Lego axes plan to make bricks from recycled bottles

[afadeev]

Sometimes, recycling can also be bad for carbon emissions.
As a result, Lego said it has "decided not to progress" with making bricks from the recycled material.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-66910573?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGA

 

[Scott_650]

Plastic recycling is tough to do - even the Sierra Club admitted that at best recycling plastic is no better than from new manufacturing (others have concluded it may very well be worse). To be truly effective it’s going to take some materials engineering on the front end to make usable plastic packaging and products that are more amenable to being recycled.

Rather than being concerned about carbon emissions, until plastics can be recycled better, plastic re-use by grinding and using as additives to construction materials and manufacturing processes would reduce the volume of plastic we dispose of in landfills. Or figure out a clean way to burn it to keep it out of oceans, landfills and soil content.

All recycling is hard, materials engineering is hard, folks who have to do hard things for a living generally want compensation for doing them.

 

[Donnager]

Of course, waxed paper cartons are off the table, as they are too expensive.

We use plastic because it is unbelievably cheap. And we (as a people) throw it away, because it is cheap.

I'd rather see us use paper bags for groceries and paper cartons for liquids. At least, those will biodegrade.

If you go to west Texas, the grocery bags hanging on the barbed wire by the road is a little off-putting.

 

[Antares JS]

I'd rather see us use paper bags for groceries and paper cartons for liquids. At least, those will bibiodegrade.

Thing is, some time ago the greens were begging people to use plastic bags to save trees.

 

[smstachwick]

Thing is, some time ago the greens were begging people to use plastic bags to save trees.

I forget if there was a misunderstanding of or a change in how paper was sourced, but it appears that many years ago people were arguing this from a deforestation standpoint.

Now paper mills get their materials from farmed trees and tropical rainforests are mainly cleared for agriculture. Farmers quickly find out the soil becomes poor without the compost provided by the rainforest biome and they either can’t or won’t fertilize the newly acquired land, so the chainsaws come out again and the cycle repeats.

Paper bagging would therefore be a an environmentally viable option now.

Paper cups and boxes are tricky too because a lot of liquid containers contain the barest hint of a plastic lining that won’t biodegrade. They need it to not become waterlogged.

Paper straws work OK without it though. It will fall apart if you take forever to drink your drink, but you can easily get another straw or just drink without one (*whispers*: like an adult).

 

[Antares JS]

I forget if there was a misunderstanding of or a change in how paper was sourced, but it appears that many years ago people were arguing this from a deforestation standpoint.

Now paper mills get their materials from farmed trees and tropical rainforests are mainly cleared for agriculture. Farmers quickly find out the soil becomes poor without the compost provided by the rainforest biome and they either can’t or won’t fertilize the newly acquired land, so the chainsaws come out again and the cycle repeats.

Paper bagging would therefore be a an environmentally viable option now.

Paper cups and boxes are tricky too because a lot of liquid containers contain the barest hint of a plastic lining that won’t biodegrade. They need it to not become waterlogged.

Paper straws work OK without it though. It will fall apart if you take forever to drink your drink, but you can easily get another straw or just drink without one (*whispers*: like an adult).

Interesting, maybe my thought there is outdated then.

 

[smstachwick]

Interesting, maybe my thought there is outdated then.

It might be, but I’m no expert. I just did a little bit of homework on this some time ago and I’m scrounging around in the disorganized cobwebbed corners of my memory.

OHMYGOD SPIDER!

Sorry, carry on.

 

[NTP2]

Once again humanity realizes that it has made a mistake.

 

[Sooner Boomer]

"Lego axes plan to make bricks from recycled bottles"

Having stepped on more than one, I thought they *already were* made from broken bottles.

 

[Donnager]

Thing is, some time ago the greens were begging people to use plastic bags to save trees.

I'm not certain it wasn't the petroleum companies behind it.

After all, they were the primary beneficiary of the change. Now we can deal with double and triple bagging because the bags kind of suck, and the cashiers hand them out like there is no tomorrow.

I'm no green commando, but I don't believe the shift to plastic grocery bags, and the overuse of thin plastic bottles in countries with bad water were good changes. It's like poor water quality has been embraced, with no desire to make it better, and the consequence is cheap empty water bottles dumped all over the southeast of Asia, usually into rivers and the seas.

Maybe I'm wrong.