Good news for people who worry about plastic use

[dreamshark]

 Wow, great article in the Strib about plastic film recycling in Minnesota! Here's the link, which you may or may not be able to follow if you are not a subscriber. 

tldr; Those plastic bags that you drop off at grocery stores really DO get recycled in Minnesota, mostly ending up at Trex, a company that manufactures decking material. But this is actually downcycling (one-time reuse) rather than true recycling which is an endless loop of reuse. It's a pretty durable form of downcycling, but eventually even composite decking gets scrapped. HOWEVER... a plastic film recycling plant will be opening this summer in Rogers, MN, that will be part of a true recycling chain, ending up at a facility in Wisconsin that produces new food-grade plastic film!  

Comments

[pameladean]

It is sometimes possible to get past the Strib's paywall by opening a private window and pasting the url of the story into it, but this is variable. Sometimes it's a race between getting the actual story and just getting the first paragraph and then the subscription and login box.

I couldn't get at this one, but it sounds like very good news, depending on how polluting the recycling facility is.

P.

[quadong]

I can read articles on my phone at the New York Times by letting the article load, and then quickly turning off the WiFi before it can send the signal to hide the article from me and demand a subscription. So silly. (Especially because I do subscribe to the NYTimes, but I am too lazy to find my password and type it into my phone...)

[pameladean]

That's hilarious; I'll have to try it.

I had a NYT subscription for a while and I developed the most ridiculous reluctance to just sign in and get on with it. I resented the necessity. One problem was that my phone and their website didn't always see eye to eye about whether I was allowed to paste my username and password in from the password manager. Sometimes it was fine, sometimes it wasn't.

P.

[quadong]

I bet that even if they convert old plastic film into new plastic film, it's a lossy process where the number of pounds of useful film out is much less than the number that they truck in. This is in contrast to aluminum recycling, which isn't lossy at all. (Well, I'm sure it's not perfect, but this is the claim.)

Anyway, I don't think either of these new recycling thingies should make you feel good about single-use plastic.

[davidwilford]

We did install Trex for the front and side decks of our soon-to-be home in Arizona, it ought to last 30+ years. Our contractor recommended it, given the climate there. We do use cloth bags when getting groceries.

[dreamshark]

I use cloth and paper bags for groceries too, but that's just the tip of the plastic iceberg. It's probably not impossible to avoid plastic film entirely, but it would involve wrenching lifestyle changes: no more newspaper delivery, online shopping (or practically ANY kind of shopping, frankly). I don't think there is any form of electronic tech that doesn't come in layers of plastic packaging, so I'd never have another new phone or laptop or computer monitor. I'd be spending most of my time making bread and tofu and homemade applesauce, and shopping at thrift stores. I know how much time that kind of thing eats up, since we did a lot of all those things when the kids were babies and we were very very poor.

Now that I can afford to buy new things when I want them and keep out of season frozen fruit in my freezer, I am not willing to revert to that lifestyle. So I am grateful for whatever plastics recycling opportunities come my way.