The US Produces Nearly 5 Pounds of Trash Per Day Per Person
This post started with a reader comment to my post The US Produces Nearly 5 Pounds of Trash Per Day Per Person.
Hi Mish
I’ve followed your blog for several years now – I always enjoy your insight and analysis.
I read your post today about what to do with the garbage we generate, and it struck close to home for me. I see climate change as high blood pressure, where our overflowing landfills are a ruptured appendix.
The company I’m working with is buying the unrecycled plastic from curbside pickup to convert it into naphtha, ultra-low sulfur diesel, and paraffin wax. Here’s a video that describes it, a shameless plug since my kids are in it.
I thought you might find it interesting. Appreciate your work, Mish – enjoy southern Utah, it’s a beautiful part of the world!
Cheers,
Rick
Rick’s Video
That video is amazingly well produced and quite fascinating.
It turns out things have changed a bit more than I thought, at least for a few companies.
I called Rick and asked how many other companies were doing something similar but he estimated only a handful.
They turn commingled plastics back into wax and oil that can be reused as anything from transportation fuel to new plastic. They can even handle Styrofoam but they do not get very much of it.
The Art of Buying Garbage
Brightmark not only takes garbage, they pay to get better quality garbage (better sorted plastic).
Much of it comes from Chicago. The city would otherwise have to pay a landfill to dump garbage. Instead, Chicago gets paid.
Interestingly, Brightmark does not care much for the typical plastic bottles because they have too high water content and other problems.
But that’s OK because according to Rick, water bottles, clean paper, and aluminum cans are about all that does get recycled elsewhere.
And they do like plastic grocery bags that other recyclers cannot easily deal with.
This kind of innovation is exactly what we need more of.
Mish
I really admire your blog. recycle helps and has a big impact on this world. We must aware and responsible for our surroundings. Our team is right here to help you with everything you need. We can basically do anything from getting rid of waste, overhauling your house, cleaning up for you, disposing of damaged furniture, and throwing away old appliances. The junk and trash in your house should not overpower your home; thus, together with our Junk Removal services, it will be an easy task to eradicate unwanted stuff.
link to southelginjunkremoval.com
In my place (Brittany) plastic garbage is compressed, put in boats (25000 tons each time) and goes in a special factory in Sweden, where it is burnt to produce electricity. I don’t know the underlying financial deal, but maybe this is paid with the produced energy.
Ma femme est Bretonne.
1985 We had created a process where waste unsoarted was unloaded at the plant then food waste redirected for fertilizer and everything else refabricated into large mass building products. Being to early ment funding impossible. Currently everyone has to seperate their garbage only to have it shipped to 3rd world hideouts where it gets burned. Goverment only makes it look like they are recycleing but there are not at all enforcing the 3Rs.
Kudos on the exploratory follow-up. Where I live in central PA, they haul glass, aluminum/metal cans, and most #1 and #2 plastics, as well as corrugated cardboard. As of 18 months ago they were the ones with a viable economy in our area. Maybe it’s changed, dunno.
There is good methodology for recycling OLD corrugated cardboard, too.
Your original piece made some unassailable points though – “the illusion of recycling is real,” to an extent.
Nooooooo!!!! Not the Leggos!!!
Just kidding……pretty cool innovations. I hope they make bank.
They acquired the plant and the technology when they took over RES Polyflow LLC,an Ohio company, in 2018. They got from Goldman the financing for what I believe are Green Bonds so the plant could be finished. Hope it works out well now that the original company is owned by some people with deeper pockets. No public stock yet.
That’s cool!
Here’s another similar innovation with waste plastic turning it into graphene at an affordable cost that I read about the other day. More please!
I like the generation of H as a byproduct of the process.
Speaking of graphene, here’s something else that it can do while removing discarded face masks from the garbage.
New Graphene Face Masks Offer Very High Anti-bacterial Efficiency, Deactivation of Coronaviruses
By CITY UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG
SEPTEMBER 13, 2020
Anti-bacterial efficiency close to 100% under 10-min sunlight and promising results in deactivation of coronaviruses.