how to pronounce "toluene". Like most hydrocarbons, it's just how it looks: "TALL-you-een"
2. What about industrial composting? Did you come across anything about that? A lot of plastic utensils nowadays advertise that they're compostable (which has lead me to preferentially buy them even though...) The problem is that when you read the fine print on the packages, it's not compostable in a neighborhood or agricultural compost heap, nor does it degrade any faster in landfills. It's only compostable in _"industrial"_ composting facilities. Are there any of these? How would you get them there? Is this just a euphemism for incineration or pyrolysis?
3. The "life spans" of each of the resin types in the Nebula video... I'm guessing those are half-lives? Even the 500 year ones, if that's a literal "They last 500 years and after that they're all gone" sort of thing, then that's completely trivial on geologic time spans, and it makes all the memes and tropes about "plastic is forever" kind of ring hollow, like George Carlin's "The Earth Plus Plastic" routine. If it's a half-life, though, then if we as a species end up producing say, a trillion tons of plastic before we either kill ourselves off or figure this stuff out, that's 15,000 years, give or take a few thousand depending on how little you consider "basically nonexistent" (1,000 tons is about 15,000 years, 10 tons is 18,000).
4. Has there been any talk of geological disposal, like deep-pit landfills similar to the deep storage of nuclear waste being done? Burying it underground seems like by far the best solution we have, aside from reducing single-use plastics. The only problem, as I understand it, is that as it breaks down it releases problematic chemicals into ground water. But what if we buried it below the level of the water table? We're already shipping plastic all over the world so poor people can burn it and get more cancer, so what if we shipped it all to a big central megaproject, or a few around the world, where we dig a giant hole a kilometer deep and just dump it all down there to compact itself over time?
5. It seems to me that long-term, the solution must be biological. Microbes, fungi, and other "nature's garbage disposal" sorts of organisms _should_ eventually be able to evolve to digest most or all plastics, I would think. Wood was a major problem for a long time when trees first evolved, with dead trees piling on top of each other to form layers miles thick, which then got buried over geologic time, which we now call coal seams. Eventually, after I don't remember how many billions of years, fungi evolved the ability to break down the long-chain polymers in wood as a food source, and just like that, no more coal will ever be made again. Since wood basically _is_ plastic, the only real advantage I see in wood as far as biodegradability goes, is that things have had time to evolve to eat it and break it down. So what if we... y'know... help nature along a bit? Maybe in the mid-future we'll shred plastic waste and sprinkle it into forests or over farmland that's been modified to integrate plastic-eating fungi or bacteria or yeasts, in a way that coexists in harmony with the soil microbes that already break down polymer plant remnants. You mentioned microbes and fungi that can break down polystyrene, but did you come across any promising research into the development of microbes that can digest other resin types?
That symbol means the grade if plastic
I knew most of this before i worked in a Canadian recycling facility in the early 2000's and amazing they explain this to the staff and contractors because it all has ti be sorted and then ground up in the appropriate bins.... #3 grade plastics or higher basically are only good for squishing and sending overseas in a container for someone else to use as coal replacement.. the material is so soft and impure that you cant really grind it up it plugs the machines
Even at our local level of recycling collection they put a lot on the consumer. Instead of just sorting it all themselves they try to educate the thousands of residents on what types are ok to put in the bin but then get mad when people don't understand.
Our local area just banned plastic shopping bags and it's even had an impact further out as it's easier for stores to make a change by region rather than one by one. I overheard some guys complaining about how will they carry things but guess what they have paper bags again for the 5 people that don't have an overflowing stash of reusable ones. On a personal level I try not to stress about what I buy but I do look for non plastic packaging or buy used when I can. I wouldn't want to live in a completely plastic free world but this single use stuff has got to be reigned in.
"people that don't have an overflowing stash of reusable ones"
That one really hit home, I've never once bought a grocery bag yet the drawer is overflowing with bags made of paper and fabric.
Other than having forgotten to take a bag with you there's literally no excuse to use the plastic bags from the store.
It's nice that DE shaving is making a resurgence. Not only can you get your disposable plastics use down to practically zero, it's also much much cheaper. There's a bit of effort to learn how to handle it and you have to dial in which blades work for you, but that's far easier than it sounds.
I was packing my things and I wanted to use packing material to fill in the gaps and to protect delicate things. I had to resort to bubble wrap because I couldn't either find any biodegradable stuff or the price was so prohibitively expensive. The only thing that was affordable enough was paper tape. It is so much better: normally I would rip off the plastic tape but this time I had to cut it all the way open - there's no way it not to be noticed if someone had opened the box!
There are biodegradable "plastics" which are made from plant-based materials, such as corn starch or seaweed. They are perfect for carrying things home from shops before throwing the bag away. They take only weeks to decompose and the ones used for lining compost bins start decomposing in just after a week! Polystyrene balls or chips used as packing materials can also replaced by corn "chips".
I like to store things in plastic bags so in that regard I am not totally happy about giving up plastic bags entirely.
The "Hello Deer" 😂
What a great Dad joke.
While the resin numbers aren’t useful to most consumers, I’m still super glad that they exist because it helps me identify the food safety and temperature stability of given plastics.
Recycling shouldn't have to make a profit. It should be funded by the plastics manufacturers. If 5% of plastics is currently recycled and the cost of doing that is Z, then the tax on manufacture should be Zx20 shared between the manufacturers by weight. Similar import duty on plastics too, it's not difficult to solve, it's just nobody has the balls to make it law.
"It should be funded by the plastics manufacturers." Translation, the consumer should have to pay more.
I like the approach I saw in Germany. If you sell a product like an appliance, the seller is responsible for disposing of the packaging materials, not the consumer. It gives manufacturers a good reason to reduce packaging to just what's needed instead of being wasteful with it. And to @1pcfred, yes, the cost gets passed to the consumers, but they would have had to pay to dispose of the packaging anyway, and this way there's less to dispose of.
@@billthacker6527 I'm paying for a container every week anyways. I threw out a 16x32 foot pool in my trash. It took a while but I got rid of it.
@@billthacker6527but it's not like there is an extra cost to me throwing it out.
All vital industries should be nationalized. If society relies on it, society should control it.
Tiny little kids books called waste not want not. Not sure the publishing dates but those were old when I read them in a school library as a child , a decent seeded approach well recieved for the time. 😊 great video
We do not ingest a credit card worth of plastics each week. This has never been directly studied, it just got sensationalized by the media. It should be common sense that this is BS, at least it seemed obvious to me and investigating it seems to show this to be the case.
Speaking of BS, there was an episode on recycling that talked about this very subject, and was quite controversial at the time.
7:12 - Perspex, aka Plexiglas was mostly used for airplanes' (both bombers and fighters) windows - not for "periscope covers" (whatever it may be).
And because some of those windows got shattered either during dogfights (fighters) or because of flak rounds exploding next to a bomber, some Perspex shrapnel got embedded in pilots'/ crew's eyes. But those wounds usually healed well, no inflammation or other adverse reactions to Perspex bits - and that's how doctors learned it's a good material for eye implants, like artificial eye lenses. Or so I learned quite some time ago from a book I can't remember now, so...
@joescott I'm excited about the potential of enzymatic recycling through Fast PETase. It's still very early, but folks are trying to convert PET into raw materials for not just plastics, but precursors for pharmaceuticals and other high value chemical products.
Absolutley hillarious intro! Kudos to some fantastic actors! I retired to New Mexico from Dallas a few years ago, but I recognize a North Texas Alley anywhere!
My mother was physically allergic to most plastisers. It first showed up when she was working in an armement factory at the end of WWII. None of the 'medical' profession believed her, so she documented all symptoms and when they appeared. She was finally vindicated when her new plastic spectacles were diagnosed as the cause of the rash covering most of her body. She died 2023 aged 93 after a plastic intubation tube was put down her throat during a medical episode.
How many other people have similar experiences?
How many other people have been laughed at by doctors for suggesting the link to plastics?
I work with packaging plastics and LDPE (RIC 4) is easily recyclable while HDPE (RIC 2) is the one that is harder and more expensive to recycle (LDPE is thinner as low as 12 microns and breaks down much faster when using dissolvents while HDPE is 16 microns thick)
Interesting. Can you give me an example of LDPE and HDPE?
@@zyxw2000 majority of plastics that are around 6 packs of soda cans are HDPE , PET is also closer to HDPE , plastic wrapping foil you find in stores LDPE.
Okay, the part at the end about buying a lifetime subscription to nebula giving you a reason to take care of yourself and keep breathing cracked me up and may have just convinced me to check out the streaming site. 🤣🤣
Part of the problem is platforms like amazon. When they will hold a seller to task for a customer's unreasonable standards, that seller ends up having to do everything they can to guarantee that your item arrives without the slightest blemish, even though a really likely cause of damage is Amazon's own shipping practices when they send it to you.
~ 27:45 - My recent two Kindles came packaged in multiple layers, but they were all cardboard. Amazon makes a point of using the fact in their advertising. The "gastro" section of my local supermarket sells soup in paper cups with paper lids. More and more often I got products shipped to me protected by crumpled paper instead of bubble wrap.
Now, paper is more environmentally expensive to produce than plastic, but much easier to recycle (or burn, if it comes to that), and most of that packaging material is made of recycled paper.
Take shopping bags: producing both paper bags and reusable cloth bags is much more environmentally costly than producing plastic bags. It is _disposal_ at their end of life where plastics sucks. (Many grocery store chains over here in Croatia make a point of charging for plastic bags and boasting that they are all made of recycled plastic - reusable, sturdy ones from pure PET from water bottles, single use ones out of more inferior feedstock. Yes, it is again the consumer who pays, but at least these stores encourage reuse.)
I got something from the store a couple weeks back that said right on the plastic bubble packaging that it was a plastic free product. Sure. The product was plastic free but the packaging wasn’t.
At least in Germany most stuff I order is secured with shredded cardboard or some other paper/cardboard stuff. It's relatively new, started maybe two years ago and now more and more packages come like this. Some stuff really seems to be just shredded cardboard boxes, you can even see old shipping labels there, some stuff is kinda fancy looking like an intertwined 3 dimensional spiderweb, seems to be a replacement for bubblewrap.
I ordered some bike parts last weeks and it had no plastic at all.
I'm sure that's more the stuff I order and not representative, but it really seems to get used more and more in all kinds of industries.
In Motala, Sweden, they have a plant that can sort and properly recycle plastics handed in for recycling (in bulk). It’s supposed to be one of the few if not the only plant that can do this.
I remember shopping and everything was in paper and glass. Yaknow, truly sustainable stuff. Then all the whackos started complaining about it. Now we pack most of our foods in petrochemicals lol. My mom with an eighth grade education knew we were on the wrong path.