[dinamic]

Despite loving such projects, sometimes I have a feeling that concentration on recycling shifts attention too much from the real causes of waste pollution, such as overproduction, overconsumption and lack of investment in biodegradable materials.

[ravenstine]

Or even from using truly† recyclable materials like aluminum. If we weren't so obsessed with seeing the liquid inside of containers, many things could be converted to use aluminum.

[Obviously, aluminum waste isn't 100% recyclable, but it's about as close as you can get besides maybe glass.

[pvorb]

So why not use glass directly?

I try to buy products in glass bottles that are produced as close to home as possible. Most, but unfortunately not all of those glass bottles are refilled, but at least they are recycled by melting and producing new glass.

I've read some reports that claim that washing is also not ecological, as there are too few facilities in Germany that do this and transportation costs are high. So it's a trade off.

[coolgeek]

The obvious downsides to glass bottles are weight and fragility.

I personally find them preferable to plastic. But aluminum is (roughly) as light as plastic, and it doesn't catastrophically fail in the way that glass does.

[dwohnitmok]

RE your disclaimer what about aluminum isn't recyclable?

[marcosdumay]

You lose some it every time you recycle. Of course in theory you can treat all the aluminum waste and get every gram of metal back, but it's not viable in practice.

[goda90]

Maybe the plastic liner that most aluminum cans have?

[geuis]

That doesn’t really do much to prevent recycling though. When the material is melted, anything like paint or plastic liners are burned off. The main issue that has to be handled are the vapors that are released. (They can be toxic and have to be handled.)

[ravenstine]

Much of it is burned off, but there are constituents that remain and need to be removed. This is called "dross".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dross

You can actually witness the formation of dross yourself if you make your own aluminum foundry (which is ridiculously easy if you have hair dryer, a coffee can, an empty propane canister, and some charcoal). My understanding is that aluminum oxidization contributes somewhat to this, but it's also caused by what's left over after the plastic and paint have burned.

Granted, I am in no way saying that recycling aluminum isn't 100% worth it. I was merely trying to address the issue before someone might have brought it up. (I've noticed some people despise the use of absolutes and always need to point out that nothing is absolute)

EDIT: For anyone interested in "recycling" their own aluminum, this is almost exactly what I did about 10 years ago, and it was a lot of fun. This guy's casting looks dreadful, though.

https://www.instructables.com/Quick-cheap-and-dirty-aluminum...

There are other tutorials that describe using a soup can as a crucible, which might work for a short time but I think that's pretty dangerous.

[ravenstine]

Yeah, the plastic liner and the paint add impurities that have to be removed, and of course those components are not recyclable, scant they may be. This isn't to say that the aluminum element itself isn't recyclable, but inevitably there's some loss because of impurities, so I added the disclaimer to save people time from replying with "Ackshually..."

[dwohnitmok]

Out of curiosity do you have any idea of how much loss that adds up to (say by mass)?

[ravenstine]

Off the top of my head, I don't truly know, but I would bet it's a very small fraction. Let's find out...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium#Recycling

> Recycling involves melting the scrap, a process that requires only 5% of the energy used to produce aluminium from ore, though a significant part (up to 15% of the input material) is lost as dross (ash-like oxide).[134] An aluminium stack melter produces significantly less dross, with values reported below 1%.

That amount seems to fit with my amateur experience of melting aluminum cans. Dross pretty much floats up to the top of the molten aluminum, and you basically just scrape it off. Even bar stock aluminum from Home Depot would produce a small amount of it.

According to this page, aluminum is separated from dross in a separate process:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_recycling#Secondary_...

So yeah, the loss is non-zero, but the the recyclability of aluminum might as well be considered infinite, especially in contrast to plastics.

[dimitrios1]

You are going to have to define what "over" means for each of those categories. Contrary to popular belief, I believe people generally consume what they need. It's much of the world coming "online", due to the global prosperity capitalism has enabled, that has resulted in such mass production of things we would do well to get rid of such as single use disposable plastics (that aren't for medical purposes, of course).

[dinamic]

Fast fashion is a vivid example of overconsumption, and planned obsolescence would be a good example of overproduction.

Regarding person's "needs" - I believe they are endless up to the point where person can afford them.

[titzer]

If "need" includes paying $NN/mo to rent a storage container to put your extra junk, then sure, people are consuming what they need.

[dimitrios1]

Most was the key qualifier in my statement.

There is no doubt that about 5% of the population have some sort of compulsive hoarding habit. But it wouldn't matter because this is irrelevant to the issue of single use plastics, the thing that generates the most waste in oceans and waterways. Nice attempt at a "gotcha" though. Let's try a good faith dialogue next time.

[titzer]

It's not only that. Do we "need" to consume sodas and bottled water? Americans throw away 35 billion plastic bottles every year.

That's just the US. Literally every country I've visited, including third world countries, are consuming ungodly amounts of one-time use plastics. The reason? Plastics make the job of global megacorporations, whose only goal is to make more money, much easier, since they can package their junk food and drinks and ship them the world over.

It's not a "gotcha." I just very strongly disagree, given what I've seen everywhere I've traveled.