Originally published at: Lego gives up on making bricks with recycled plastic, for now | Boing Boing
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I often wonder, when putting stuff in my recycling bin, if it has any positive effect on our carbon output/landfill volume.
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I have to drive an hour two towns over to drop my recycling. I wonder if my driving is worse
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Metal (cans and such), paper, and to some extent glass, Yes). But plastics, and styrofoam no, full stop.
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We are not really recycling plastics. While aluminum and glass recycling is real and can be effective (we’ve got a dismal 34 and 31% but they’re both economically effective since they are cheaper than virgin material and effectively infinite, and all of the glass and aluminum you recycle has a positive carbon effect), and paper recycling can work to at least downcycle white paper to cardboard, plastic is “8.7%” but even that is probably bullshit.
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If energy is the only constraint, they could just build their own nuclear reactors, like Microsoft: Microsoft hiring a nuclear power program manager, because AI needs lots of 'leccy • The Register
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It’s somewhat heartening to know that Lego are admitting that recycling plastic isn’t working.
It must have been tempting for them to go along with greenwashing the way everyone else seems to…
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I guess the good news is that Lego bricks at least get re-used more than most plastic products; they last damn near forever and often get played with by a couple generations of kids before ending up in the landfill. I can’t say the same for a lot of the other plastic crap people have gifted my kids over the years.
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Until ~10 years ago, the city of Austin trucked all collected recycling materials to Dallas, a 4-5 hour drive. They also wouldn’t accept glass where I lived, one of the most recyclable materials
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Most recycling is a lie.
Metal (especially aluminum) is worth it.
Glass, sorta worth it, as long as you don’t care about color or clarity.
Plastic or paper? Not worth it, although they are making much progress in incorporating plastic waste into asphalt roads.
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Yes.
My city only takes in cans (aluminum and steel) and cardboard, but they don’t want anything else. No glass, no paperboard, and the only plastic they want are milk jugs.
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I had the same feeling. How great that they tried and that they reported the results, etc.
I went to lego demo when we brought our kid to Legoland. I loved seeing all the tech.
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It’s somewhat heartening to know that Lego are admitting that recycling plastic isn’t working.
Perhaps this due to their Danish roots? Maybe the company really did want to do what was better. They tried this and it was worse. Then again, maybe their whole effort was a feignt. I’d like to think it’s the European roots, which can yield a more sustainable business. Also, the EU has stringent sustainability rules. Ah, who knows.
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Glass is recyclable, sure, but it doesn’t save energy (it takes about the same amount of energy to melt recyclable glass as it does the original sand, limestone, and other ingredients), plus you have to sort bottles if you care about color, not all glass types are compatible in the melt so you have to watch out for glass-like ceramics (they tend to stick to the sides of your crucible and can drastically change the melt/working characteristics of your glass) and even things like uranium glass (radioactive) and reagent-contaminated lab glass. That said, NYC and several other municipalities grind old glass and tumble it to remove sharp edges, then use it as aggregate in asphalt, which gives it a lovely sparkle at night. That may be the best, most efficient use of the stuff.
I still remember helping bring crates of glass soda bottles to a bottling plant up in Maine for refilling sometime in the early 70s, so the ancient summer camp soda machines (only a nickel!) could be refilled. That’s what needs to come back, if we want to save energy on glass: reuse the things. Except for some very special situations, glass is just a one-use thing for most people. Glass siphons for carbonated water in NYC, for example, have to be refilled as they are no longer made – some of the bottles are over 50 years old, and there are still companies (hat tip to Brooklyn Seltzer Boys) that refill them. (edit: one popular specific style is no longer made, others are custom made on demand.)
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I worked at my uncle’s bottling company for a summer as a teen. There was a machine at the front for crushing the glass and that was hauled away every week. Working that machine was awful, you came away covered in sticky shards. Or at least it felt that way. But I loved seeing how recycling was actually happening. There is a market for that crushed glass, for sure. Not sure about sustainability, energy, etc.
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Yeah the ideal usage is refilling the bottles - some bottle designs are better at this than others. I feel like some modern bottles are designed to break easily wheras the old stubby ones were designed to go through multiple cycles
There’s a company here in austin that recycles glass as an aggregate for countertops and flooring - I kind of like the results but they probably don’t do huge business.
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This is a similar company, in Brooklyn
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They were still doing that to at least some extent in Mexico last time I visited. We really never should have let that practice fall to the wayside for single-use beverage containers.
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There was a Discovery channel program some years back (may have been ‘How Do They Do It’, but can’t track it down) that showed the Carlsberg plant reusing returned beer bottles. Unfortunately it looks like most of the return programs there now default to recycling, not wash and reuse 
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Lots of info on return programs here:
Scotland was well on the way to deploying a similar system until the Southern government fuckers down here torpedoed it 
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On 7 June 2023, the Minister for Green Skills, Circular Economy and Biodiversity announced that Scotland’s Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) will be delayed until at least October 2025.
This is to align with schemes in the rest of the UK. As a result, it is likely elements of Scotland’s scheme will need to be redesigned to be fully interoperable with the UK.
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Check the number in the triangle. As a rule of thumb, the higher the number, the worse the recycling.
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