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Beer can artwork accidentally thrown in bin by staff member at Dutch museum
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2024
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Aluminum is actually one of the most recyclable things we have. To the point where it's better, environmentally, to have single use aluminum cups that get recycled every time.
Except aluminium cans nowadays have a plastic lining that make recycling them harder.
I'm talking about straight up aluminum cups. No need for the can liner.
And in contrast, plastic sucks 100% for recycling. Remelting it for recycling results in polymer degradation. Going so far as to be basically useless for some cases. We tried a bunch of high quality recycled materials - for instance ground up and repelletized lego bricks. Bumpers from cars. All abs, all possible to be broken by hand when extruded. New pellets never had that and could basically withstand everything we threw at them. What people usually do is mix like 5% of recycled into the new stuff.
The cost of plastic is so cheap, that I could have ordered a metric tonne, use up 50kgs out of that, throw the remaining 950kg out and still turn a healthy profit. It always surprised me why someone would make something out of shitty plastic, when the good stuff is barely more expensive. It also surprises me why people bother with recycling it for the exact same reason. The drawbacks are huge for maybe 5 - 10% difference in cost.
For some products it is fine that the plastic is not pure virgin material, like traffic cones. That 10% savings might be what keeps a company profitable, and new oil wasn't needed. A lot of plastic goes to fuel pellets too. Not great, but better than new oil
Plastic is basically free. It's a waste product from refining oil. That's why it's so cheap. Instead of telling the petroleum industry they needed to properly deal with their hazardous waste we let them sell it. It would be like a coal mine finding a use for the chemical soup that remains after processing, and then just yeeting it everywhere.