From the GWPF and the “Great Pacific Recycling Patch” department.
Save The Oceans – Stop Recycling Plastic – video follows
London 28 June: An explosive report from the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) reveals that efforts to recycle plastic are a major cause of the marine litter problem. The report, written by public health expert Dr Mikko Paunio, sets out the case for incinerating waste rather than trying to recycle it.
* Most of the plastic waste comes from just a few countries, mostly in Asia and Africa.
* 25% is “leakage” from Asian waste management processes — the rest is waste that has never been collected, but is simply thrown into rivers.
* But European countries ship inject huge quantities of waste into Asian waste management streams, ostensibly for recycling. As much as 20% — millions of tons every year — ends up in the oceans and will continue to do so.
* Since the Chinese banned waste imports at the start of the year, shipments have been diverted to other Asian countries with even weaker environmental controls (Figure 1).
* EU recycling is therefore a major contributor to marine waste and increasing recycling will therefore simply increase marine litter.
Author Dr Mikko Paunio says
“It is clear that the European contribution to marine waste is a result of our efforts to recycle. However, several countries have already shown that they can reduce this contribution to near zero, by simply incinerating waste”.
Despite this success, the EU is trying to redouble recycling efforts and to close down the incineration route, mistakenly believing that this will reduce carbon emissions. As Dr Paunio puts it,
“The effects look as though they will be appalling. We can expect a great deal more plastic to end up in the environment, and in the oceans in particular. If the EU was serious about its war against marine pollution it should consider banning the export of plastic recyclate rather than banning plastic straws or taxing incineration.”
Figure 1: UK waste exports, 2017 versus 2018. Source: British Plastic & Rubber
Full paper (pdf): Save the Oceans: Stop Recycling Plastic
What is the west going to do with all their plastic now that China has stopped importing it? They have enough of their own now so ….
In the reduce, reuse, recycle scenarios it is only the first one that matters. The other 2 are for appearances only and after the fact kludges to the waste problem.
Plasma incinerators are a great invention. Mine the waste for what you can extract profitably and torch the rest. Even low level radioactive material from hospitals can be safely made inert in that process.
“What is the west going to do with all their plastic now that China has stopped importing it?”
Burn it for heavens sake!
The plant in the image below (Gärstadverken) produces nearly all heating for a city of 130,000 inhabitants (1.4 TWh thermal) plus 300 GWh of electricity per year. All from waste – 88 tons per hour at full blast in winter.
https://news.sky.com/story/plastic-contamination-slowly-killing-human-race-warns-doctor-11416987
Sailing around the world in their plastic yacht with plastic sails and plastic ropes to warn us of the dangers of plastic.
“As much of Germany’s nearly 30,000 strong fleet of wind turbines approach 20 or more years in age, the list of catastrophic collapses is growing more rapidly. The turbines are now being viewed by technical experts as “ticking time bombs”.”
http://notrickszone.com/2018/06/22/germanys-ticking-time-bombs-technical-experts-say-wind-turbines-posing-significant-danger-to-environment/
““Razor-sharp fiberglass shards flew 800 meters,” the Westfalen Blatt reported.
The debris from exploded turbine now poses a threat to the environment. The sharp fiberglass pieces injure grazing animals”
Lets hope they look after those turbine offshore???
And fiberglass composites are really difficult to dispose of. They can’t be recycled or burned, are virtually indestructible, non-biodegradable and last virtually for ever.
Maybe that polyethylene stuff could be recycled…
https://worldindustrialreporter.com/new-autophage-rocket-engine-uses-its-own-structure-as-fuel/
So, engineers, if it’s good enough to power rockets, could it not be used to make vehicle or electric generator engines of some kind? We need more engineers with some ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking on this …
Whoever wrote that piece doesn’t know much about rockets:
“Present-day rockets use tanks to store their propellant as they climb, and the weight of the tanks is usually many times greater than the weight of the useful payload.”
The only large rocket I know that “used tanks” was the German V-2. Just about the first improvement both americans and russians thought of was to eliminate the tanks and use the rocket structure as an integral tank. So unless they find some way to eliminate the rocket structure completely nothing will be gained.
And making electric engines and/or generators out of a non-conducting material will definitely need some way-out-of-the-box thinking.
Please contemplate this cut-away image of the Saturn V. It’s a bit of a challenge to store liquid hydrogen and oxygen without some sort of tank and insulation.
https://www.space.com/18422-apollo-saturn-v-moon-rocket-nasa-infographic.html
Of course, the later Space Shuttle had solid rocket boosters that would have been more reliable had the rocket bodies not been shipped in sections.
And the external tank, complete with insulation that would have been more reliable if it stuck to the tank better, had, umm, two tanks inside, as mixing liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen is best done in rocket engines and not premixed in the tank.
What we have here is a conflict between an ethic of ideal ends (“recycle!”) and an ethic of responsibility (“does it work?”).
May I refer you to Adam Minter,s work? He details the recycling of plastic and other rubbish in China. They made new plastic items . Containers were sent from New Zealand by firms who collect recycling because they got a good price for it. China now prefers to use it,s own plastic rubbish in the main he claims. Non ferrous metals are still much in demand,as they always have been in other countries. He writes in Bloomberg and has written books including one called Junk Planet. ,People have made fortunes in recycling even old time rag and bone men who drove carts through British Streets. Councils sell off the rights to recycling collections in New Zealand. There,s money in recycling.
Correction “JunkYard Planet” https://www.bloomberg.com/view/contributors/AROF-Y8Q8ZE/adam-minter