Plastic producers have known for more than 30 years that recycling is not an economically or technically feasible plastic waste management solution. That has not stopped them from promoting it, according to a new report.
“The companies lied,” said Richard Wiles, president of fossil-fuel accountability advocacy group the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), which published the report. “It’s time to hold them accountable for the damage they’ve caused.”
Why couldn’t we switch back to glass as our primary container material? Wasn’t that always fully recyclable?
Apparently we’re running out of sand. That’s going to make the transition to glass harder. I’m not saying I don’t agree because I would definitely prefer glass than plastic.
For people that don’t want to read/don’t already know
It’s the types of sand, desert sand is useless
Sounds like someone needs to make a new glass processing method so we can use desert sand
Sorry but this comment is completely ignorant of the chemistry & manufacturing… you can make some shitty unusable glass with it, but unless you waste an unsustainable amount of resources to try to make the problems less apparent, a majority of desert sand is too low-silica to work. It’s a problem with the material, no new glass processing method will change that.
And if you do decide to use desert sand, it’s practically a logistics nightmare, especially considering you’ll likely have to be centered in one of the few deserts made of sand (most of which are in North/South-East Africa and the Middle East, but also Central Asia, Australia, some parts of the Americas). But even if you did it’s not sustainable or practical, and it most probably won’t be in the future, there’s a reason glass manufacturing plants smack dab in the middle of sandy deserts have to import their sand.
I wonder if we can “recycle” desert sand to have more of the properties that we’re looking for… It seems the biggest problem is it’s weathered in such a way that it doesn’t bond properly as an agregate like sand harvested from the water does
What if we just take all the sand in deserts and move it into the ocean?
Insert Patrick meme here
Apparently ocean sand is fine.
Good luck shipping stuff in glass packaging. Very heavy, extremely fragile, big, expensive. Glass is only worth it on reusable stuff. We need to find a good material for “throwaway” stuff. Eco plastic made from stuff like bamboo are great starting points. They feel like plastic even mcdonalds is using this material for their throwaway spoons. And it can’t be that expensive or they wouldnt be using it for free spoons
PLA is made from beet juice and degrades in a few weeks I’ve recently learned
It degrades in a few weeks in a heated industrial composter, and it doesn’t meaningfully degrade in a sensible amount of time in natural conditions. It has the potential to be less bad than other plastics, but anything that biodegrades in a similar way to food is going to go off at a similar rate to any food it’s containing, which is obviously bad for packaging.