Comments on: Does it cost more to recycle a plastic bottle than to make a new one?

By: sally

sally — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:13:16 +0000

Dear Sir or Madam:,
We are Cheung Hung Plastic Trading from Hong Kong. We are doing the Plasitc film recycle business, and looking for those material which list as below:
1. LDPE sticky Rolls, and also LDPE bales (no glue)
2. Pet sticky Rolls, any colour.
3. PP material can be roll or bales, color : white, nature
4. PA6, PA66, PA12 can be any form, material must be pure, colour: mixed, white, nature
5. PS hangers,
6. PP big bag (A, B grade)
7. HDPE bottles or HDPE oil tank.
If you have ,could you provide to us? we can offer a very good and reasonable price for this item base on the quality. Please send the detail and picture to our email .Hope we could establish good business partner.Looking forward to your earliest reply and remain,thank you very much.
Yours fainthfully,
Sally
Cheung Hung Plastic Trading
Email:sallybabyna@163.com or sallybabyna@yahoo.cn
FAX: 86-752-6386382

By: paul

paul — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:52:38 +0000

Regarding comments 18 and 22… 18: this article does not talk about global warming. this article talks about pollution. i don’t think global warming is happening either, but we still need to protect our plant. and 22: these are real issues. if you think it’s BS then why are you reading it?

anyway, that said,

in the ocean there are patches of nothing but plastic pellets. unfortunately retrieving it could destroy a lot of the wildlife in the area… but if we don’t, it will destroy the wildlife in the area…

also, if all countries banned putting plastics in landfills and required them being brought to a plant for recycling, we might be able to curb at least some of this. and bioplastics are a great idea! :D

By: mel

mel — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:00:37 +0000

why did we change to start with? huh, dose any one know, I didnt thank so!
it is lighter then glass , i do like plastic bottles in the tub, soap use to come in a bar, of course toothpaste came a lead tin thing many years ago.

I thank we need to recycle every thing we can , I had to work in the garden when i was 5 , so make your lasy ass kids do it or else! then count to 3

I say we band all plastic dippers.

thanks

Mel

By: coetsee

coetsee — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 07:58:58 +0000

A power that can affect, persuade and cause changes to someone or something. In order to influence people, you first need to discover what is already influencing them. What makes them tick? What do they care about? We need some leverage to work with when we’re trying to change how people think and behave.Just 20 years ago the market for plastic water bottles was practically nonexistent, but today we produce billions of these completely unnecessary products. There can be only one sane response, plastic water bottles must be banned!

Thanks N Regards
Coetsee

onlineuniversalwork

By: Canada Guy

Canada Guy — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:55:52 +0000

We all know disposable water bottles are wasteful and bad for the environment, yet their production is growing rapidly everywhere. Just 20 years ago the market for plastic water bottles was practically nonexistent, but today we produce billions of these completely unnecessary products. There can be only one sane response, plastic water bottles must be banned! http://www.selfdestructivebastards.com/2009/10/water-bottle-manifesto.html

By: steve

steve — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:21:09 +0000

ohhhh the sky is falling…

By: Roy Purkiss

Roy Purkiss — Thu, 28 May 2009 18:34:44 +0000

Sir’s, some elements of cost are glossed over or not discussed at all. One has to look at the cost from different perspectives: on a simple level, from the consumer’s perspective one could argue that it takes time to sort the trash, carry it to a different location/ container (and sometimes fuel), and added cost to store extra container(s) on property. From a municipality standpoint, added cost for more trucking and maintenance, storage of trucking, employees to operate the trucks, containers/ bins, and purchase of and maintaining bin locations. From a manufacturer point of view we know that one should only use about 15% recycled material (regrind) in process because of inherent changes in chemical properties and resultant processing challenges, added floor space for storage of the material, added equipment to process and prepare the material (dryers, grinders, etc), added energy costs to prepare, move and store the material, and additional employees to receive, manage, inspect, sort, handle, and process the material.
From a pollution stand point one should readily see that with only 15% or less content being used, the added energy employed -cost- (Municipality trucking, maintenance, storage, employee usage for creature comforts while not transporting, as well as manufacturer energy use of employees, material transporting, preparation, storage, and processing) adds up to considerably more than 15% over the use of virgin material. Since the energy used is of late claimed to be directly correlated to resultant pollution, one can see that the resultant savings in land fill pollution is only transferred to air pollution. Therefore from a realistic look at costs, one can readily see that recycling plastic bottles for regular use is cost prohibitive on both a pollution and monetary basis. If on the other hand one considers the use for 100% recycled material such as in plastic lumber, construction materials etc, the cost to the manufacturer is much less; however, the cost to the consumer and the municipality is the same and they do not recoup the cost. In fact, these items made from 100 % recycled materials are typically 150% the cost of virgin material cost to the end user. The pollution cost is the same.

By: Steven C. Buttgereit

Steven C. Buttgereit — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:28:19 +0000

Not so sure about this. I question an economic benefit argument for recycling when industry and individuals don’t do this on their own outside of government intervention. I just read through the study they cite in the posting and I have a number of questions regarding content that could distort the results of the study.

1) regarding the disposal costs, for example, if the tipping-fees discussed are inclusive of government taxes, especially of the nature of environmental impact fees and the like that might be unique to waste disposal, the tipping-fees become an unreliable measure of market cost of disposal relative to recycling plastic. This creates a scenario where: Government claims recycling is cheaper, government adds artificial costs to disposal business operations, government claims success in their claim. Hmmmm. I didn’t see where they adjusted for those sorts of things (granted I read quickly).

2) The employment numbers seem dubious as an argument for economic benefit. The study authors presume the creation of a job: any job is necessarily an economic benefit and it’s not. Other industries require labor and if the economic output of the of the labor is less than had that labor been available to some other work with a greater output, the recycling program would have reduced economic growth, not enhanced it. The study would have also been distorted by the issue raised in point 1 as well in terms of measuring worker productivity relative to costs.

3) The report itself says don’t use it for important monetary decisions because the report authors state that their data could contain enough error due to the collection methodology.

4) How does one determine the real environmental impact if you don’t control for these artificial pricing impacts? Truly free market prices = equipment costs + raw material costs + distribution costs + labor costs throughout the supply chain. And each cost element includes a raw materials/energy cost as well (i.e. workers need to get to work, equipment is made of stuff) If disposal on that basis is cheaper than recycling then recycling could very well have a negative environmental impact as well as economic impact. And if that’s true… why are we doing it? Too bad getting to a real answer could jeopardize the livelihood of very individuals that are paid to analyze the question; seems like another chance for a distorting effect.

By: Frank

Frank — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 01:22:49 +0000

If we adopted a national deposit of 5 or 10 cents/can, then took the returned materials to be recycled, wouldn’t that solve the problem?

By: Harry Weiner

Harry Weiner — Fri, 23 May 2008 14:27:11 +0000

I DON’T AGREE WITH THIS ARTICLE BECAUSE GLOBAL WARMING IS NOT HAPPENING YOU’RE ALL FUCKING STUPID IF YOU THINK IT IS THERE ARE BIGGER ISSUES GOING ON IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW LIKE THE LEMUR MEAT SHORTAGE IN INDIA SERIOUSLY ALL OF YOU NEED TO GROW UP