Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them in Indonesia - "Five months earlier, in July 2022, Reuters had given the shoes to a recycling program spearheaded by the Singapore government and U.S. petrochemicals giant Dow Inc. In media releases and a promotional video posted online, that effort promised to harvest the rubberized soles and midsoles of donated shoes, then grind down the material for use in building new playgrounds and running tracks in Singapore... None of the 11 pairs of footwear donated by Reuters were turned into exercise paths or kids’ parks in Singapore. Instead, nearly all the tagged shoes ended up in the hands of Yok Impex Pte Ltd, a Singaporean second-hand goods exporter, according to the trackers and that exporter’s logistics manager. The manager said his firm had been hired by a waste management company involved in the recycling program to retrieve shoes from the donation bins for delivery to that company’s local warehouse. But that’s not what happened to the shoes donated by Reuters. Ten pairs moved first from the donation bins to the exporter’s facility, then on to neighboring Indonesia, in some cases traveling hundreds of miles to different corners of the vast archipelago, the location trackers showed."
Grocers gear up to fight inclusion of compostable bags in plastics ban - "the official regulations, published in June in the Canada Gazette, say there isn’t enough evidence that plant-based “compostable” plastic alternatives will fully break down in nature. As a result, Calgary Co-op’s bags and others like them will be treated in the “same manner as their conventional plastic counterparts,” according to the government. In other words, they’re forbidden as of the end of next year... The Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers (CFIG) has opted to back Calgary Co-op in its fight, warning a ban on compostable bags could impact grocers across the country... The City of Calgary tested the Co-op bags at its municipal composting facility and found they successfully break down... The federal government’s ban will put an end to all manufacturing of plastic shopping bags for domestic sale by the end of the year. Stores must stop using them by December 2023, and manufacturers have to stop making them for export by the end of 2025. The manufacturer that supplies Calgary Co-op will lose roughly half its sales due to the ban, according to Jerry Gao, chief executive and founder of Calgary-based Leaf Environmental Products Inc. “It’s in the millions for sure,” he said. Gao said banning compostable bags will also chill innovation in Canada, which could become a leader in manufacturing compostable plastics because they are often made using starch from corn — a crop grown in abundance here."
Plastic bag bans may unintentionally drive other bag sales - "while plastic grocery bags are viewed as a single-use item, they often find a second use as liners for small trash cans. When these shopping bags are taxed or taken away, people look for alternatives -- which means they buy small plastic garbage bags... while sales of small garbage bags jumped after policies were implemented, sales of larger 13-gallon trash bags -- the size often found in kitchen trash cans -- remained relatively unchanged. This further underscored the double life of plastic grocery bags... "Carryout grocery bags were substituted for similar sizes of trash bags before implementing the regulations," he wrote in the paper. "After the regulations came into effect, consumers' plastic bag demand switched from regulated plastic bags to unregulated bags." The unintended increase in trash bag sales could also be measured by weight. By purchasing 4-gallon trash bags, plastic consumption increased by between 30 and 135 pounds per store per month. The sales of 8-gallon trash bags created an additional 37 to 224 pounds of plastic per store per month."
Plus, supermarkets pay less for bags than individuals, so elasticity of cost absorption aside there're equity concerns
Why Do Some People in New Jersey Suddenly Have So Many Reusable Bags? - The New York Times - "Nicole Kramaritsch of Roxbury, N.J., has 46 bags just sitting in her garage. Brian Otto has 101 of them, so many that he’s considering sewing them into blackout curtains for his baby’s bedroom. (So far, that idea has gone nowhere.) Lili Mannuzza in Whippany has 74. “I don’t know what to do with all these bags,” she said. The mountains of bags are an unintended consequence of New Jersey’s strict new bag ban in supermarkets. It went into effect in May and prohibits not only plastic bags but paper bags as well. The well-intentioned law seeks to cut down on waste and single-use plastics, but for many people who rely on grocery delivery and curbside pickup services their orders now come in heavy-duty reusable shopping bags — lots and lots of them, week after week. While nearly a dozen states nationwide have implemented restrictions on single-use plastic bags, New Jersey is the only one to ban paper bags because of their environmental impact. The law also bans polystyrene foam food containers and cups, and restricts restaurants from handing out plastic straws unless they’re requested... Compared to single-use plastics, the more durable reusable bags are better for the environment only if they are actually reused. According to Shelie Miller, a professor at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability, a typical reusable bag, manufactured from polypropylene, must be used at least 10 times to account for the additional energy and material required to make it. For cotton totes, that number is much higher... The ban in New Jersey, which applies to grocery stores 2,500 square feet or bigger, is meant to encourage in-store shoppers to skip single-use plastic and paper entirely, and instead bring their own reusable bags. But that, of course, doesn’t work for most online orders... Dr. Miller said the bag situation in New Jersey was emblematic of a lot of environmental policies. “If we don’t pay attention to the unintended impacts of policies such as the plastic waste ban, we run into the potential of playing environmental Whac-a-Mole,” she said. “We solve one environmental problem only to create or exacerbate another problem.”"
Plastic, Paper or Cotton: Which Shopping Bag is Best? - Sustainable Living - "Life cycle studies done in Europe and North America have determined that, overall, plastic bags are better for the environment than paper or reusable bags unless the latter are used many times... Generally speaking, bags that are intended to last longer are made of heavier materials, so they use more resources in production and therefore have greater environmental impacts. To equal the relatively low global warming impact of plastic bags, paper and cotton bags need to be used many times; however, it’s unlikely that either could survive long enough to be reused enough times to equal the plastic bag’s lower impact."
Britain's Plastic Bag Fee Is Producing a Huge Spike in the Consumption of Thicker, 'Reusable' Plastic Bags - "The results of plastic bag bans and restrictions are frequently disappointing, and occasionally counter-productive. Take the United Kingdom, where a country-wide bag fee is encouraging consumers to switch from single-use bags to thicker, reusable bags that use more plastic... A University of Sydney study of local bag bans in California found that while they got rid of single-use plastic bags, they encouraged customers to buy thicker garbage bags as substitutes... To that end, the Greenpeace/EIA study recommends either hiking fees on "bags for life" to 70 pence (about $1), or banning them entirely, in order to get people to finally remember to bring their own bags to the grocery store."
It doesn't matter if the environment suffers, because virtue signalling is more important
Of course the gospel cannot be questioned, so they can only double down. I guess it doesn't matter that poor people will be even more badly affected by higher prices (or no bags to buy), or that in other contexts we are told that poverty imposes a cognitive load on poor people so they can't make good choices
Plastic waste and the recycling myth - "Germans are proud of their recycling system. Even children's books spin the tale of the colored bins. Indeed, the nation is celebrated as a recycling role model around the world. When Germany introduced its recycling system with the "green dot" as a symbol in 1991, it was unparalleled... According to official statistics, 48.8 percent of that plastic waste was recycled in Germany. But that figure is deceptive, says Philipp Sommer, a circular economy expert with the German environmental and consumer protection association Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH). "We assume that only 38 percent was actually recycled," he told DW. Germany is not alone in opaque statistics. The lobby group Plastics Recyclers Europe says that reported recycling rates across European countries don't reflect how much material is actually recovered. "The numbers are based on the amount of plastic waste collected rather than the amount of plastics finally recycled," Antonino Furfari, managing director of the lobby group, told DW... All of the "rejected" waste is either sent to landfills, where it sits for centuries, or to incineration sites where it gets burned for heat or energy generation. Yet, this is counted as "recycled." Another oft-forgotten fact about recycling is that the recovered material degrades in quality. Recycled plastic packaging can therefore not simply be used to produce new packaging material. Recycled plastic bags, sandwich wrappers and juice bottles are typically turned into flower pots, coat hangers and other products that don't require high-quality material, such as that associated with food. Experts call this "downcycling."... "We only have 'real' recycling with reusable bottles that are collected [from consumers with help of a deposit system] via supermarkets," he adds. Bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate — or PET — can be cleaned and refilled 25 times before they get recycled. Glass bottles can see 50 uses or more before they need to be recycled... Plastic is cheap, robust and lightweight. It has transformed the way we consume — and in short, made our modern lifestyle possible. Packaging based on synthetic polymers has allowed supermarkets to offer a wider range of fresh produce that stays fresh longer. Computers, toothbrushes and synthetic clothing contain plastic. Modern medicine has also greatly benefited from the disposable plastic syringe... Although some talk of turning back the clock to a pre-plastic era, plastic's ubiquity in our modern lives would make this a huge challenge."
After they got over the surge in endorphins over recycling, Germans moved on to wrecking their power supply with "renewable" energy. What will be the next obsession?
Is Plastic Recycling A Lie? Oil Companies Touted Recycling To Sell More Plastic - "when Leebrick tried to tell people the truth about burying all the other plastic, she says people didn't want to hear it. "I remember the first meeting where I actually told a city council that it was costing more to recycle than it was to dispose of the same material as garbage," she says, "and it was like heresy had been spoken in the room: You're lying. This is gold. We take the time to clean it, take the labels off, separate it and put it here. It's gold. This is valuable." But it's not valuable, and it never has been. And what's more, the makers of plastic — the nation's largest oil and gas companies — have known this all along, even as they spent millions of dollars telling the American public the opposite... Without question, plastic has been critical to the country's success. It's cheap and durable, and it's a chemical marvel."
It's easier to blame big companies than the virtue signallers perpetuating feel-good eco-myths (even when presented with evidence that they're wrong)
Plasticphobes demand that plastic be eliminated but never consider the implications
Shoppers at major supermarkets to pay at least 5 cents per disposable carrier bag from mid-2023 - "Shoppers at any of the major supermarket chains here can expect to pay at least five cents for each disposable bag, regardless of material, they take from around the middle of next year. The charge, which will be determined by supermarket operators, will be applied only at supermarkets run by operators with an annual turnover of more than S$100 million... Minister for Sustainability and the Environment Grace Fu, who announced this in Parliament during her ministry’s Committee of Supply debate on Monday (March 7), said that this initiative will hopefully "encourage Singaporeans to adopt sustainable habits and bring our own bags when shopping at supermarkets and other stores"."
RIP rubbish chutes, especially the pneumatic ones. RIP the environment too, since reusable bags are worse for the environment under real life conditions
It's easier to ban plastic bags than fix waste disposal infrastructure - that's why China did it
Amidst Bag Legislation Trend, Survey Shows 'Reusable' Shopping Bags are Minimally Reused - "although many believe 'reusable' bags are more environmentally friendly than the alternatives, shoppers routinely forget them at home and use them far less frequently than intended. And, when 'reusable' bags are used, they are often never cleaned. "While most consumers said they prefer 'reusable' bags, 61% reported that they used plastic bags during their last grocery shopping trip," said Jason McGrath, the study's lead researcher. "The actual reuse rate of 'reusable' grocery bags is only around 15 times, but there is an assumption that people are reusing them at a much higher rate." "The findings also demonstrated that consumers prefer to have paper and plastic alternatives when it comes to the checkout aisle," added McGrath...
40%: the percent of grocery trips consumers forget their 'reusable' bags and must use the plastic or paper alternative at the store.
14.6 times: the calculated reuse rate of non-woven polypropylene shopping bags in their lifetime.
3.1 times: the calculated reuse rate of low density polyethylene shopping bags in their lifetime."
Given that polypropylene bags need to be used 37 times to break even environmentally (vs a 'single use' plastic bag), it is clear that reusable bags are worse for the environment (especially since 'single use' plastic bags are usually reused, meaning 'reusable' bags need more uses to break even
Many support EPA ban on throw-away utensils - "more than 60 percent of the nation's population welcomed the administration's decision to allow food service operators to begin providing free plastic bags to customers. The administration began to restrict the use of plastic bags in 2003. The ban prevented the owners of department stores, shopping malls, hypermarkets, convenience stores, fast food restaurants and regular restaurants from providing free plastic bags to their customers. A customer must pay NT$1 to NT$2 for a bag. This year, however, the administration decided to begin allowing free plastic bags to be offered by food service operators. The administration made the decision because of concerns that plastic bags used for food or soup could pose a health risk if they were reused."
Plastic or glass: a new environmental assessment with a marine litter indicator for the comparison of pasteurized milk bottles - "LCA results show that R-PET bottle gives the lowest contribution to global warming, stratospheric ozone depletion, terrestrial acidification, fossil resource scarcity, water consumption and human carcinogenic toxicity, followed by PET bottle, returnable glass bottle, and finally non-returnable glass bottle. Glass is the worst packaging option because of high energy demand in the bottle production and its weight and in the transport phase. Some improvements can be obtained with returnable glass, but even if we consider that a bottle could be reused eight times, results are not comparable to the PET or R-PET bottles used only once"
The irony is that plasticphobes tend to be climate change hystericists
The Cotton Tote Crisis - The New York Times - "An organic cotton tote needs to be used 20,000 times to offset its overall impact of production, according to a 2018 study by the Ministry of Environment and Food of Denmark. That equates to daily use for 54 years — for just one bag. According to that metric, if all 25 of her totes were organic, Ms. Berry would have to live for more than a thousand years to offset her current arsenal. (The study has not been peer-reviewed.) “Cotton is so water intensive,” said Travis Wagner, an environmental science professor at the University of Maine. It’s also associated with forced labor, thanks to revelations about the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China, which produces 20 percent of the world’s cotton and supplies most Western fashion brands. And figuring out how to dispose of a tote in an environmentally low-impact way is not nearly as simple as people think. You can’t, for example, just put a tote in a compost bin: Maxine Bédat, a director at the New Standard Institute, a nonprofit focused on fashion and sustainability, said she has “yet to find a municipal compost that will accept textiles.” And only 15 percent of the 30 million tons of cotton produced every year actually makes its way to textile depositories. Even when a tote does make it to a treatment plant, most dyes used to print logos onto them are PVC-based and thus not recyclable; they’re “extremely difficult to break down chemically,” said Christopher Stanev, the co-founder of Evrnu, a Seattle-based textile recycling firm. Printed patterns have to be cut out of the cloth; Mr. Stanev estimates 10 to 15 percent of the cotton Evrnu receives is wasted this way. At which point there is the issue of turning old cloth into new, which is almost as energy intensive as making it in the first place. “Textile’s biggest carbon footprint occurs at the mill,” Ms. Bédat said. The cotton tote dilemma, said Laura Balmond, a project manager for the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Make Fashion Circular campaign, is “a really good example of unintended consequences of people trying to make positive choices, and not understanding the full landscape.” How did we get here? Arguably, it was the British designer Anya Hindmarch who put the reusable cotton bag on the map. Her 2007 “I’m Not a Plastic Bag” tote, created with the environmental agency Swift, sold for around $10 (£5) in supermarkets. It encouraged shoppers to stop buying single-use bags and went effectively viral... The idea, said Shaun Russell, the founder of Skandinavisk, a Swedish skin care brand that is a registered B Corp — or business that meets certain standards for social or environmental sustainability — is “to use your customers as mobile billboards.” It’s free advertising. “Any brand that claims otherwise would be lying,” he added... Aesop, which is also a registered B Corp, first introduced them as shopping bags a decade ago; Ms. Santos said customers consider them “an emblematic part of the Aesop experience.” So much so that the brand receives angry emails when they don’t arrive with online orders. “Abuse would be the right word,” she said, describing it over a Zoom call from Sydney. (Ms. Santos said customers wanting to offload their excess bags can return them to stores, though Aesop doesn’t advertise that possibility on its website or in-store.) Cotton bags have long existed in luxury; shoes and handbags come in protective dust wrappings. But the supposed sustainability of totes means more brands than ever are packaging wares in ever more layers. Items that don’t even need protection from dust, like hair scrunchies, organic tampons and facial cleansers, now arrive swaddled in a sleeping bag. “It’s just packaging on top of packaging on top of packaging,” said Ms. Bédat."
Virtue signalling often leads to worse outcomes
To continue to promote plastic hysteria, the article ludicrously claims that you can't say cotton is worse than plastic, but all analyses point to that
Are Plastic Bag Bans Garbage? - "University of Sydney economist Rebecca Taylor started studying bag regulations because it seemed as though every time she moved for a new job — from Washington, D.C., to California to Australia — bag restrictions were implemented shortly after. "Yeah, these policies might be following me," she jokes. Taylor recently published a study of bag regulations in California. It's a classic tale of unintended consequences... these bag bans did what they were supposed to: People in the cities with the bans used fewer plastic bags, which led to about 40 million fewer pounds of plastic trash per year. But people who used to reuse their shopping bags for other purposes, like picking up dog poop or lining trash bins, still needed bags. "What I found was that sales of garbage bags actually skyrocketed after plastic grocery bags were banned," she says. This was particularly the case for small, 4-gallon bags, which saw a 120 percent increase in sales after bans went into effect. Trash bags are thick and use more plastic than typical shopping bags. "So about 30 percent of the plastic that was eliminated by the ban comes back in the form of thicker garbage bags," Taylor says. On top of that, cities that banned plastic bags saw a surge in the use of paper bags, which she estimates resulted in about 80 million pounds of extra paper trash per year. Plastic haters, it's time to brace yourselves. A bunch of studies find that paper bags are actually worse for the environment. They require cutting down and processing trees, which involves lots of water, toxic chemicals, fuel and heavy machinery. While paper is biodegradable and avoids some of the problems of plastic, Taylor says, the huge increase of paper, together with the uptick in plastic trash bags, means banning plastic shopping bags increases greenhouse gas emissions. That said, these bans do reduce nonbiodegradable litter... Taylor says a fee is smarter than a ban. She has a second paper showing a small fee for bags is just as effective as a ban when it comes to encouraging use of reusable bags. But a fee offers flexibility for people who reuse plastic bags for garbage disposal or dog walking."
Commentary: Reusable containers are not always better for the environment than disposable plastic ones - "reusable containers could actually be worse for the environment than their disposable counterparts. Reusable containers have to be stronger and more durable to withstand being used multiple times - and they have to be cleaned after each use - so they consume more materials and energy, increasing their carbon footprint... Styrofoam containers are by far the best option for the environment among single-use food containers. This is mainly due to their use of only 7.8g of raw materials compared with PP containers’ 31.8g. Also, they require less electricity for production compared with aluminium containers. Even a reusable container would have to be reused between 16 and 208 times for its environmental impact to equal that of a single-use Styrofoam container... When it comes to endangering our landscapes, reusable containers are always a worse option - regardless of the number of times used - due to the electricity required to heat the water for washing them. This is thanks to the emission of substances like heavy metals in electricity generation, which are toxic to many land-based organisms. Similar results to ours have been reported for coffee cups, with one study concluding that it takes between 20 and 100 uses for a reusable cup to offset its higher greenhouse gas emissions compared to a disposable cup... reuse is a considerable challenge for an industry optimised for on-the-go consumption. Unless it is highly convenient or they are offered an incentive, such as money back, customers are not likely to carry around empty containers until they can return or reuse them. There are also potential issues with liability for food poisoning and cross-contamination from allergens when reusing containers. Despite this, reuse has been shown to work in the takeout sector, as with reusable box schemes like reCIRCLE in Switzerland. However, systems like this require considerable investment, particularly to help customers return containers. A more promising model may be one where the vendor directly collects empty containers from the customer to be refilled with the same substance, in the style of old-fashioned milk delivery rounds. Similar models, like Terracycle’s Loop, aim to reuse each container up to 100 times."
The usual canard about polluting waterways is thrown out - pretending that the problem is single use materials rather than waste disposal. And of course wasting everyone's time by making people lug around containers is supposed to be a good thing
Should plastics be a source of energy? - "Some municipalities didn’t even bother sorting. They just baled up all the unsorted plastics and tried to sell it. Chinese recyclers were ready buyers. In China, they would mostly pluck out the same three valuable plastics and then discard the rest—not always in a proper landfill. The West Coast, with its cheap freight rates to China, was particularly addicted to this system. In a letter to local officials this May, Scott Smithline, director of California’s Department of Resources Recycling & Recovery, acknowledged that two-thirds of the recyclables collected in California were being sent abroad, more than 60% of that to China.“All they were doing was transferring the landfill from their state to a foreign country”... Some jurisdictions have temporarily suspended recycling programs. In other places, recyclables are piling up and even being landfilled... Proponents of waste to energy say the technology is cleaner than other power sources. According to SWANA’s O’Brien, waste-to-energy plants emit less CO2, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides than coal-fired power plants do per unit of power."
FACT CHECK: Reuse of Plastic Bottles - "What's False
Reusing single-use PET bottles doesn't cause them to release carcinogenic DEHA into the fluids they contain; freezing plastic water bottles doesn't cause them to release carcinogenic dioxins into the fluids they contain.
What's Undetermined
Whether heating some types of plastic bottles could increase the leaching of harmful phthalates into the fluids they contain."
Climate change: obsession with plastic pollution distracts attention from bigger environmental challenges - "plastic pollution – or more accurately the response of governments and industry to addressing plastic pollution – provides a “convenient truth” that distracts from addressing the real environmental threats such as climate change... there are no conclusive studies on population level effects of plastic pollution. Studies on the toxicity effects, especially to humans are often overplayed. Research shows for example, that plastic is not as great a threat to oceans as climate change or over-fishing... environmental news has been dominated by the issues of plastic pollution. So it’s not surprising that so many people think ocean plastics are the most serious environmental threat to the planet. But this is not the case"
In general, the reality is that obsessing about minor or non-problems means we ignore real or major ones - which is a reason to oppress victim culture
Biodegradable plastic alternatives not necessarily better for Singapore, say experts - "You might think that switching from single-use plastics to biodegradable plastic alternatives is good for the environment but in Singapore, there are “no effective differences”, experts said. They often end up in the same place - the incinerator... Biodegradable plastic wastes make a difference to the environment only when they are buried in landfills... "it might even be more expensive to incinerate biodegradable plastics," said Assoc Prof Tong. He explained that this is because some biodegradable options take more resources to produce, which make them more expensive. The opinion squares with what Dr Amy Khor, Senior Minister of State for the Environment and Water Resources said in Parliament in August - that a life-cycle assessment of single-use carrier bags and disposables by the National Environment Agency (NEA) found that substituting plastics with other types of single-use packaging materials is “not necessarily better for the environment”... "In addition, oxo-degradable bags could interfere with the recycling process when mixed with conventional plastics... Although biodegradable alternatives may not make a difference to the environment, several companies here have already made the switch... Despite the belief that they are better for the environment, experts said a larger carbon footprint could be created in producing them... Many biodegradable materials can only break down under specific circumstances, many of which cannot be provided by natural environments... the carbon footprint for cornware is high compared to regular plastic, and based on the NEA study, it is not clear whether it can be recycled. “Furthermore, cornware is made from corn starch extracted from kernels, which makes one wonder if the same resource could have been used for food instead of convenience”"
Feeling good and smug is priceless
Why glass jars aren’t necessarily better for the environment than plastic ones - The Washington Post - "Glass peanut butter jars are another example of the way “natural” living and “environmental” living diverge. Other examples include industrial pet foods, which are better for the environment than “natural” alternatives, and canned fruits and vegetables, which are, in some cases, easier on the Earth than fresh produce. As the small-scale Vermont Peanut Butter Co. writes on its Web site in defense of its plastic tubs: “Glass is almost 1 lb heavier, which increases shipping costs and requires more gas and oil to transport. If you practice recycling, the plastic jar is a greener way to go.” The science supports this position. A 2008 comparison of glass and plastic baby food jars, for example, found that the glass jars produce between a quarter and a third more greenhouse gases than plastic jars. In fact, the plastic jars bested the glass in almost every category: They released fewer carcinogens into the air, sent fewer pollutants into waterways and required less acreage. A year later, an assessment of soft drink containers also found plastic superior to glass. (The study was funded by a plastics manufacturer, but the company that conducted the review is independent and widely respected.) The results were broadly similar to the baby food study, with glass producing approximately four times as much greenhouse gas as plastic... peanut giant Planters cut packaging weight by 84 percent by switching from glass to plastic jars. That affects most aspects of an environmental assessment. Lighter products require fewer raw materials, which means they take less energy to make and usually produce a smaller carbon footprint. They take less energy to transport to the consumer, and it’s easier to dispose of them when the peanut butter, baby food or soda runs out."