Too be fair, why would you even go to Starbucks in the first place? Kinda on yourself to get scammed there, that whole place is a scam. So they are just doing as people ought to expect from them.
giant corporation lies it’s ass off and pollutes and destroys the world so the CEO and shareholders get a few extra dollars, all without consequences
You don’t say!
Wait until you find out about recycling in general!
More specifically plastic recycling, but yeah.
This is why glass, metal, and paper recycling will always be superior lol.
The recycling movement really ruined any attempt at the federal government regulating/limiting plastic production. Which I have to assume was the purpose.
Actually it was a response to local governments attempting to ban plastic packaging. You know, because they were the ones who had to pay for disposing of it.
Glass bottles of milk or soda got picked up and re-used by the companies that sold stuff in them, metal cans got bought up for use as scrap metal. Municipal garbage only had to deal with stuff like wood, paper, cardboard, and food scraps; stuff that rotted and broke down over time. Plastic though, well, it didn’t break down, it filled up the dumps, and suddenly towns had to constantly be digging new dumps. This was expensive and a bunch of local governments started banning the use of single use plastic packaging. Oil/plastic lobbyists went to state governments and got them to ban the local bans.
Of course this was going to be unpopular, so they also spent a bunch of money funding PR blitz’s to convince everyone plastic recycling was viable, and that it was actually the responsibility of average consumers and municipalities to implement it. And now local governments are burdened with the cost of dealing with all the waste generated by oil and plastic companies.
the recycling movement is, ultimately, a big giant scam designed to shove the burden off onto consumers instead of on the producers.
and most everything but easy and valuable metals still end up more in dumps than being reprocessed in any way, because processing/sorting waste plastic is hard and no one wants to pay the money to do it… So if they suspect one wrong plastic in an entire truckload of plastic recyclables, the entire truck goes to the dump.
I am curious how much petroleum products actually go into making the plastics vs how much energy it costs to recycle it. Is it possible we will see a boon in the recycle market if Oil prices get high enough?
its not about the energy.
its about the cost.
Lets preface this by saying that “plastics” is just a universal word that describes like half a dozen or more types of commonly used polymer materials.
These materials are generally made from waste byproducts from the oil and gas industry, so the oil and gas industry could literally give these byproducts away and it would still be cheaper for them than having to incur disposal costs. fresh plastic will always win on price, as long as petroleum exists (Which may not be as long as some people hope…but thats another discussion)
meanwhile recycling all these plastics require massive complicated machines (if such machines even exist), or hordes of human workers manually sorting the various types. Which already makes recycled plastic too expensive to be anything but a propaganda tool for companies to slap “MADE WITH RECYCLED MATERIALS!” on their label, usually with an asterisk somewhere that says they only used like 10% recycled materials, because again, the sorting, cleaning, processing is so expensive as to make the final pelletized product magnitudes more expensive than fresh raw plastic could ever hope to be… so they only use enough recycled plastic to be able to slap that on their label in hopes of appealing to the environmentalist types.
Which is also why most plastic in the recycle bins ends up at the dump regardless, because if one person on the route is suspected of putting something they shouldnt in their bin, then the truck is sent to the dump where all the plastic is buried with the rest of the trash, because they dont want to deal with any sorting or processing. they just want to dump the truck into pelletizer and be done with it.
If you care about the environment, recycling isnt whats going to save it. getting rid of plastic and replacing it with something sustainable like glass and wood is what will save it.
Recycling plastic is still less cost than manufacturing virgin material. The sorting is effort, but the repelletinzing is not highly complex. As with anything for sale, for a company to stay in business their product has to cover costs and make profit. Recycled plastic is cheaper than new, sometimes not by a huge %/but enough that when oil prices rise the plastic part manufacturers reach out and order a lot more recycled material.
The plastic that is not easily converted back into consumer materials, is repelletized into fuel pellets. These are used in heating and incinerator systems in place of oil, coal and gas fuels. Its still just hydrocarbons at the end.
Recycling plastic is still less cost than manufacturing virgin material.
No it doesnt.
virgin plastic is cheaper.
The only thing that makes recycled plastic remotely viable is state and federal subsidies/incentives/etc… and even those don’t make recycled plastic cheaper. just marginally more affordable.
I am mostly just interested in clean, baled strapless shrink wrap industry.
Plastic recycling basically everywhere is a scam. It requires direct government subsidization to be cost competitive with new plastic. Companies actually advertising that they do it or could do it are missing the forest for the trees or just greenwashing.
Because plastic is a byproduct of oil production. It is a way to get rid of fractions of oil that are not used as fuel. No matter how efficient plastic recycling gets, it will never be cost competitive with new plastic. Refineries will just drop the price of the new plastic to ensure all of it gets sold, since if they couldn’t sell it, they would have to pay to dispose of it.
The real value of plastics isn’t that they’re good materials for things, it’s that they’re a way for oil companies to push the responsibility of disposing of their waste products on to public waste management by laundering it through packaging and cheap junk.
Not exactly true. There are many companies making profit off of recycling. The collecting costs here are by property taxes. Recycling plastic is still less cost than manufacturing virgin material. The sorting is effort, but the repelletinzing is not highly complex. As with anything for sale, for a company to stay in business their product has to cover costs and make profit. Recycled plastic is cheaper than new, sometimes not by a huge %/but enough that when oil prices rise the plastic part manufacturers reach out and order a lot more recycled material.
The plastic that is not easily converted back into consumer materials, is repelletized into fuel pellets. These are used in heating and incinerator systems in place of oil, coal and gas fuels. Its still just hydrocarbons at the end.
Not saying every country is doing this, and often not every city. But where I’m at 96% of collected material is recycled.
Is it all made from byproducts or are some plastics made specific from a batch of crude that is refined in a specific way to yield lots of a specific molecule that is needed? I am seriously asking since I dont have a clue.
As in: us there always e ought waste to create plastic no matter what? As long as we refine car propellant, that is.
So, there are certain products of refining oil that are just in the wrong range of properties to be used in their own right as fuels, over a century of work has gone in to finding uses for the stuff that can’t be fuels, or performing alchemy to make it in to fuel, what’s left over at this point is stuff that just… can’t be made in to fuel. Some of the thickest, densest gunk gets turned in to asphalt for roads, this is called bitumen. Above that is heavy oil used in ships or for heating, then diesel, then kerosene/jetfuel, then Naphtha, then petrol/gasoline, and then stuff like butane and propane.
Naphtha is just in this weird space where it’s too thick to be useful for places where you need the fuel to vaporize in to a gas easily like butane or gasoline, but to light to be used in something where you need it to stay liquid at high temperatures, like diesel. Lots of stuff was tried to find a usage for Naphtha but none of it was economical or had a large enough demand to use enough of it. So they started doing catalytic reformation to it, basically smashing the molecules up to make them lighter. This produces a new mix of stuff, the heavier bits are added to gasoline to raises its octane, but the lighter half of this stuff is too short for use in gas. This lighter stuff is mix of some useful stuff like butane and propane, but then there is ethane and a mix of weird aromatic compounds. These are just not useful as fuels and there isn’t an affordable way to process them in to fuels. So… something needs to be done with them; just venting them is not an option because a lot of it is super carcinogenic stuff like benzene.
And this is the issue, this is the bottom of the barrel left overs after so much processing, it can’t be dumped, it can’t be sold as fuel. It’s only useful as chemical feedstocks for making various plastics and chemicals. If we’re going to refine oil to make diesel, jet fuel, and gasoline, we’re gonna end up with these byproducts and we’re spent a century trying to figure out how to use them as fuel, and there just isn’t an economical way to do so. Ether the fuels get way more expensive to cover the costs of disposing of the junk safely, or they get passed along as plastics, chemicals, and asphalt for everyone else to deal with when they’re not useful anymore.
Have some gold kind stranger (and judging b this information also alchemist, wizard and rocket scientist).
🪙
One point is not clear to me though. Are the benzene amounts from fuel production sufficient for all plastic manufacturing or are they in short supply nowadays because of the risen demand for plastic? Or are they just shifting around their processes to be less fuel optimized to create enough plastic precursors if needed?
So, it’s not just benzene but a whole cocktail of aromatics (carbon molecules with rings in them) in addition to the ethane which is used to make poly ethylene plastic.
To answer your question, no, they never alter production for the sake of making more plastic, rather changes in production are driven by the availability of certain types of crude oil (heavy vs light, sweet vs sour) and demand for certain types of fuel. These changes result In more or less production of plastic precursors as a side effect.
Demand for plastic is almost entirely driven by the availability of the precursors, more supply means a lower price, means more uses for plastic become cost effective and displace other materials. They make far more money selling fuels than they do selling plastics. The margins on fuels are much higher as plastic requires additional inputs, additional manufacturing/processing, and additional marketing to be sold.
The fuel sales are effectively subsidizing the cost of plastic, as it would not be cost effective to produce on its own. Other, cheaper, and easier to manufacture materials would displace its uses if it wasn’t already being produced as a byproduct of fuel.
Thank you for clarifying!
So plastic use is standing on the shoulders of fuel production. Interesting to imagine what materials could emerge as the next default when the prices are not offset by waste disposal needs.
Because plastic is a byproduct of oil production.
I learned this from playing Satisfactory. I mean, I probably actually learned it in school at some point, but Satisfactory really drove it home. One of the first things you learn after unlocking oil is how to process all the excess oil by-product into plastic… And then straight into the shredder for those sweet sweet Ficsit coupons
And in real life, the shredder is plastic packaging and junk that everyone else has to dispose of when they’re done with it. Not the oil companies problem, now it’s the responsibility of local municipal governments. Your tax dollars subsidizing the disposal of oil company byproducts.
Another side of the issue is that recycling is not government mandated - companies can choose on their own to recycle, and this is costly. When we as a society expect companies to maximize profit, it can come as no surprise that they do not voluntarily pay to be ecologically responsible.
This sounds like cardboard propaganda. When everyone knows cardboard is just a way for lumber companies to dispose of their unused tree parts from 2x4 production.
Yah, but hear me out, growing trees doesn’t make the planet get hotter.
It in fact has the opposite effect.
Yeah that just sounds like you’d like humans to live in caves again
Evil corporation is evil.
‘Recyclable’ just means that you - theoretically - CAN recycle something. Doesn’t mean that it’s actually done - and never has.
That word has always been the most blatant dogwhistle of greenwashing.
Yeah. I am ‘fuckable’ in the sense that I can have sex. Still does not mean I have any or much of it.
and then research came out, that recycling is too intensive of a process to be feasible, unless they make biodegradble kinds.
People get hung up on “is it being rrectcled” as justification of use of recycles codes, but these codes extend beyond plastic I think baterries are code 33 or 43 I forget. The idea being when a technology is developed to recycle we have an existing ID for the material.
factoid: those recycling symbols on various shit? none of that is regulated and packagers can put any symbol on anything, recyclable or not.
90% of it ends up in landfills anyway.
Incorrect.
TIL: it IS regulated in 36/50 US states.
What is your source for that? According to the law, they have to use the correct symbol for the type of material. Are ou saying it isn’t enforced enough?
It’s not enforced and not everyone lives in the USA.
https://just-zero.org/our-stories/explainer/the-hidden-truth-behind-recycling-labels-revealed/
Those symbols are being put on plastics that no region anywhere can recycle. They either end up in landfill, or moved to other countries to be burned.
1 and 2 can be commercially and productively downcycled
recycled (not just downcycled). The others are garbage though, and the biggest con was the plastic companies shifting the responsibility onto the consumer.EDIT: you were right they are not commercially recycled (instead they are downcycled, because virgin plastic is currently cheaper). https://oceana.org/blog/recycling-myth-month-plastic-bottle-you-thought-you-recycled-may-have-been-downcycled-instead/
Not sure why you’re still saying the law is not enforced though. I don’t see any evidence for this at least in my country. Companies have to put the correct numbers on their materials, even if they can’t actually be recycled. Not sure what laws there are in other countries besides the USA.
Materials not recycled for consumer goods reuse are often ground and repelletized as fuel pellets. Not great, but better than mining more coal, drilling more oil etc
Recycling in America is a scam 🎶
Always has been. Make the manufacturers/retailers of the product be responsible for the cleanup.
Starbucks is a shit company and people need to stop drinking their slop.
If there’s a local coffee house nearby (there almost always is) then go there instead.
Starbucks is stupid expensive lol.
yea thier overpriced coffee, that is burnt. petes, philz and local coffee bars are good though. or make your OWN.
South Indian Filter coffee that costs like 40-50 INR (≈0.5 Dollars) is a billion times better than any other coffee on this planet.
Allow me to rephrase Starbucks’ claim: “the plastic we said was recyclable decades ago but then found to be prohibitively expensive to recycle, information that didn’t change our practice at all, is now considered recyclable again and wevre taking credit and celebrating but still pawning the task off on whoever takes our garbage”
Polypropylene is #5, which nearly all takeout containers are made form in my experience. My town hasn’t taken any plastic besides 1/2/3 for at least a decade.
1: polyethylene, such as soda bottles
2: high density polyethylene, such as milk jugs (and a pretty good material for flat bearings)
3: pvc, such as medicine bottles
4: low density polyethylene, such as bags
5: polypropylene, such as most food takeout containersIn my opinion, companies should be required to recycle and penalized if they don’t. This word salad of talking about how things are possible is meaningless if it isn’t done.
Some plastic water cups and takeaway containers are 1, but most of them are 5 or 6, in my recent experience.
That means they aren’t very valuable even in recycling. Starbucks would not ignore a potentially reliable revenue stream.
Recycling used to be shipped to China. A couple of years ago China made that illegal.
used to be shipped to SE asia to, until the countries decided to send it back, because they arnt dealing with the filth and waste anymore it was actually polluting those countries to the point its not very feasible. plastic is too expensive to be recycled in the end, its better ot just dump it somewhere.
That’s fair. It’s more than a little disgusting to imagine one country exporting its literal waste to an entirely separate group of people… Countries should have to manage their own trash. But there’s a lot that countries should have to do that will never be done, so ¯_(ツ)_/¯
They still export garbage, just not to China. To poorer countries now.
even some of the SE asian ones are refusing now.
Valuable to say they are recyclable
Plastics recycling, on the whole, is mostly a scam
The scammers are those who say they recycle but don’t. That isn’t recycling itself.
Recycling of plastics only happens when it’s economically feasible to do so. Otherwise it just ends up in the landfill. More than 90% of plastics end up there
The whole concept of most plastics being economically feasible to recycle, by plastering a recycling symbol on every single type of plastic product, is a facade created by the plastics industry to stem the growing backlash against plastic waste that started all the way back in the 1970s
https://grist.org/culture/recycling-symbol-logo-plastic-design/
facade created by the plastics industry
Exactly, instead of satisfying the actual demand for actual recycling, the plastics industry is scamming people by filling up landfills. The customers will pay for environmental damages down the line, instead of upfront for recycling, which is not what they necessarily want. The scammers are making that decision for them without their consent, by making them believe they’re paying for recycling, while they are actually NOT receiving that service.
I’m surprised that this surprises anyone.
giant corporation lies it’s ass off and pollutes and destroys the world so the CEO and shareholders get a few extra dollars, all without consequences
You don’t say!
Starbucks: “ocean, right?”
Recycling goes in the blue
bin.
