Should plastic be banned?

@carpediem Thnak you!

I know the subject only to a fairly general, lay level although over the years I have worked with various plastics including synthetic resins (the sort you cast, use for fibre-glassing, or make into special adhesives).

What you can recycle depends at household level on what recovery services you have in your area; and that can vary across the country.

These recoverable materials are all the "thermoplastics", i.e. those that can be softened and reshaped, or even melted and re-cast by heat. The eventual refiners mince the plastic into granules then melt and mould them into new products.

Even then recycling services tend to concentrate only on particular types, by their products. They typically include the bottles used for soft-drinks, shampoos and such-like; shop carrier-bags, and the moulded trays used for packing individual pies and cakes.The choice is set really by the recovery companies who buy the waste from the local authorities.

The manufacturers usually advise on the label about the type of plastic and if it can be salvaged - you might find, say, that a bottle can be but not its cap (different type of plastic). Alternatively or as well as labels, a recyclable item may carry the standard "Recycling" symbol printed or embossed on it, of small arrows following each other round a triangle. There may be a code-number next to it, but I am not sure what that means.

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To put it in context, as well as those plastics, all metals, expended batteries, glass, wood, paper and cardboard can all be salvaged; but whether you can help them on their way, and how, does depend on the public waste-collection services in your area. Some councils also collect garden waste and food waste; for turning into compost.

Advice on what can be salvaged locally, and how, should be obtainable from your local authority offices.

@ArishMell Here the supermarkets don't give you plastic bags anymore. People have to bring their handbags, reusable paper bag, etc like many years ago when our grandparents did.

@Pablok Good idea! The ones I use offer bags for sale, and some at least do include ones designed to last a reasonable time.

@Pablok Littering is an offence anyway, in the UK; but the problem is catching them. The litter throwers, that is, not the manufacturers or sellers, of course.

I think they should fingerprint trash and fine the people who litter and make them do community service (picking up trash) @Pablok

@SStarfish I doubt finger-printing would work in practice, but also risks catching people who have handled the items perfectly innocently and were not the ones who discarded it.

Fly-tippers have occasionally been caught by tracing information on labels or documents etc. within the dumped rubbish.

@nudistsueaz as it used to be in our younger days

@nuddie Yes it did and worked very well for all.

@nudistsueaz yes it did. I
Liked the peanut butter jars that were marked for measuring cups so that they could be saved and used. I have glass pasta sauce jars that are marked that way and jelly jar glasses from Griffin jellies made in Oklahoma and glass mug jelly jars too, great for every day drinks.

@Like2play The plastic material is often, though not always, a recoverable type, with "single use" meaning the item itself.

@ArishMell 95 percent of all plastic is just tossed. Recoverable mean nothing if it isn’t done.

@Like2play "of all plastic"? That seems a very high amount, but it may depend where you are.

A large percentage of plastics generally are types that cannot be recovered anyway, and it is hard to see what can be done with them. That includes the composites used in wind-turbine blades, boats and electronic circuit-boards.

However, an enormous amount of those types that can be salvaged, is, at least in my part of the world. It is turned into various secondary products such as the imitation wood used for garden furniture.

One serious loss now recognised is not only of plastics but also of expensive metals, in domestic electronic equipment people throw into the household refuse fit only for land-fill, instead of disposing of it properly so its materials can be salvaged.

@caesar7 I fear the worst polluters are in the "developed" nations because it is they - we - who use the most plastics. We also know how to "recycle" those plastics that can be, and indeed do; but we also harbour so many who just dump their rubbish anywhere with no excuse for doing so.

Many plastics can not be salvaged for re-use, at least not in the same chemical form, and what we do with those appears a problem few address; perhaps because it is too difficult. You can melt the thermoplastics (mainly polyethylene and PVC), and re-mould them, but you can't do that with the thermo-setting plastics; and I am not sure if you can recover the synthetic rubbers to any great extent.

Among the biggest and most obvious examples are the composites used for making pleasure-boat hulls, wind-turbine blades and electronic circuit-boards. Those are relatively rare in the "underdeveloped countries", but what do we do with the vast tonnages of these our "developed" countries produce and use up? Just how do you scrap a ferry-sized "private yacht" or a stack of 80-metre span wind-turbine rotors, when they become worn out?

Sometimes I wonder which set of nations ought be trying to teach the other!

@ArishMell Very valid points..thank you.