8 ms·

Just Bury Your Trash

100 points by eamag 15d ago

georgeecollins 15d ago
This all makes tons of sense. Recycling metal works, other recycling may not. Cloth bags make sense if you have a few of them and use them hundreds of times. Reduce still makes sense so why not focus on reduce.
tfourb 15d ago
Meanwhile, New York exports its trash to the mid west and microplastics are found on the top of Mount Everest.
- analog31 15d ago
  Canada also ships trash to the US.
toomuchtodo 15d ago
"I am once again asking you to consider plasma gasification." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification InEnTec says its plasma technology effectively destroys PFAS - https://www.wastetodaymagazine.com/news/inentec-says-its-plasma-technology-effectively-destroys-pfas/ https://www.wastetodaymagazine.com/news/inentec-says-its-pla... - August 23rd, 2024 Production of high quality syngas from argon plasma gasification of plastic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41623879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41623879 (September 2024) (0 comments) Plasma gasification versus incineration of plastic waste: Energy, economic and environmental analysis - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fuproc.2022.107470 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fuproc.2022.107470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38994374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38994374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38722984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38722984
- murderfs 15d ago
  What's the point of this when incineration is an option? Even its wikipedia page has only negatives compared to incineration. > Air emissions can be cleaner than landfills and similar to that of incinerators. > Large initial investment costs relative to that of alternatives, including [...] incineration. > Operational costs are high relative to that of incineration.
  - toomuchtodo 15d ago
    I think you misread the Wikipedia page. Plasma gasification air emissions are cleaner with costs being somewhat higher than incineration. Plasma gasification breaks matter down at the molecular level versus combustion of incineration. With plasma gasification, you are paying more to end with a more inert end material and reduced hazardous process byproducts.
    - murderfs 15d ago
      I interpret "can be cleaner than X and similar to that of Y" to mean "inferior to that of Y, but kinda close". Otherwise, it would be "cleaner than X and Y".
      - hbd-investor 14d ago
        Plasmification is cleaner than incineration A good example is a old PCB board with Lead solder thrown carelessly into the trash A incinerator gets hot enough to melt organics, but it won't turn the lead into gas Instead the lead will end up in either the exhaust gases or in the ashes. These ashes will be thrown into a landfill. Over the course of 10,000 years these landfills will end up leaching this lead into groundwater supplies and ending up in our food, soil and in plants. Plasmification on the other hand, this lead ends up encased in a slag, and will remain that way easily for millions of years. The lead atoms will be locked in a obsidian glasslike rock. All the bad stuff like heavy metals etc... will end up in the soil for a incinerator, Organics like plastic will be broken down into their base elements carbon/oxygen/nitrogen/water While all the bad stuff gets encased in slag for Plasmification
- dennis_jeeves2 15d ago
  Seems to rival incarceration or probably is better.
ImHereToVote 15d ago
If a country burns coal. It should burn trash first, before the coal.
- Flavius 15d ago
  Absolutely, but green activists are actively fighting against burning trash. This needs to stop. Even if a country doesn't burn coal it should still burn trash instead of sending it to poor countries. People need to take responsibility for the trash that they generate.
  - butlike 15d ago
    Yeah, burning trash isn't a great answer
    - ch4s3 15d ago
      I'd say it depends. Amager Bakke in Denmark is a combined heat and power plant that burns waste and emits 687 grams of CO2 per kWh vs natural gas at 290 to 930 grams per kwh and coal at 900 to 1,050 grams per kwh. This makes burning trash CO2 competitive with Natural Gas. Using it for district heating probably improves the picture here because resistive electrical heating on a standard grid emits more CO2 than natural gas heat or pumped district heating. It plausible that in cold climates burning trash has significant advantages.
    - Flavius 15d ago
      90% of countries use some kind of fossil fuel to generate electricity or heat, so burning trash instead won't increase the CO2 emissions. The rule is simple: if you already burn fossil fuels, you should burn trash instead.
      - butlike 14d ago
        I disagree. Burning trash creates an implicit stopgap where the trash burning is better than the fossil fuels, so the process is placated until the trash burning isn't good enough, or its downsides rear their ugly heads. Instead of turning to trash burning as a solution if fossil fuels are already being burnt, a more long-term 3rd solution should be explored while still in the 'unsatisfactory' mindset.
axus 15d ago
Hopefully energy used will become less important. CO2 emissions seem like the biggest threat to our long term health. Microplastics also matter, a bit. How much plastic is escaping into the environment from the recycling process vs. landfill? What are the CO2 output of landfill vs. recycling? I imagine burning would be the worst option for these. Not surprised that the market forces tended towards the most energy efficient waste disposal systems; glad we don't have mountains of trash or poor landfills.
duggan 15d ago
I don't remember energy use being the problem with plastic bags? It was plastic bags being absolutely everywhere in the environment. Streets, parks, trees. Wrapped around anything sticking out of the ground. On your face on a windy day. Pollution is the problem with plastic. Probably health, too, now that microplastics are being recognized as an issue.
- crab_galaxy 15d ago
  Every winter in my city, once the leaves all fell, our trees would be draped in shredded plastic bags. Banning single use plastic bags has done a significant amount to beautify this place.
  - justonceokay 15d ago
    When visiting Seattle for the first time my mom was simultaneously outraged at the lack of plastic bags and the recycling bins everywhere, and also in awe at how clean the city was. Never did the two thoughts cross each other in her head
    - embedding-shape 15d ago
      > When visiting Seattle for the first time my mom was simultaneously outraged at the lack of plastic bags and the recycling bins everywhere The first part I kind of get, humans get used to stuff they get, and get frustrated when it disappears without them really understanding why, it's kind of understandable. But why would she be outraged about recycling bins being more readily available? Are the recycling bins like really ugly/disgusting, or why would they upset someone? Sounds like being upset about there being too many libraries or something.
      - vel0city 15d ago
        > Sounds like being upset about there being too many libraries or something. You joke but people who complain about public recycling bins would also likely be the ones to complain about public libraries too. I've encountered many people who think libraries exist to poison the minds of the youth and somehow make homelessness a problem and we should shut them all down to alleviate the homeless issues in our communities and ensure higher community standards in education (mostly, go read the bible at church, that's all you need).
hank2000 15d ago
I don’t understand how plastic bags for “100 years at current rates” is an argument FOR its longevity/being fine?
- bensyverson 15d ago
  Yes… I don't think the author is thinking on a long enough time horizon. I'm curious what happens to these landfill sites in 100, 1000 and 10k years. Do they inevitably break down and leak into the water table? Do they eventually stop off-gassing and become inert? Do they become fossilized layers of sediment on a long enough horizon? If we maintain our current waste levels, how much land is required by the year 3000?
  - hbd-investor 14d ago
    These landfills will eventually breakdown and leak, dumping microplastics and dangerous chemicals into the groundwater which in turn will poison the people drinking from wells, and will float up during heavy rains to poison the plants. thousands of years becomes a long time, it makes more economic sense to burn it for energy, rather than performing a thousand years of inspections and repairs for every landfill
xd1936 15d ago
The argument that is pro-polyethylene plastic bags over cotton completely ignores the source: Renewable plants that are grown and harvested, vs. finite fossil fuels extracted from the Earth and refined. > Instead of a simple blowing and sealing process, the cotton must be made into yarn, woven into fabric, prepared, dried, sized, dyed, and finished, which takes around 1,725 megajoules, around 3,050 times as much energy. That conveniently ignores the drilling, extracting, transporting, refining, and transporting again to make "polyethylene resin".
- frotaur 15d ago
  The energy to make the cotton bags presumably also involves lots of drilling and extracting, at least currently.
- _aavaa_ 15d ago
  > That conveniently ignores the drilling, extracting, transporting, refining, and transporting again to make "polyethylene resin". It also ignores the energy requirements to grow the cotton. This isn't the gotcha you think it is.
  - Reubachi 15d ago
    The energy requirements for growing cotton being largely the sun, and a resource which makes up most of the universe (yes, I know water is several steps from hydrogen). ((And the tangentials like the fertilizers, dieslel etc.)) Compared to the energy requirements of petroleum based products: Incredible density and pressure acting on sufficient organic matter(thousands of times greater than growing cotton), on millenium time scales, then requiring several incredibly expensive and commoditization refining/distribution practices, and the end product is then ceremoniously burned off as poison or discarded into the aether. It is 100 percent the "gotcha OP thought it is". However I do see/realize the fallacy you're pointing out in that the lesser of two evils is still evil.
    - mschild 15d ago
      I think the main point is that this post is not a good faith attempt to convince people otherwise. It's a shoddly researched opinion piece that has little to no merit as it ignores the complexities of producing either item.
conorbergin 15d ago
I think using a cotton bag 173 times to beat plastic bags and a mug 1,000 times to beat disposable cups sounds completely reasonable.
- dinkblam 15d ago
  thats assuming the plastic bag is used once, but i've always reused them, sometimes had the same bags for 10 years however i have never re-used a paper bag because they are awfully loud and cannot be compressed. it is the worst kind of bag.
  - add-sub-mul-div 15d ago
    I reused all my grocery store plastic bags for disposing of cat litter and other trash. When those bags went away I had to start buying new plastic bags for the first time.
    - DiggyJohnson 15d ago
      That’s funny because when my locality switched from plastic to paper bags I was annoyed at having to buy trash bags for the bathroom for the first time but found the paper bags were excellent for litter cleanup since they stand up on their own and are easier to scoop into than a smaller fluttery plastic bag.
  - ch4s3 15d ago
    Turning a plastic grocery bag into a small bathroom trashcan liner is IMO the perfect reuse. it displaces a thicker plastic bag and ensures the grocery bag goes into a landfill.
  - dkarl 15d ago
    My grocery store now uses slightly thicker plastic bags, and I've found that you con reuse them dozens of times; I've had the same bags in my car for over a year. Unfortunately, when they deliver, they use brand-new bags, and they don't accept them back for reuse, so a lot of them get thrown away after a single use.
smcg 15d ago
Not every place has space for landfills... which is why we often ship trash over to low-income countries.
- dghlsakjg 15d ago
  There’s precious few places on earth that don’t have room for landfills, and those places will be shipping their refuse whether it is sent as “recycling” or as trash. The article also points out that incineration is an option to reduce volume, but expensive. There are cases of shipping trash around, but it has more to do with it being cheaper to send a container of garbage somewhere than dispose of it locally. Cost is the constraint, not available space.
- Symmetry 15d ago
  There's a very nice park near where I live that used to be a landfill. Space isn't really a concern. https://maps.app.goo.gl/vCeyDb9tbm29zr549 https://maps.app.goo.gl/vCeyDb9tbm29zr549 It's much more the case that we ship plastic to be recycled to other countries than trash. The problem is that then the unrecyclable plastic mixed in often ends up in rivers.
- cucumber3732842 15d ago
  >Not every place has space for landfills... because we're stupid and let the anti-landfill people decide what acceptable space is Fixed that for you. My municipality is staring down getting screwed bad in the 2030s so I've gone down the rabbit hole.
- throwaway2037 15d ago
  Can you give a specific example of a rich country that is "ship[ping] trash over to low-income countries" in 2026? It must be a tiny minority at this point.
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lillecarl 15d ago
Just burn your trash https://www.energimyndigheten.se/en/news/2025/from-waste-to-wealth---swedens-comprehensive-approach-to-energy-recovery/ https://www.energimyndigheten.se/en/news/2025/from-waste-to-... My understanding is that biological decomposition of waste creates methane which is a worse greenhouse gas than CO2.
- elil17 15d ago
  That's only if it's buried. Properly managed compost is the best option.
  - tclancy 15d ago
    Is that something I can do with plastic though?
- sigilis 15d ago
  Burning waste is listed in the article as an even better for the environment, but somewhat more expensive method. The methane that landfills produce is routinely captured and burned for power, they may otherwise flare it off before it can contribute to the greenhouse effect. This is also mentioned in the article.
- AlexandrB 15d ago
  The thing with methane is that it has a lifespan of something like 10 years in the atmosphere before it breaks down to CO2 + water, while CO2 persists for centuries. I suspect that burning would release more net CO2 than emitting the methane and having it eventually break down to CO2. [1] https://science.nasa.gov/earth/explore/earth-indicators/methane/ https://science.nasa.gov/earth/explore/earth-indicators/meth... > A molecule of methane traps more heat than a molecule of CO2, but methane has a relatively short lifespan of 7 to 12 years in the atmosphere. CO2 can persist for hundreds of years or more.
  - dbdr 15d ago
    I you emit the methane, you have one molecule of CH₄ for 10 years, then one molecule of CO₂ for x years. If you burn the methane, you have one molecule of CO₂ for x years. Burning seems strictly better. (If you use the heat of the burning to offset other emissions, it gets even better)
rapnie 15d ago
In the Netherlands the cradle to cradle hype of some years ago has created a paper reality where waste is turned magically into building material and can thus be effectively dumped anywhere in the environment.
- throwaway2037 15d ago
  I don't understand this comment. As I understand, many types of incineration (coal, garbage, etc.) produces some amount of fly ash. This can be used when making concrete. I think that is a good way to dispose of fly ash.
jschveibinz 15d ago
Other papers/articles on this topic: Tierney: "The Reign of..." https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-of-recycling.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-... Kinnaman: "Is it Time to..." https://www.vox.com/2016/2/13/10972986/recycling https://www.vox.com/2016/2/13/10972986/recycling Kinnaman, Thomas C. "Determining the Socially Optimal Recycling Rate." Resources, Conservation and Recycling, vol. 85, 2014, pp. 5–10, doi:10.1016/j.resconrec.2013.11.002.
cogman10 15d ago
> A returnable milk bottle takes much more energy to produce and much more fuel to transport than a plastic carton, and has to make around ten or more trips to use less energy than a bottle made from polyethylene plastic. This seems like the weakest of presented arguments. Just 10 trips and it's more environmentally friendly? Yeah, seems like reusable milk bottles wins over plastic. That's what, ~10 weeks for payback?
- marcosdumay 15d ago
  Returned bottles have a finite lifetime after what they have to be trashed. Glass bottles tend to be reused some (small) tens of times, plastic bottles certainly last a lot less.
  - cogman10 15d ago
    Google AI is saying 25->30 on average with a high of 50. That still ends up being translated to 1/2 to 1/3 (up to 1/5th) the energy of plastic. Glass is also one of the few good cases for recycling.
    - marcosdumay 15d ago
      Granted, glass bottles are also the one good case for recycling glass. But keep in mind the article's energy number is for plastic bottles, glass uses more energy. Returnable glass bottles are probably better than disposed plastic ones. Returnable plastic bottles (for food) probably aren't.
      - cogman10 15d ago
        I dug into the linked article because I think the short blurb was a bit vague. This was it's conclusion. (R-PET -> Recycled polyethylene) > Results show that R-PET bottle has the lowest impact for all the selected LCA categories, followed by PET bottle, returnable glass bottle with 8 use cycles, and finally non-returnable bottle. This is due to the savings of virgin materials, its low weight and its lower energy consumption in the production phase and transports. The most impactful solution is the non-returnable glass bottle, while better results are obtained using returnable glass bottles: using many times the same bottle, there is only a production and disposal phase, then the majority of the impacts are connected to the cap, label and washing and transport phase. However, even considering 30 use cycles before the glass bottle disposal, its impact is not comparable to the R-PET bottle. Perhaps, reducing the glass bottle weight as much as possible and modifying the cap, its environmental impact could be reduced, but there are still some researches to do for ensuring a bottle shock resistance. According to the MLI proposed, non-returnable glass bottles are the worst material option, followed by PET, R-PET and finally returnable glass bottles. As far as this indicator is concerned, investing on glass bottles reuse and augmenting the incentives of the bottle restitution will help to reduce the marine litter. Furthermore, from a methodological point of view, possible changes could be made to this indicator, such as the adding of other factors or the use of specific weight for each parameter, as already expected but not applied in this study. [1] The study argues that glass bottles shouldn't be used beyond 8 times mainly because of the other environmental factors around washing and relabeling. I'm not actually sure where the OP got 10 from. I guess the only additional defense I'd offer over reusing glass is the chemicals used in washing get removed in water treatment and glass doesn't ultimately turn into microplastics (Although... the lid does which is unfortunate and could potentially be fixed [2]). [1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11367-020-01804-x https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11367-020-01804-x [2] https://www.anses.fr/en/content/caps-glass-bottles-contaminate-beverages-microplastics https://www.anses.fr/en/content/caps-glass-bottles-contamina...
dguest 15d ago
These arguments tend to ignore that a reusable thing is often just a lot better at whatever it does. You can put a few liters of milk in a reusable bag without triple bagging it. You don't have to worry that it will split open and spill out on the ground. You can use the bag to pack for road trips, to store kid's snacks and toys, as a gym bag, etc. Groceries aren't the only thing anyone caries and people go further than between their boot and fridge. In Switzerland grocery stores have been promoting reusable (recycled plastic) bags for years, and people use them for everything: I saw someone in Interlaken carrying firewood with one. So: - To people promoting reuse: maybe go beyond the environmental impact and appeal to quality of life. Having bag or two in your boot all the time is a good idea. - To people promoting single use: others have pointed out that you need to address the other environmental problems beyond energy, but also acknowledge that you're asking people to find a replacement for their everyday tote bags as well.
Symmetry 15d ago
The article mentions the energy benefits from recycling aluminium but fails to mention the also large (but not as large) savings from recycling glass. Please recycle your aluminium and glass even if it's probably wiser to throw out plastic in most localities.
joekrill 15d ago
Penn & Teller have a Bullshit! episode about this (Season 2, Episode 5). Well, it's technically about recycling, but it makes the claim that landfills are not a bad thing, and much better than the current recycling situation, in most cases. That episode has always stuck with me, and I've always wondered how valid their argument is.
- doctoboggan 15d ago
  I remember watching that as a young teen with a libertarian bent. As an old man who no longer identifies as libertarian that episode for some reason has stuck with me as the arguments were pretty compelling. I agree and would like to know if the calculations have changed today or if their argument is still valid.
  - hbd-investor 14d ago
    Their argument was NEVER valid, Penn and Teller never addressed how long this trash actually takes to break down (Estimates are as high as 10,000) years. This means for 10,000 years you would need to inspect the landfill every year, and repair it when the landfill breaks. In actuality what will happen is that all these buried landfills will break, all the bad stuff will leak out and enter the ground water. The groundwater becomes polluted, the plants start dying. And you end up with dead dirt that nothing will grow in. The people advocating for landfills now, are not going to be around 500 years from now to see the results of their selfish thinking. The primary issue is that we took elements naturally found in nature and used them to create manmade synthetic material, that nature has no tools to deal with. And these manmade synthetic material will eventually break down small enough to the point where quantum forces take over (nanoscale sized particles) and enter the groundwater. And plants and animals will drink in these manmade synthetic materials the size of nanometers, and the body has nothing that can breakdown or deal with these manmade synthetic materials. Putting a piece of shit into icecream and mixing it is easy. Unmixing a icecream mixed with shit to remove the shit is scientifically impossible. For billions of years, high-density elements (lead, cadmium, mercury, rare earth elements, arsenic) were locked away in solid mineral ores, buried under hundreds of feet of rock. Surface biology only ever encountered them as faint, background trace elements. We mined gigatons of these ores, refined them to near-100% purity, combined them with synthetic chemicals, and packed them into hyper-dense landfill cells right above or near freshwater aquifers. Landfills are fundamentally a temporal transfer mechanism. They take the immediate waste generated by modern high-consumption lifestyles—cheap electronics, disposable packaging, synthetic textiles, convenience goods—and bury it out of sight, converting a present-day logistical crisis into a slow-motion geological problem for future generations.
general_reveal 15d ago
In an apartment, I’ve learned not to even have a garbage bin. If I have garbage I make a small bag and throw it out, or keep it in the freezer until I go out. Frozen trash doesn’t smell and doesn’t attract anything :) Of course, this requires you to have less trash , which is very easy if you simply take a few seconds to go outside and throw your food out after lunch/dinner. Everything else is just dry scraps usually. There’s always the fridge :) All in all, there is no concept of “garbage”, “garbage bin” , or any kind of “garbage accumulation” in my apartments. Oh, you can also just freaking flush small things down the toilet. Seriously, it’s like a little mini garbage. Only advise this for people with great water pressure (lucky you!). If I had a backyard, I’d be burning and burying garbage too, man. Last but not least, never ever buy expensive garbage bags. It’s literally going in the garbage, man.
- lukan 15d ago
  Erm, was that part about keeping trash in the freezer serious? For me a freezer is for food, I don't mix that with garbage by intention. (small particles of it will remain)
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- DiggyJohnson 15d ago
  Using the toilet in this manner is the worst option. You’re sending your trash straight into the water treatment system let alone damaging your building pipes and whatnot, though it sounds like you rent. I respect the approach and find it fascinating even though I think it’s crazy aha. I don’t think this would be very compatible at all with a lot of people’s cooking habits or hobbies, etc. Or if your apartment complex has an inconvenient garbage disposal location. And there’s a lot of garbage I wouldn’t feel comfortable putting in the freezer. How do you handle bathroom trash? I’m thinking feminine hygiene products specifically. Surely you don’t recommend flushing those right?
- 201984 15d ago
  >Oh, you can also just freaking flush small things down the toilet. People with this attitude are why the drains in my apartment keep backing up and my landlord sends emails threatening to evict whoever's flushing things they shouldn't.
dofm 15d ago
"In total, Britain’s Environment Agency calculated that a conventional cotton bag needed to be reused 173 times to beat plastic. Denmark’s equivalent public body estimated a similar ratio." I think there's a thing about food shopping here. Americans just don't go shopping as frequently, so you're better off with paper bags in the back of your car. I am a Brit. I have a Lidl cotton bag that I've probably used sixty times already. It augments and will ultimately replace two reusable foldable/pocketable bags from Marks & Spencer that I have used for all of my shopping for at least thirteen years, perhaps more like sixteen. (Genuinely can't remember when I bought them but as early as 2010 seems possible) I shop on foot, about once every four or five days. I wil have used the two M&S bags on more than a thousand journeys. One of them is finally wearing thin. The other goes in my pocket more or less whenever I leave the house. They were themselves made from recycled material (rPET I guess, not cotton). I use two the majority of the time so I am confident I've avoided using at least 1800 plastic bags. (Weird timing, but I did end up needing one last night, annoyingly, because I had to shop in an emergency, but it is the first time in five years or so and it already has a reuse purpose) Reusable shopping bags are easy. A British shopper might even get to 173 uses in a single year.
elil17 15d ago
Such a reductive title/framing. Yes, plastic recycling doesn't work very well. But that doesn't mean that getting rid of trash is simple/there aren't opportunities to reduce waste. Metal recycling, compost, glass bottle reuse, and proper management of landfills are all super important! Also: > In total, Britain’s Environment Agency calculated that a conventional cotton bag needed to be reused 173 times to beat plastic. They make it seem like this is a bad thing but surely the average cotton bag gets used more than 173 times. I've probably used some of my oldest reusable bags like ~1k times.
- yunwal 15d ago
  In New York City where disposable bag bans occurred I’m quite certain the average “reusable” bag gets used a single-digit number of times. Grocery stores charge 25c for a “reusable” bag in the case that you forgot to bring your own, and every household has a bag full of bags that never get used. Now they’ve re-allowed disposable paper bags, which seems sensible to me.
  - elil17 14d ago
    Surely the reusable bags that cost 25c also use a lot less resources to make than a cotton bag. Also, I would argue that the paper bag is the worst of both worlds - more carbon emissions than a plastic bag but also unlikely to be reused.
leonixyz 15d ago
The authors think reusing a cotton bag for 173 times is difficult - that's all we need to say about this article. When recommendation for landfilling comes from this kind of sources, I think we can safely assume we are doing absolutely great with our demands to reuse, repair and recycle!
- AlexandrB 15d ago
  I think it's beyond many people. A typical pattern is that you forget your bag at home and end up buying another one. After this happens a few times you now have an excess of reusable bags such that you will never recoup the "173 times" on all of them.
  - whstl 15d ago
    One solution for this is reusable bags with a deposit that you can give back at the supermarket in exchange for cash. We have this at some supermarkets in Germany.
    - card_zero 14d ago
      So, you forgot your bag, now you just can't have another. This solves the problem of you having any bags.
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- strken 15d ago
  I imagine part of what makes it difficult is that people can and do reuse plastic bags. If I reuse a plastic bag 20 times before it breaks then you now have to reuse your cotton bag 3460 times, which is much harder.
- broken-kebab 15d ago
  One argument for PET packaging bans is that there are people for whom the discipline of disposal is hard. If it's true, than re-using cotton bags for 173 times is hard - on average level, not for you personally.
_def 15d ago
> a conventional cotton bag needed to be reused 173 times to beat plastic So what? That's like a year of grocery shopping maybe. I easily use a tote bag for way longer than that and I'm not trying that hard to live an environment friendly life.
harvie 15d ago
I am still not sold on those reusable plastic bottles and how these are better for environment and health then regular soda bottles. I use maybe one PET water bottle each month when i go for outdoor activities. PET bottle i would buy anyway even if i had reusable one, because i've got stuck somewhere without running water or because i craved bottled icetea or orange juice. After carefully rinsing it. I keep using it for month or so and then dispose it. I only use it for clean tap water. No sugar or anything that might promote unnecessary microbial growth. Non-abrasive rinsing. Store with lid off when not in use. These are usualy made locally in soda bottling companies, so the shipping is cheaper and more ecological than shipping reusable bottles from one central reusable bottle factory (likely abroad). This makes me feel zero guilt when i finaly decide it's used enough to be disposed. Quite often these are reasonably sturdy to be used for months if you keep them in backpack and don't throw them around too much. And the reusable bottles get damaged over time as well if you don't treat them right. Reusable bottle people say something about how refilling that water bottle with water makes it leak BPA or whatever chemicals. That's just insane. I've seen huge grocery market chains storing pallets of those in direct sunlight for months, yet somehow magically that's not leaking enough to violate any regulatory limits. But me puting pure tap water into the bottle automaticaly makes it extremely nasty hormonal disruptor according to some people. On the other hand, i would like to see some sensible regulation on amount of packaging materials vs amount of product these are holding. Shrinkflation and cost cutting caused some products to be ridiculously small compared to amount of packaging they need. (especialy when you realize the relationship between volume of product and surface area covered by packaging is geometricaly increasing the packaging to product ratio when shrinking down). Sometimes it kinda makes sense (pills/medications), sometimes it's kinda stupid (100ml water bottles - and yes, i am aware of airplanes and conference rooms).
0xbadcafebee 15d ago
Before anyone gets all excited by they cherry picked evidence and extremely confident tone, remember this isn't being written by a veteran waste disposal professional, environmentalist, logistics expert, or professor. It's by a "magazine of new and underrated ideas to improve the world". Aka, contrarian armchair experts who did some googling and are now throwing spitballs made to be shallowly convincing enough to make money off it with no skin in the game. Catnip for HN, but 100% unreliable.
SamBorick 15d ago
"Instead of paying more to recycle, we could spend that money far more effectively on other environmental mitigation measures like carbon capture." Yeah, let's stop doing the fairly well established recycling programs that have knock on benefits like reducing pollution, and instead start scaling an entirely unproven and expensive mitigation program. These are some prominent Effect Altruism guys so I know "cause prioritization" is their whole thing. But I think this is just basic contrarianism, because you cant fundraise off the fact that the cultural shift to recycling in the first world has been pretty successful and positive.
- m-ee 15d ago
  Almost all EA takes I’ve read strike me as basic contrarianism
  - joquarky 15d ago
    And their plans all just happen to further empower some already-wealthy people today with the promise of paying it back in the future.
- AlexandrB 15d ago
  The push for recycling has been successful at making people feel better about themselves, not successful at saving energy or raw materials. The article also goes on at length about this, but most of what's put in recycling bins gets thrown out anyways and folks regularly put stuff in recycling bins that can't be recycled, just increasing the cost of recycling programs while lowering their effectiveness. Recycling metal cans and containers is a no brainer, recycling most plastics is of questionable value bordering on actively harmful[1]. [1] https://www.npr.org/2022/10/24/1131131088/recycling-plastic-is-practically-impossible-and-the-problem-is-getting-worse https://www.npr.org/2022/10/24/1131131088/recycling-plastic-...
  - SamBorick 15d ago
    Yes, that is true. From the NPR article: "The real solution is to switch to systems of reuse and refill," Ramsden said. "We are at a decision point on plastic pollution. It is time for corporations to turn off the plastic tap." "Just Bury Your Trash" is arguing "Turn the plastic tap on more please, and don't even bother TRYING to recycle it".
hamdingers 15d ago
Just let me buy things without forcing me to buy so much trash too. Every grocery store item is over-packaged.
- DiggyJohnson 15d ago
  Strongly agree. I wish more things came in jars, cans and sacks. I would pay a premium for this alone. The plastic liner in a tall box workflow adds so much friction to storing using and disposing groceries. I despise cereal boxes.
  - megaman821 15d ago
    Having your cereal crushed and then not eating it is more wasteful than dozens of cardboard boxes. Increasing food waste to decrease packaging waste doesn't make sense; food is way more energy intensive to create than packaging.
    - hamdingers 15d ago
      The cardboard isn't the problem, the plastic is. Looking at energy use of packaging alone is myopic as other comments in this thread have already pointed out. I can go to a bulk store like re_grocery with my own reusable airtight container and buy fresh uncrushed cereal with zero packaging. This should be an option in every grocery store.
twobitshifter 15d ago
I recently learned of Dandora Kenya (Nairobi) and the megadump there and ors waste pickers. It’s worth reading about and considering what happens to your waste. https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/kenya-aid-waste-nairobi-dump-b2838750.html https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/kenya-aid-waste... The total plastic waste in subsaharan africa is expected to increase by 100 Million tons by 2060.
robtherobber 15d ago
Every now and then I'd come across articles from this source and thought that they were decent. Perhaps not the best, but reasonably well researched and argued. But coming across this statement kind of sealed the deal for me in the wrong way: > Instead of paying more to recycle, we could spend that money far more effectively on other environmental mitigation measures like carbon capture. Pure unadulterated bollocks, I'm sorry to say. I shall flag this source whenever emerges in my feed. > Sufficiently well-worn cotton tote bags can beat plastic for environmental cost, but only for the most consistent among us. We simply don't need to rely on the "most consistent among us", because these things -- and so, so many others -- can be legislated, enforced, stopped, controlled etc. Businesses make and sell plastic bags because no one stops them and they're convenient (as well as a serious environmental problem). Should governments do the job they are supposed to do (or simply step aside and let the society organise in that particular respect), plastic bags would cease to be a problem. I am somewhat disappointed, I guess.
- DiggyJohnson 15d ago
  I agree with a lot of what you’re saying but flagging a post because you no longer trust the source is a misuse of the functionality.
  - robtherobber 15d ago
    I suppose you're correct, and it's my frustration speaking there. That said, the internet is absolutely immense in terms of articles to read, an arguably poor source is simply not worth the effort.
- throwaway2037 15d ago
  I didn't flag the article, but I have similar feelings to you. The weird part: This media source is usually high-quality with well-researched and well-written (balanced) and articles. They really fell flat on this one. And yes, the carbon capture comment made me clench my fist. I have been listening to that hogwash for at least twenty years with very little progress made. I'm not saying that it cannot work, but I doubt with current technology it can be done in an economical manner.
rimworld 15d ago
[dead]
yndoendo 15d ago
Proper recycling improves national security and the well-being of their citizens. Good example is South Korea. They were devastated after continual war in the 1950s. So they implemented mandatory recycling. Food waste goings into bin A, metals into bin B, plastics into bin C, ... This allows for reducing the cost of recycling by presorting items. It helped them rebuild and become stronger. To this day they still properly separate their garbage to ease recycling. Recycling food waste and scraps means creating a nutrient rich fertilize resource. Tossing them into a land fill removes nutrients from the food chain. USA food has less nutrients than years past because of the push for synthetic nitrogen fertilizers.
collabs 15d ago
> By contrast, there is no danger of running out of paper. We can always grow more trees, and that is in fact a decent way of removing carbon from the atmosphere. The silicon used to make glass is one of the most abundant elements on Earth. Please correct me if I am wrong, but from what I understand, not all sand is created equal. Desert sand, like in the Sahara Desert, is eroded by wind. The smooth, round, and tiny grains are practically useless for both construction concrete and high-grade glassmaking. We want something called silica sand. Moreover, while industrial sand may be abundant worldwide, the same localized shortages that we face with petroleum or cobalt (from the article) also apply to sand.
- broken-kebab 15d ago
  On one hand, you are not wrong, sands differ in qualities, but the question is what you need to make from it. Glass-grade sands aren't everywhere, but they are abundant anyway. Some industries, like solar panels production, require higher purity, and such sands reserves are way more limited.
  - collabs 15d ago
    What I left unsaid to be polite was if they missed/hand waved something that even I know, what else is missing from this analysis? It feels like a gross oversimplification of a very real, very multifaceted problem.
    - broken-kebab 15d ago
      I don't think it's fair, while "one of the most abundant" isn't well-nuanced wording, but the argument is that glassmaking won't exhaust glass-grade sands in historically near times, and it's true.
- throwaway2037 15d ago
  To add more fuel to your well-lit (!) fire, landfill projects also cannot use desert sand for similar reasons. It really needs sand from a river because it can create a stable bed for soil in a way that desert sand cannot.
throwaway2037 15d ago
I have a hot take that rarely gets mentioned when people talk about recycling: It creates jobs. For rich countries, I think we can do a fair trade of a bit less landfilling in favour of more recycling to create some long-term, reliable jobs. I'm not saying that recycling will be cheaper, rather it is an expense that we can afford. For those unaware, amoung rich countries, the US has incredibly low rates of garbage incineration: ~12%. (Shockingly, Canada is even lower: ~5%!) When I was growing up in the US, we were always (incorrectly) taught that garbage incineration is terrible for the environment and creates a lot of air pollution. When I got older and was fortunate enough to visit other countries, I learned that many rich countries do with their garbage: (1) recycle what they can, (2) bury a tiny fraction that cannot be burned, and (3) burn the rest. Modern flue gas treatment techniques can remove the vast majority of air pollution (except CO2) from garbage incineraters exhaust stacks. Again: The tech isn't cheap, but it is necessary if you want to have clean air.
zejn 15d ago
Has anyone tried recycling old t-shirt into a shopping bag?
0xbadcafebee 15d ago
The best trash management solution is: don't create trash. Buy in bulk and from low packaging sources. Compost organic matter, recycle paper/cardboard/metal/glass, and you end up with a tiny amount of genuine trash. Use reusable rags and wash them in cold water (you don't need heat to remove dirt and grease, just good soap). Don't use single use products. Result: waste is minimal and way less harmful. The world used to work just fine before single-use plastics. We started using them because it increased profits.
- hbd-investor 14d ago
  Landfills are also a private moneymaking scam, They are owned by private companies, who will make tons of money taking in trash by the ton, then they get paid for 50 years of bogus inspections. After 80 years these private companies will go bankrupt after the owner extracted all the profits. These landfills will remain deadly for 10,000 years. There will be no company around to be liable in the future and will front the money to repair the landfills. Pretty much all of them will be leaking in the future and poisoning the groundwater for thousands of years. Landfills don't fix the problem, they just dump it onto the humans of the future
Mr_Eri_Atlov 14d ago
Something about the energy comparison of a cotton bag vs a plastic bag seems mathematically off, not really taking into account the costs of petroleum extraction/war to maintain extraction forever
ZeroGravitas 14d ago
The emphasis on cotton tote bags seems weird. It's like the attacks on EVs that focus on cobalt or copper mining. You wonder if they realize that those materials are used for other things too. Or is their ire mysteriously specific in its targets? Similar to the classic anti-recycling contrarian article in the 90s that argued that washing in warm water heated via coal generated electricity caused pollution. But didn't dwell on any ideas to remove coal from the wider electricity system, or introduce heat pumps, because that wasn't "contrarian". You can cut the gordian knot in the current case by using a tote made of recycled cotton (and/or plastic).
seobotaicom 14d ago
[flagged]

100 points by eamag 15d ago

This all makes tons of sense. Recycling metal works, other recycling may not. Cloth bags make sense if you have a few of them and use them hundreds of times. Reduce still makes sense so why not focus on reduce.

tfourb 15d ago

Meanwhile, New York exports its trash to the mid west and microplastics are found on the top of Mount Everest.

analog31 15d ago
Canada also ships trash to the US.

toomuchtodo 15d ago

"I am once again asking you to consider plasma gasification." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification InEnTec says its plasma technology effectively destroys PFAS - https://www.wastetodaymagazine.com/news/inentec-says-its-plasma-technology-effectively-destroys-pfas/ https://www.wastetodaymagazine.com/news/inentec-says-its-pla... - August 23rd, 2024 Production of high quality syngas from argon plasma gasification of plastic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41623879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41623879 (September 2024) (0 comments) Plasma gasification versus incineration of plastic waste: Energy, economic and environmental analysis - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fuproc.2022.107470 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fuproc.2022.107470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38994374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38994374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38722984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38722984

murderfs 15d ago
What's the point of this when incineration is an option? Even its wikipedia page has only negatives compared to incineration. > Air emissions can be cleaner than landfills and similar to that of incinerators. > Large initial investment costs relative to that of alternatives, including [...] incineration. > Operational costs are high relative to that of incineration.
- toomuchtodo 15d ago
  I think you misread the Wikipedia page. Plasma gasification air emissions are cleaner with costs being somewhat higher than incineration. Plasma gasification breaks matter down at the molecular level versus combustion of incineration. With plasma gasification, you are paying more to end with a more inert end material and reduced hazardous process byproducts.
  - murderfs 15d ago
    I interpret "can be cleaner than X and similar to that of Y" to mean "inferior to that of Y, but kinda close". Otherwise, it would be "cleaner than X and Y".
    - hbd-investor 14d ago
      Plasmification is cleaner than incineration A good example is a old PCB board with Lead solder thrown carelessly into the trash A incinerator gets hot enough to melt organics, but it won't turn the lead into gas Instead the lead will end up in either the exhaust gases or in the ashes. These ashes will be thrown into a landfill. Over the course of 10,000 years these landfills will end up leaching this lead into groundwater supplies and ending up in our food, soil and in plants. Plasmification on the other hand, this lead ends up encased in a slag, and will remain that way easily for millions of years. The lead atoms will be locked in a obsidian glasslike rock. All the bad stuff like heavy metals etc... will end up in the soil for a incinerator, Organics like plastic will be broken down into their base elements carbon/oxygen/nitrogen/water While all the bad stuff gets encased in slag for Plasmification
dennis_jeeves2 15d ago
Seems to rival incarceration or probably is better.

ImHereToVote 15d ago

If a country burns coal. It should burn trash first, before the coal.

Flavius 15d ago
Absolutely, but green activists are actively fighting against burning trash. This needs to stop. Even if a country doesn't burn coal it should still burn trash instead of sending it to poor countries. People need to take responsibility for the trash that they generate.
- butlike 15d ago
  Yeah, burning trash isn't a great answer
  - ch4s3 15d ago
    I'd say it depends. Amager Bakke in Denmark is a combined heat and power plant that burns waste and emits 687 grams of CO2 per kWh vs natural gas at 290 to 930 grams per kwh and coal at 900 to 1,050 grams per kwh. This makes burning trash CO2 competitive with Natural Gas. Using it for district heating probably improves the picture here because resistive electrical heating on a standard grid emits more CO2 than natural gas heat or pumped district heating. It plausible that in cold climates burning trash has significant advantages.
  - Flavius 15d ago
    90% of countries use some kind of fossil fuel to generate electricity or heat, so burning trash instead won't increase the CO2 emissions. The rule is simple: if you already burn fossil fuels, you should burn trash instead.
    - butlike 14d ago
      I disagree. Burning trash creates an implicit stopgap where the trash burning is better than the fossil fuels, so the process is placated until the trash burning isn't good enough, or its downsides rear their ugly heads. Instead of turning to trash burning as a solution if fossil fuels are already being burnt, a more long-term 3rd solution should be explored while still in the 'unsatisfactory' mindset.

axus 15d ago

Hopefully energy used will become less important. CO2 emissions seem like the biggest threat to our long term health. Microplastics also matter, a bit. How much plastic is escaping into the environment from the recycling process vs. landfill? What are the CO2 output of landfill vs. recycling? I imagine burning would be the worst option for these. Not surprised that the market forces tended towards the most energy efficient waste disposal systems; glad we don't have mountains of trash or poor landfills.

duggan 15d ago

I don't remember energy use being the problem with plastic bags? It was plastic bags being absolutely everywhere in the environment. Streets, parks, trees. Wrapped around anything sticking out of the ground. On your face on a windy day. Pollution is the problem with plastic. Probably health, too, now that microplastics are being recognized as an issue.

crab_galaxy 15d ago
Every winter in my city, once the leaves all fell, our trees would be draped in shredded plastic bags. Banning single use plastic bags has done a significant amount to beautify this place.
- justonceokay 15d ago
  When visiting Seattle for the first time my mom was simultaneously outraged at the lack of plastic bags and the recycling bins everywhere, and also in awe at how clean the city was. Never did the two thoughts cross each other in her head
  - embedding-shape 15d ago
    > When visiting Seattle for the first time my mom was simultaneously outraged at the lack of plastic bags and the recycling bins everywhere The first part I kind of get, humans get used to stuff they get, and get frustrated when it disappears without them really understanding why, it's kind of understandable. But why would she be outraged about recycling bins being more readily available? Are the recycling bins like really ugly/disgusting, or why would they upset someone? Sounds like being upset about there being too many libraries or something.
    - vel0city 15d ago
      > Sounds like being upset about there being too many libraries or something. You joke but people who complain about public recycling bins would also likely be the ones to complain about public libraries too. I've encountered many people who think libraries exist to poison the minds of the youth and somehow make homelessness a problem and we should shut them all down to alleviate the homeless issues in our communities and ensure higher community standards in education (mostly, go read the bible at church, that's all you need).

hank2000 15d ago

I don’t understand how plastic bags for “100 years at current rates” is an argument FOR its longevity/being fine?

bensyverson 15d ago
Yes… I don't think the author is thinking on a long enough time horizon. I'm curious what happens to these landfill sites in 100, 1000 and 10k years. Do they inevitably break down and leak into the water table? Do they eventually stop off-gassing and become inert? Do they become fossilized layers of sediment on a long enough horizon? If we maintain our current waste levels, how much land is required by the year 3000?
- hbd-investor 14d ago
  These landfills will eventually breakdown and leak, dumping microplastics and dangerous chemicals into the groundwater which in turn will poison the people drinking from wells, and will float up during heavy rains to poison the plants. thousands of years becomes a long time, it makes more economic sense to burn it for energy, rather than performing a thousand years of inspections and repairs for every landfill

xd1936 15d ago

The argument that is pro-polyethylene plastic bags over cotton completely ignores the source: Renewable plants that are grown and harvested, vs. finite fossil fuels extracted from the Earth and refined. > Instead of a simple blowing and sealing process, the cotton must be made into yarn, woven into fabric, prepared, dried, sized, dyed, and finished, which takes around 1,725 megajoules, around 3,050 times as much energy. That conveniently ignores the drilling, extracting, transporting, refining, and transporting again to make "polyethylene resin".

frotaur 15d ago
The energy to make the cotton bags presumably also involves lots of drilling and extracting, at least currently.
_aavaa_ 15d ago
> That conveniently ignores the drilling, extracting, transporting, refining, and transporting again to make "polyethylene resin". It also ignores the energy requirements to grow the cotton. This isn't the gotcha you think it is.
- Reubachi 15d ago
  The energy requirements for growing cotton being largely the sun, and a resource which makes up most of the universe (yes, I know water is several steps from hydrogen). ((And the tangentials like the fertilizers, dieslel etc.)) Compared to the energy requirements of petroleum based products: Incredible density and pressure acting on sufficient organic matter(thousands of times greater than growing cotton), on millenium time scales, then requiring several incredibly expensive and commoditization refining/distribution practices, and the end product is then ceremoniously burned off as poison or discarded into the aether. It is 100 percent the "gotcha OP thought it is". However I do see/realize the fallacy you're pointing out in that the lesser of two evils is still evil.
  - mschild 15d ago
    I think the main point is that this post is not a good faith attempt to convince people otherwise. It's a shoddly researched opinion piece that has little to no merit as it ignores the complexities of producing either item.

conorbergin 15d ago

I think using a cotton bag 173 times to beat plastic bags and a mug 1,000 times to beat disposable cups sounds completely reasonable.

dinkblam 15d ago
thats assuming the plastic bag is used once, but i've always reused them, sometimes had the same bags for 10 years however i have never re-used a paper bag because they are awfully loud and cannot be compressed. it is the worst kind of bag.
- add-sub-mul-div 15d ago
  I reused all my grocery store plastic bags for disposing of cat litter and other trash. When those bags went away I had to start buying new plastic bags for the first time.
  - DiggyJohnson 15d ago
    That’s funny because when my locality switched from plastic to paper bags I was annoyed at having to buy trash bags for the bathroom for the first time but found the paper bags were excellent for litter cleanup since they stand up on their own and are easier to scoop into than a smaller fluttery plastic bag.
- ch4s3 15d ago
  Turning a plastic grocery bag into a small bathroom trashcan liner is IMO the perfect reuse. it displaces a thicker plastic bag and ensures the grocery bag goes into a landfill.
- dkarl 15d ago
  My grocery store now uses slightly thicker plastic bags, and I've found that you con reuse them dozens of times; I've had the same bags in my car for over a year. Unfortunately, when they deliver, they use brand-new bags, and they don't accept them back for reuse, so a lot of them get thrown away after a single use.

smcg 15d ago

Not every place has space for landfills... which is why we often ship trash over to low-income countries.

dghlsakjg 15d ago
There’s precious few places on earth that don’t have room for landfills, and those places will be shipping their refuse whether it is sent as “recycling” or as trash. The article also points out that incineration is an option to reduce volume, but expensive. There are cases of shipping trash around, but it has more to do with it being cheaper to send a container of garbage somewhere than dispose of it locally. Cost is the constraint, not available space.
Symmetry 15d ago
There's a very nice park near where I live that used to be a landfill. Space isn't really a concern. https://maps.app.goo.gl/vCeyDb9tbm29zr549 https://maps.app.goo.gl/vCeyDb9tbm29zr549 It's much more the case that we ship plastic to be recycled to other countries than trash. The problem is that then the unrecyclable plastic mixed in often ends up in rivers.
cucumber3732842 15d ago
>Not every place has space for landfills... because we're stupid and let the anti-landfill people decide what acceptable space is Fixed that for you. My municipality is staring down getting screwed bad in the 2030s so I've gone down the rabbit hole.
throwaway2037 15d ago
Can you give a specific example of a rich country that is "ship[ping] trash over to low-income countries" in 2026? It must be a tiny minority at this point.
- deleted 14d ago
  [deleted]

lillecarl 15d ago

Just burn your trash https://www.energimyndigheten.se/en/news/2025/from-waste-to-wealth---swedens-comprehensive-approach-to-energy-recovery/ https://www.energimyndigheten.se/en/news/2025/from-waste-to-... My understanding is that biological decomposition of waste creates methane which is a worse greenhouse gas than CO2.

elil17 15d ago
That's only if it's buried. Properly managed compost is the best option.
- tclancy 15d ago
  Is that something I can do with plastic though?
sigilis 15d ago
Burning waste is listed in the article as an even better for the environment, but somewhat more expensive method. The methane that landfills produce is routinely captured and burned for power, they may otherwise flare it off before it can contribute to the greenhouse effect. This is also mentioned in the article.
AlexandrB 15d ago
The thing with methane is that it has a lifespan of something like 10 years in the atmosphere before it breaks down to CO2 + water, while CO2 persists for centuries. I suspect that burning would release more net CO2 than emitting the methane and having it eventually break down to CO2. [1] https://science.nasa.gov/earth/explore/earth-indicators/methane/ https://science.nasa.gov/earth/explore/earth-indicators/meth... > A molecule of methane traps more heat than a molecule of CO2, but methane has a relatively short lifespan of 7 to 12 years in the atmosphere. CO2 can persist for hundreds of years or more.
- dbdr 15d ago
  I you emit the methane, you have one molecule of CH₄ for 10 years, then one molecule of CO₂ for x years. If you burn the methane, you have one molecule of CO₂ for x years. Burning seems strictly better. (If you use the heat of the burning to offset other emissions, it gets even better)

rapnie 15d ago

In the Netherlands the cradle to cradle hype of some years ago has created a paper reality where waste is turned magically into building material and can thus be effectively dumped anywhere in the environment.

throwaway2037 15d ago
I don't understand this comment. As I understand, many types of incineration (coal, garbage, etc.) produces some amount of fly ash. This can be used when making concrete. I think that is a good way to dispose of fly ash.

jschveibinz 15d ago

Other papers/articles on this topic: Tierney: "The Reign of..." https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-of-recycling.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-... Kinnaman: "Is it Time to..." https://www.vox.com/2016/2/13/10972986/recycling https://www.vox.com/2016/2/13/10972986/recycling Kinnaman, Thomas C. "Determining the Socially Optimal Recycling Rate." Resources, Conservation and Recycling, vol. 85, 2014, pp. 5–10, doi:10.1016/j.resconrec.2013.11.002.

cogman10 15d ago

> A returnable milk bottle takes much more energy to produce and much more fuel to transport than a plastic carton, and has to make around ten or more trips to use less energy than a bottle made from polyethylene plastic. This seems like the weakest of presented arguments. Just 10 trips and it's more environmentally friendly? Yeah, seems like reusable milk bottles wins over plastic. That's what, ~10 weeks for payback?

marcosdumay 15d ago
Returned bottles have a finite lifetime after what they have to be trashed. Glass bottles tend to be reused some (small) tens of times, plastic bottles certainly last a lot less.
- cogman10 15d ago
  Google AI is saying 25->30 on average with a high of 50. That still ends up being translated to 1/2 to 1/3 (up to 1/5th) the energy of plastic. Glass is also one of the few good cases for recycling.
  - marcosdumay 15d ago
    Granted, glass bottles are also the one good case for recycling glass. But keep in mind the article's energy number is for plastic bottles, glass uses more energy. Returnable glass bottles are probably better than disposed plastic ones. Returnable plastic bottles (for food) probably aren't.
    - cogman10 15d ago
      I dug into the linked article because I think the short blurb was a bit vague. This was it's conclusion. (R-PET -> Recycled polyethylene) > Results show that R-PET bottle has the lowest impact for all the selected LCA categories, followed by PET bottle, returnable glass bottle with 8 use cycles, and finally non-returnable bottle. This is due to the savings of virgin materials, its low weight and its lower energy consumption in the production phase and transports. The most impactful solution is the non-returnable glass bottle, while better results are obtained using returnable glass bottles: using many times the same bottle, there is only a production and disposal phase, then the majority of the impacts are connected to the cap, label and washing and transport phase. However, even considering 30 use cycles before the glass bottle disposal, its impact is not comparable to the R-PET bottle. Perhaps, reducing the glass bottle weight as much as possible and modifying the cap, its environmental impact could be reduced, but there are still some researches to do for ensuring a bottle shock resistance. According to the MLI proposed, non-returnable glass bottles are the worst material option, followed by PET, R-PET and finally returnable glass bottles. As far as this indicator is concerned, investing on glass bottles reuse and augmenting the incentives of the bottle restitution will help to reduce the marine litter. Furthermore, from a methodological point of view, possible changes could be made to this indicator, such as the adding of other factors or the use of specific weight for each parameter, as already expected but not applied in this study. [1] The study argues that glass bottles shouldn't be used beyond 8 times mainly because of the other environmental factors around washing and relabeling. I'm not actually sure where the OP got 10 from. I guess the only additional defense I'd offer over reusing glass is the chemicals used in washing get removed in water treatment and glass doesn't ultimately turn into microplastics (Although... the lid does which is unfortunate and could potentially be fixed [2]). [1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11367-020-01804-x https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11367-020-01804-x [2] https://www.anses.fr/en/content/caps-glass-bottles-contaminate-beverages-microplastics https://www.anses.fr/en/content/caps-glass-bottles-contamina...

dguest 15d ago

These arguments tend to ignore that a reusable thing is often just a lot better at whatever it does. You can put a few liters of milk in a reusable bag without triple bagging it. You don't have to worry that it will split open and spill out on the ground. You can use the bag to pack for road trips, to store kid's snacks and toys, as a gym bag, etc. Groceries aren't the only thing anyone caries and people go further than between their boot and fridge. In Switzerland grocery stores have been promoting reusable (recycled plastic) bags for years, and people use them for everything: I saw someone in Interlaken carrying firewood with one. So: - To people promoting reuse: maybe go beyond the environmental impact and appeal to quality of life. Having bag or two in your boot all the time is a good idea. - To people promoting single use: others have pointed out that you need to address the other environmental problems beyond energy, but also acknowledge that you're asking people to find a replacement for their everyday tote bags as well.

Symmetry 15d ago

The article mentions the energy benefits from recycling aluminium but fails to mention the also large (but not as large) savings from recycling glass. Please recycle your aluminium and glass even if it's probably wiser to throw out plastic in most localities.

joekrill 15d ago

Penn & Teller have a Bullshit! episode about this (Season 2, Episode 5). Well, it's technically about recycling, but it makes the claim that landfills are not a bad thing, and much better than the current recycling situation, in most cases. That episode has always stuck with me, and I've always wondered how valid their argument is.

doctoboggan 15d ago
I remember watching that as a young teen with a libertarian bent. As an old man who no longer identifies as libertarian that episode for some reason has stuck with me as the arguments were pretty compelling. I agree and would like to know if the calculations have changed today or if their argument is still valid.
- hbd-investor 14d ago
  Their argument was NEVER valid, Penn and Teller never addressed how long this trash actually takes to break down (Estimates are as high as 10,000) years. This means for 10,000 years you would need to inspect the landfill every year, and repair it when the landfill breaks. In actuality what will happen is that all these buried landfills will break, all the bad stuff will leak out and enter the ground water. The groundwater becomes polluted, the plants start dying. And you end up with dead dirt that nothing will grow in. The people advocating for landfills now, are not going to be around 500 years from now to see the results of their selfish thinking. The primary issue is that we took elements naturally found in nature and used them to create manmade synthetic material, that nature has no tools to deal with. And these manmade synthetic material will eventually break down small enough to the point where quantum forces take over (nanoscale sized particles) and enter the groundwater. And plants and animals will drink in these manmade synthetic materials the size of nanometers, and the body has nothing that can breakdown or deal with these manmade synthetic materials. Putting a piece of shit into icecream and mixing it is easy. Unmixing a icecream mixed with shit to remove the shit is scientifically impossible. For billions of years, high-density elements (lead, cadmium, mercury, rare earth elements, arsenic) were locked away in solid mineral ores, buried under hundreds of feet of rock. Surface biology only ever encountered them as faint, background trace elements. We mined gigatons of these ores, refined them to near-100% purity, combined them with synthetic chemicals, and packed them into hyper-dense landfill cells right above or near freshwater aquifers. Landfills are fundamentally a temporal transfer mechanism. They take the immediate waste generated by modern high-consumption lifestyles—cheap electronics, disposable packaging, synthetic textiles, convenience goods—and bury it out of sight, converting a present-day logistical crisis into a slow-motion geological problem for future generations.

general_reveal 15d ago

In an apartment, I’ve learned not to even have a garbage bin. If I have garbage I make a small bag and throw it out, or keep it in the freezer until I go out. Frozen trash doesn’t smell and doesn’t attract anything :) Of course, this requires you to have less trash , which is very easy if you simply take a few seconds to go outside and throw your food out after lunch/dinner. Everything else is just dry scraps usually. There’s always the fridge :) All in all, there is no concept of “garbage”, “garbage bin” , or any kind of “garbage accumulation” in my apartments. Oh, you can also just freaking flush small things down the toilet. Seriously, it’s like a little mini garbage. Only advise this for people with great water pressure (lucky you!). If I had a backyard, I’d be burning and burying garbage too, man. Last but not least, never ever buy expensive garbage bags. It’s literally going in the garbage, man.

lukan 15d ago
Erm, was that part about keeping trash in the freezer serious? For me a freezer is for food, I don't mix that with garbage by intention. (small particles of it will remain)
- deleted 15d ago
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DiggyJohnson 15d ago
Using the toilet in this manner is the worst option. You’re sending your trash straight into the water treatment system let alone damaging your building pipes and whatnot, though it sounds like you rent. I respect the approach and find it fascinating even though I think it’s crazy aha. I don’t think this would be very compatible at all with a lot of people’s cooking habits or hobbies, etc. Or if your apartment complex has an inconvenient garbage disposal location. And there’s a lot of garbage I wouldn’t feel comfortable putting in the freezer. How do you handle bathroom trash? I’m thinking feminine hygiene products specifically. Surely you don’t recommend flushing those right?
201984 15d ago
>Oh, you can also just freaking flush small things down the toilet. People with this attitude are why the drains in my apartment keep backing up and my landlord sends emails threatening to evict whoever's flushing things they shouldn't.

dofm 15d ago

"In total, Britain’s Environment Agency calculated that a conventional cotton bag needed to be reused 173 times to beat plastic. Denmark’s equivalent public body estimated a similar ratio." I think there's a thing about food shopping here. Americans just don't go shopping as frequently, so you're better off with paper bags in the back of your car. I am a Brit. I have a Lidl cotton bag that I've probably used sixty times already. It augments and will ultimately replace two reusable foldable/pocketable bags from Marks & Spencer that I have used for all of my shopping for at least thirteen years, perhaps more like sixteen. (Genuinely can't remember when I bought them but as early as 2010 seems possible) I shop on foot, about once every four or five days. I wil have used the two M&S bags on more than a thousand journeys. One of them is finally wearing thin. The other goes in my pocket more or less whenever I leave the house. They were themselves made from recycled material (rPET I guess, not cotton). I use two the majority of the time so I am confident I've avoided using at least 1800 plastic bags. (Weird timing, but I did end up needing one last night, annoyingly, because I had to shop in an emergency, but it is the first time in five years or so and it already has a reuse purpose) Reusable shopping bags are easy. A British shopper might even get to 173 uses in a single year.

elil17 15d ago

Such a reductive title/framing. Yes, plastic recycling doesn't work very well. But that doesn't mean that getting rid of trash is simple/there aren't opportunities to reduce waste. Metal recycling, compost, glass bottle reuse, and proper management of landfills are all super important! Also: > In total, Britain’s Environment Agency calculated that a conventional cotton bag needed to be reused 173 times to beat plastic. They make it seem like this is a bad thing but surely the average cotton bag gets used more than 173 times. I've probably used some of my oldest reusable bags like ~1k times.

yunwal 15d ago
In New York City where disposable bag bans occurred I’m quite certain the average “reusable” bag gets used a single-digit number of times. Grocery stores charge 25c for a “reusable” bag in the case that you forgot to bring your own, and every household has a bag full of bags that never get used. Now they’ve re-allowed disposable paper bags, which seems sensible to me.
- elil17 14d ago
  Surely the reusable bags that cost 25c also use a lot less resources to make than a cotton bag. Also, I would argue that the paper bag is the worst of both worlds - more carbon emissions than a plastic bag but also unlikely to be reused.

leonixyz 15d ago

The authors think reusing a cotton bag for 173 times is difficult - that's all we need to say about this article. When recommendation for landfilling comes from this kind of sources, I think we can safely assume we are doing absolutely great with our demands to reuse, repair and recycle!

AlexandrB 15d ago
I think it's beyond many people. A typical pattern is that you forget your bag at home and end up buying another one. After this happens a few times you now have an excess of reusable bags such that you will never recoup the "173 times" on all of them.
- whstl 15d ago
  One solution for this is reusable bags with a deposit that you can give back at the supermarket in exchange for cash. We have this at some supermarkets in Germany.
  - card_zero 14d ago
    So, you forgot your bag, now you just can't have another. This solves the problem of you having any bags.
    - deleted 9d ago
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strken 15d ago
I imagine part of what makes it difficult is that people can and do reuse plastic bags. If I reuse a plastic bag 20 times before it breaks then you now have to reuse your cotton bag 3460 times, which is much harder.
broken-kebab 15d ago
One argument for PET packaging bans is that there are people for whom the discipline of disposal is hard. If it's true, than re-using cotton bags for 173 times is hard - on average level, not for you personally.

_def 15d ago

> a conventional cotton bag needed to be reused 173 times to beat plastic So what? That's like a year of grocery shopping maybe. I easily use a tote bag for way longer than that and I'm not trying that hard to live an environment friendly life.

harvie 15d ago

I am still not sold on those reusable plastic bottles and how these are better for environment and health then regular soda bottles. I use maybe one PET water bottle each month when i go for outdoor activities. PET bottle i would buy anyway even if i had reusable one, because i've got stuck somewhere without running water or because i craved bottled icetea or orange juice. After carefully rinsing it. I keep using it for month or so and then dispose it. I only use it for clean tap water. No sugar or anything that might promote unnecessary microbial growth. Non-abrasive rinsing. Store with lid off when not in use. These are usualy made locally in soda bottling companies, so the shipping is cheaper and more ecological than shipping reusable bottles from one central reusable bottle factory (likely abroad). This makes me feel zero guilt when i finaly decide it's used enough to be disposed. Quite often these are reasonably sturdy to be used for months if you keep them in backpack and don't throw them around too much. And the reusable bottles get damaged over time as well if you don't treat them right. Reusable bottle people say something about how refilling that water bottle with water makes it leak BPA or whatever chemicals. That's just insane. I've seen huge grocery market chains storing pallets of those in direct sunlight for months, yet somehow magically that's not leaking enough to violate any regulatory limits. But me puting pure tap water into the bottle automaticaly makes it extremely nasty hormonal disruptor according to some people. On the other hand, i would like to see some sensible regulation on amount of packaging materials vs amount of product these are holding. Shrinkflation and cost cutting caused some products to be ridiculously small compared to amount of packaging they need. (especialy when you realize the relationship between volume of product and surface area covered by packaging is geometricaly increasing the packaging to product ratio when shrinking down). Sometimes it kinda makes sense (pills/medications), sometimes it's kinda stupid (100ml water bottles - and yes, i am aware of airplanes and conference rooms).

0xbadcafebee 15d ago

Before anyone gets all excited by they cherry picked evidence and extremely confident tone, remember this isn't being written by a veteran waste disposal professional, environmentalist, logistics expert, or professor. It's by a "magazine of new and underrated ideas to improve the world". Aka, contrarian armchair experts who did some googling and are now throwing spitballs made to be shallowly convincing enough to make money off it with no skin in the game. Catnip for HN, but 100% unreliable.

SamBorick 15d ago

"Instead of paying more to recycle, we could spend that money far more effectively on other environmental mitigation measures like carbon capture." Yeah, let's stop doing the fairly well established recycling programs that have knock on benefits like reducing pollution, and instead start scaling an entirely unproven and expensive mitigation program. These are some prominent Effect Altruism guys so I know "cause prioritization" is their whole thing. But I think this is just basic contrarianism, because you cant fundraise off the fact that the cultural shift to recycling in the first world has been pretty successful and positive.

m-ee 15d ago
Almost all EA takes I’ve read strike me as basic contrarianism
- joquarky 15d ago
  And their plans all just happen to further empower some already-wealthy people today with the promise of paying it back in the future.
AlexandrB 15d ago
The push for recycling has been successful at making people feel better about themselves, not successful at saving energy or raw materials. The article also goes on at length about this, but most of what's put in recycling bins gets thrown out anyways and folks regularly put stuff in recycling bins that can't be recycled, just increasing the cost of recycling programs while lowering their effectiveness. Recycling metal cans and containers is a no brainer, recycling most plastics is of questionable value bordering on actively harmful[1]. [1] https://www.npr.org/2022/10/24/1131131088/recycling-plastic-is-practically-impossible-and-the-problem-is-getting-worse https://www.npr.org/2022/10/24/1131131088/recycling-plastic-...
- SamBorick 15d ago
  Yes, that is true. From the NPR article: "The real solution is to switch to systems of reuse and refill," Ramsden said. "We are at a decision point on plastic pollution. It is time for corporations to turn off the plastic tap." "Just Bury Your Trash" is arguing "Turn the plastic tap on more please, and don't even bother TRYING to recycle it".

hamdingers 15d ago

Just let me buy things without forcing me to buy so much trash too. Every grocery store item is over-packaged.

DiggyJohnson 15d ago
Strongly agree. I wish more things came in jars, cans and sacks. I would pay a premium for this alone. The plastic liner in a tall box workflow adds so much friction to storing using and disposing groceries. I despise cereal boxes.
- megaman821 15d ago
  Having your cereal crushed and then not eating it is more wasteful than dozens of cardboard boxes. Increasing food waste to decrease packaging waste doesn't make sense; food is way more energy intensive to create than packaging.
  - hamdingers 15d ago
    The cardboard isn't the problem, the plastic is. Looking at energy use of packaging alone is myopic as other comments in this thread have already pointed out. I can go to a bulk store like re_grocery with my own reusable airtight container and buy fresh uncrushed cereal with zero packaging. This should be an option in every grocery store.

twobitshifter 15d ago

I recently learned of Dandora Kenya (Nairobi) and the megadump there and ors waste pickers. It’s worth reading about and considering what happens to your waste. https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/kenya-aid-waste-nairobi-dump-b2838750.html https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/kenya-aid-waste... The total plastic waste in subsaharan africa is expected to increase by 100 Million tons by 2060.

robtherobber 15d ago

Every now and then I'd come across articles from this source and thought that they were decent. Perhaps not the best, but reasonably well researched and argued. But coming across this statement kind of sealed the deal for me in the wrong way: > Instead of paying more to recycle, we could spend that money far more effectively on other environmental mitigation measures like carbon capture. Pure unadulterated bollocks, I'm sorry to say. I shall flag this source whenever emerges in my feed. > Sufficiently well-worn cotton tote bags can beat plastic for environmental cost, but only for the most consistent among us. We simply don't need to rely on the "most consistent among us", because these things -- and so, so many others -- can be legislated, enforced, stopped, controlled etc. Businesses make and sell plastic bags because no one stops them and they're convenient (as well as a serious environmental problem). Should governments do the job they are supposed to do (or simply step aside and let the society organise in that particular respect), plastic bags would cease to be a problem. I am somewhat disappointed, I guess.

DiggyJohnson 15d ago
I agree with a lot of what you’re saying but flagging a post because you no longer trust the source is a misuse of the functionality.
- robtherobber 15d ago
  I suppose you're correct, and it's my frustration speaking there. That said, the internet is absolutely immense in terms of articles to read, an arguably poor source is simply not worth the effort.
throwaway2037 15d ago
I didn't flag the article, but I have similar feelings to you. The weird part: This media source is usually high-quality with well-researched and well-written (balanced) and articles. They really fell flat on this one. And yes, the carbon capture comment made me clench my fist. I have been listening to that hogwash for at least twenty years with very little progress made. I'm not saying that it cannot work, but I doubt with current technology it can be done in an economical manner.

rimworld 15d ago

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yndoendo 15d ago

Proper recycling improves national security and the well-being of their citizens. Good example is South Korea. They were devastated after continual war in the 1950s. So they implemented mandatory recycling. Food waste goings into bin A, metals into bin B, plastics into bin C, ... This allows for reducing the cost of recycling by presorting items. It helped them rebuild and become stronger. To this day they still properly separate their garbage to ease recycling. Recycling food waste and scraps means creating a nutrient rich fertilize resource. Tossing them into a land fill removes nutrients from the food chain. USA food has less nutrients than years past because of the push for synthetic nitrogen fertilizers.

collabs 15d ago

> By contrast, there is no danger of running out of paper. We can always grow more trees, and that is in fact a decent way of removing carbon from the atmosphere. The silicon used to make glass is one of the most abundant elements on Earth. Please correct me if I am wrong, but from what I understand, not all sand is created equal. Desert sand, like in the Sahara Desert, is eroded by wind. The smooth, round, and tiny grains are practically useless for both construction concrete and high-grade glassmaking. We want something called silica sand. Moreover, while industrial sand may be abundant worldwide, the same localized shortages that we face with petroleum or cobalt (from the article) also apply to sand.

broken-kebab 15d ago
On one hand, you are not wrong, sands differ in qualities, but the question is what you need to make from it. Glass-grade sands aren't everywhere, but they are abundant anyway. Some industries, like solar panels production, require higher purity, and such sands reserves are way more limited.
- collabs 15d ago
  What I left unsaid to be polite was if they missed/hand waved something that even I know, what else is missing from this analysis? It feels like a gross oversimplification of a very real, very multifaceted problem.
  - broken-kebab 15d ago
    I don't think it's fair, while "one of the most abundant" isn't well-nuanced wording, but the argument is that glassmaking won't exhaust glass-grade sands in historically near times, and it's true.
throwaway2037 15d ago
To add more fuel to your well-lit (!) fire, landfill projects also cannot use desert sand for similar reasons. It really needs sand from a river because it can create a stable bed for soil in a way that desert sand cannot.

throwaway2037 15d ago

I have a hot take that rarely gets mentioned when people talk about recycling: It creates jobs. For rich countries, I think we can do a fair trade of a bit less landfilling in favour of more recycling to create some long-term, reliable jobs. I'm not saying that recycling will be cheaper, rather it is an expense that we can afford. For those unaware, amoung rich countries, the US has incredibly low rates of garbage incineration: ~12%. (Shockingly, Canada is even lower: ~5%!) When I was growing up in the US, we were always (incorrectly) taught that garbage incineration is terrible for the environment and creates a lot of air pollution. When I got older and was fortunate enough to visit other countries, I learned that many rich countries do with their garbage: (1) recycle what they can, (2) bury a tiny fraction that cannot be burned, and (3) burn the rest. Modern flue gas treatment techniques can remove the vast majority of air pollution (except CO2) from garbage incineraters exhaust stacks. Again: The tech isn't cheap, but it is necessary if you want to have clean air.

zejn 15d ago

Has anyone tried recycling old t-shirt into a shopping bag?

0xbadcafebee 15d ago

The best trash management solution is: don't create trash. Buy in bulk and from low packaging sources. Compost organic matter, recycle paper/cardboard/metal/glass, and you end up with a tiny amount of genuine trash. Use reusable rags and wash them in cold water (you don't need heat to remove dirt and grease, just good soap). Don't use single use products. Result: waste is minimal and way less harmful. The world used to work just fine before single-use plastics. We started using them because it increased profits.

hbd-investor 14d ago
Landfills are also a private moneymaking scam, They are owned by private companies, who will make tons of money taking in trash by the ton, then they get paid for 50 years of bogus inspections. After 80 years these private companies will go bankrupt after the owner extracted all the profits. These landfills will remain deadly for 10,000 years. There will be no company around to be liable in the future and will front the money to repair the landfills. Pretty much all of them will be leaking in the future and poisoning the groundwater for thousands of years. Landfills don't fix the problem, they just dump it onto the humans of the future

Mr_Eri_Atlov 14d ago

Something about the energy comparison of a cotton bag vs a plastic bag seems mathematically off, not really taking into account the costs of petroleum extraction/war to maintain extraction forever

ZeroGravitas 14d ago

The emphasis on cotton tote bags seems weird. It's like the attacks on EVs that focus on cobalt or copper mining. You wonder if they realize that those materials are used for other things too. Or is their ire mysteriously specific in its targets? Similar to the classic anti-recycling contrarian article in the 90s that argued that washing in warm water heated via coal generated electricity caused pollution. But didn't dwell on any ideas to remove coal from the wider electricity system, or introduce heat pumps, because that wasn't "contrarian". You can cut the gordian knot in the current case by using a tote made of recycled cotton (and/or plastic).

seobotaicom 14d ago

[flagged]