Re:Meditations on an inexpensive laundry basket
by lazide on Sunday December 11, 2022 @06:24PM
(#33948768)
The big issue with plastic recycling is getting ‘clean’ plastic.
Both color, and chemically.
If someone leaves their old
laundry basket out in the sun, that will degrade the plastic in a way that will make it unusable if recycled, and there is no easy or scalable way to detect it.
Same with it someone spilled a bunch of nasty pesticides on it, or used it to hold
some kind of toxic heavy metals.
This is rather different than metals, but a similar problem exists with glass (but less severe), which also makes it hard to effectively recycle.
That the raw new material is dirt cheap doesn’t help.
Both color, and chemically.
If someone leaves their old laundry basket out in the sun, that will degrade the plastic in a way that will make it unusable if recycled, and there is no easy or scalable way to detect it.
Same with it someone spilled a bunch of nasty pesticides on it, or used it to hold some kind of toxic heavy metals.
This is rather different than metals, but a similar problem exists with glass (but less severe), which also makes it hard to effectively recycle.
That the raw new material is dirt cheap doesn’t help.