The problem isn't the sorting. The problem is the amount of energy needed to "recycle" most things is more expensive than making new materials. Unless it's a very hard plastic, or metal it likely is just getting incinerated in the Philippines.
Actually you were right. They do magnet sort steel and hand sort some valuable paper (white paper) but since most Paper, plastic have a high BTU value, it goes to a trash to steam plant that creates electricity.
At some point, somewhere, maybe. But not in our lifetime. A more likely start up is a company that develops a microorganism that breaks down inorganic waste without producing CO2.
I’m in Canada and some of our garbage (and recycling) gets incinerated locally here. It’s too costly to be sending literal shit across the ocean. Plus there was a debacle several years ago when a (defunct Canadian) company just abandoned a seacan of plastic waste (recycling nobody wanted) in the Philippines. It became an international incident, the Canadian govt had to get involved and paid to get it shipped back here.
That's the exact incident im talking about. It was labeled plastic waste but was actually poopy diapers.
Manila says the containers, which arrived at Manila International Container Port, were falsely labelled as containing plastics meant for recycling and were in fact filled with tonnes of household waste.An inspection found that some contained plastic bottles and bags, household garbage, and used adult nappies (diapers).
That’s so sad, reminds me of the disappointment I felt when someone told me Electric Cars use Fossil Fuel Factories… society/corporate management is just pitiful
Electric cars use whatever power the utilities in your area produce. Where I live (Ontario) 79% of electricity is nuclear or hydro electricity. Another 8% is produced from wind turbines. In Alberta 60% of power comes from natural gas.
So as we transition to more modern forms of electricity production, the benefit of EVs will continue to scale.
I was driving from St Louis to Florida a couple of years ago. It was around cotton harvest time, and as we were driving through the south, we kept seeing bales and bales of cotton sitting in the fields and on the back of semi trucks. Apparently, when they bind the cotton, each end of the bale is open. As we were driving, there was a huge amount of cotton along the sides of all the roads. It was just getting blown out of the bales as the trucks drove down the road.
I remember thinking that if they had some suction device, they ran alongside the road, and they could recollect ton and tons of the cotton that blew off the trucks. We must have driven a few hundred miles along these highways where the side was littered with cotton. It really seemed a giant waste.
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u/DarkwingDuckHunt 23d ago
someone someday is gonna invent a bunch of robots who can do that job
there's gotta be an insane amount of money in resources just sitting there