From: tylerh@cco.caltech.edu (Tyler R. Holcomb)
Newsgroups: ca.environment
Subject: Re: Plastic Recycling and little reality
Date: 21 Jan 93 18:29:55 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
NNTP-Posting-Host: punisher.caltech.edu


I made this several days ago, my a local software problem made it bounce.
Try #2....


frankm@resonex.com (Frank Muennemann) writes:

>In article <1j7cp7INN8s5@gap.caltech.edu> tylerh@cco.caltech.edu (Tyler R. Holcomb) writes:
>>  [munch]

>>                     ...    Clearly, before recycling is economic,
>>one must reduce the variance of the feedstock....

>Here's something I wonder about: Suppose government were to restrict 
>the variety of plastics which may be used in non-durable containers.
>(OK, so I'm a damn Liberal for thinking gov'ment can solve ANYTHING :-)
>Suppose even that there were a small number of permitted COLORS in
>the plastic.  Marketeers would probably HATE that idea, but maybe they
>could get into distinctive shapes for bottles, or maybe they could
>even sell products based on superior performance of the product rather
>than more distictively colored packaging...

>Would such restrictions on the materials "out there" make it possible 
>to separate the different kinds at (consumer's) recycling time, so that
>PET can be returned to PET, and HDPE to HDPE, etc.?  How restrictive
>could the "list" of allowed plastics be before consumers see a 
>significant constriction of products available on supermarket shelves?

>I suppose glass recycling might be a model for this.  Does anyone
>have numbers demonstrating the success (or lack thereof) of glass
>recycling?

This is a very interesting idea.  I have no facts, but I never let
that stop me.  Here is my guess.
much of the *cosmetic* variance (eg. differnt colors and reflective
materials in the label) could be done away with.  The marketeers
would scream, but that is a good sign that this is probably
a useful thing.  However, I don't think that this would help all that much.

Consider just two classes of products: motor oil containers and milk containers.
Among motor oil containers, there is tremendous cosmetic variance that
could removed with no economic or functional loss.  Most of the containers
use the same underlying material (a polypropylene - ?hexene? copolymer).
Milk containers have very little cosmetic variance: thery are virtually
all uncolored High-density polyethylene.  However, even with the cosmetic
problem resolved, these two plastics are still very different:  the 
the feedstock variance problem has not really been reduced by much.  Why not use
the same plastic for both?  because both applications place very stringent
(and very different) specifications on the packaging material.  "Plastics"
have the great advantages of being lightweight, cheap, and 
*easily varied* to meet the needs of specific applications.  THus, I think
your idea would work for products with similar  specifications.  FOr economic
reasons, most of such products will tend to use similar plastics anyway.

Thus, I think the idea has merit, but will not have (by itself)  have a
very large impact.  I still think charging (by volume) for garbage
is a great first step.
> [munch]
>  I nonetheless believe that it's
>fundamentally the consumer's responsibility to care about what
>he buys and does with his purchases:  Don't buy from manufacturers
>whose products trash the Earth.

Here here.  We agree on this point.

-- 
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Newsgroups: ca.environment