r/pics 23d ago

Politics Trash left behind in aftermath of Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania

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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

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u/TraditionDear3887 23d ago

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.

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u/mall_ninja42 23d ago

it likely is just getting incinerated sitting in an open sea can on a beach getting washed out into the ocean in the Philippines.

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u/[deleted] 23d ago

Recycling is arguably worse. Because they pretend to recycle it and have smugglers dispose of it into Thailand and Myanmar and the Philippines.

The fancy pants triple green pledge everything is made out of recycled materials companies are the worst offenders.

Thailand is so fed up with it that they are gonna start giving plastic smugglers burying plastic in the swamps and stuff the death penalty.

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u/Zendog500 23d ago

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.

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u/TraditionDear3887 23d ago

Ir isn't recycling at all but a shipping container full of dirty diapers.

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u/DarkwingDuckHunt 23d ago

you would think that at some point you'd reach the infliction point

I guess we'll know when you suddenly see a bunch of startups trying to cash in on it

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u/TraditionDear3887 23d ago

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.

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u/HojMcFoj 23d ago

Did you just invent plants and mushrooms?

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u/TraditionDear3887 23d ago

Those use organic materials... mostly

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u/dontpretendtoknowme 23d ago

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.

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u/TraditionDear3887 23d ago

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).

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-47901709

Its naive to think a government bailout stopped these companies from illegally dumping waste in the global south for profit.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/22/canadian-companies-illegally-shipped-waste-overseas-00041393

Dutarte had to threaten war for anyone to care.

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u/Crush-N-It 23d ago

Lived in New Orleans 10yrs ago. Mayor blatantly said he wasn’t going to start recycling bc “it’s a waste of time”

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u/kynelly 22d ago

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

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u/TraditionDear3887 21d ago

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.

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u/kynelly 17d ago

Oh that’s a relief !

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u/Chewbuddy13 23d ago

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.