Comment on Important life choices
qyron@sopuli.xyz 6 days agoHow about paper, glass and density plastics?
And if wasn’t for negative propaganda, pyrolotic incineration would deal with the gross majority of non recyclables.
My understanding with glass is that it’s still cheaper to make new glass than recycle it whereas metal the costs have just about evened out.
Last I read about high density plastics is that they aren’t as strong after the first use. So they can’t be reused as high density plastic and have to be mixed in with other plastics.
Glass is recycleable to infinity. The greatest issue that used to exist was the colourants added to tint the glass. Nowadays, to my knowledge, with enough temperature and chemical correction the tint can be removed. Even windshields can be recycled nowadays; no plastic survives after being put to a kiln thousands of degrees hot.
Plastics can be reused. Even if we start with PEHD, crushed, melt it down, and the end plastic is of lesser quality, the biggest problem is finding a new use for that weaker material.
ryathal@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
Paper can be effectively down cycled, and corrugated cardboard is absolutely worth recycling. Glass is just borderline, it’s not significantly better energy wise to recycle, and colored glass makes it more difficult. Plastic is better off in a landfill.
kent_eh@lemmy.ca 5 days ago
It als depends on the distance and transportation costs to get to a glass plant.
Which is dissapointing, because glass should be relatively easy to recycle into new containers. The core process isn’t much different than making new glass.
ryathal@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
The problems are breaking glass back down is more expensive than using raw material and there’s the color issue. What glass excels at is reuse, it would be far better to have a handful of standard containers that could be easily cleaned and reused rather than attempt to recycle.