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a use for all that plastic waste

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vawtman:
Every time people go to the store when the clerk says"paper or plastic"Say paper.
 Of course that would reduce the demand for oil and drive the prices even higher.
 Darnit can't win.

 Just my opinion,

 Mark

richhagen:
I've figured for a while we will wind up mining the landfills for resources some day. Lots of metals, or oxides thereof and other potential resources.  Also, one of my tenants, a mechanical engineering doctorate, had told me about a similar project being developed in India regarding plastics to oil. Rich

DamonHD:
Hi,
I think that plastic and paper disposable bags are about equally evil in resource use.
The key is not to ask for a bag and take a (reusable) one with you!
I think plastic bags are wonderful things but we don't need hundreds of billions each and every year.
Rgds
Damon

spinningmagnets:
I have seen plastic 2 X 4's at Home Despot that I was told were made from shredded and melted milk and water bottles. Even if they were only 3/4ths recycled, it sounded like a good idea.
I believe this shows that it really works, but I am skeptical about the cost-effectiveness, even at $150/Bl for newly drilled oil.
Polymers (plastics) can be dissolved and catalyzed into smaller bits in a way that results in a liquid, but the weight won't change. Plastics float because they are "fluffy" and less dense than the petro-liquids they are made from.
How many plastic bags and shredded milk/water bottles would it take to equal the weight of one 55-gallon barrel of oil?
Water is about 8 lbs/gallon (yes?) and since oil floats it weighs less, so 7-ish lbs/gallon? 7 X 55 = ~385 lbs? Thats a truckload of plastic to get one drum.
That being said, I'm all for recycling, so if somebody wants to treat plastic and re-use it, I say why not.

chubbytrucker01:
Well diesel fuel weighs about 7.21 lbs per gallon. Most trucks can haul about 45000 pounds. Some more some less but 45000 is about the industry standard load for this kind of product, baled recycled trash. So if the process was 100% efficient we could get 6241 gallons of oil at $4.65 a gallon for diesel it would be worth $29,021 a truck load. If you don't think we generate this much plastic you are in denial. I hauled garbage out of New York City in the late 80's and just our small 15 truck fleet hauled from 10 to 20 truck loads of baled cardboard to recyclers. There were probably a couple of hundred other trucks hauling it also. They didn't recycle plastics as much then as they do now so I am not sure how many bales of plastic the same facility would produce now. The truck company I work for now hauls about 30 truckloads of paper and cardboard bales a day. I drive about 3000 to 4000 miles a week and trust me there is a huge world out there. There are allot of people in this country. We make a bunch of garbage. Think of all the soda bottles. Water bottles. Milk jugs. Plastic barrels. Five gallon buckets. Until we put a value on this stuff no one is going to attempt to recycle it. At $29,021 a truck load it suddenly got a value. I hope it is true. When I first started driving a truck in 1988 about half the garbage we were hauling to the landfills was paper and cardboard. Since we gave recycled baled paper a value that number has dropped below ten percent. Recycling has to take place on an industrial scale to get our landfill dependency down. Most of the garbage in our country goes through transfer stations and this is where recycling would have its best chance to succeed . Until garbage has a value we'll keep trying to hide it in holes in the ground. Sorry about the rant but seeing how wasteful we are is what got me into rethinking my own conservation approach to life. So please don't try to belittle the problem by saying this new technology is not the answer. We have a huge problem. Any technology beats what we as a whole are doing now.

  Just my opinion,

  If you don't agree e mail me,

  Doug

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