The problems associated with recycling plastics

August 15, 2023

The climate change faction, to which the Biden administration belongs, wants to do away with fossil fuels. But what they may not realize is that in addition to being fuel, some fossil fuels, like oil and natural gas, are basic elements in many things the American people need and want.

“Petrochemicals derived from oil and natural gas make the manufacturing of over 6,000 everyday products and high-tech devices possible,” Energy.gov tells us. 

“Major petrochemicals—including ethylene, propylene, acetylene, benzene, and toluene, as well as natural gas constituents like methane, propane, and ethane—are the feedstock chemicals for the production of many of the items we use and depend on every day. Modern life relies on the availability of these products that are made in the United States and across the globe.”

Energy.gov lists 161 of the 6,000 items that are made from oil and natural gas. The list includes: artificial limbs, asphalt, aspirin, awnings, backpacks, balloons, caulking, electric blankets, electrical tape, enamel, epoxy paint, eyeglasses, fan belts, faucet washers, fertilizers, hearing aids, heart valves, house paint, ink, insect repellent, insecticides, insulation, iPad/iPhone, petroleum jelly, pharmaceuticals, plastics, life jackets, light-weight aircraft, roofing, refrigerants, vinyl flooring, vitamin capsules, tires, tool boxes, toothbrushes, toothpaste, transparent tape, water pipes, wind turbine blades, and many more.

Many of those products are valuable and useful, so the mania to end fossil fuels carries with it a heavy price in terms of replacing these items.

One of those products is plastic. Take a guess at how many things that people use, want, and depend upon are made from or contain plastic?

Plastics, however, have a down side. So many plastic products are used once or a few times and discarded. Many people try to recycle them, but that is a non-existent entity, to a large degree.

An article on the National Public Radio (NPR) website addresses this. “The vast majority of plastic that people use, and in many cases put into blue recycling bins, is headed to landfills, or worse, according to a report from Greenpeace on the state of plastic recycling in the U.S.”

The article cites a report that the amount of plastic actually recycled and used for new products has fallen to only about 5 percent, and is expected to fall even further in the future.

“Greenpeace found that no plastic — not even soda bottles, one of the most prolific items thrown into recycling bins — meets the threshold to be called "recyclable" according to standards set by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation New Plastic Economy Initiative,” the article continued. “Plastic must have a recycling rate of 30 percent to reach that standard; no plastic has ever been recycled and reused close to that rate.”

The NPR article also explained that “Waste management experts say the problem with plastic is that it is expensive to collect and sort. There are now thousands of different types of plastic, and none of them can be melted down together. Plastic also degrades after one or two uses. Greenpeace found that the more plastic is reused the more toxic it becomes.

“New plastic, on the other hand, is cheap and easy to produce. The result is that plastic trash has few markets — a reality the public has not wanted to hear,” NPR wrote.

There are tons of these un-reusable plastic items that are not really needed. Things such as packaging materials, shopping bags, straws, bottles, cups and such things were made of paper or glass prior to plastic being implemented, and we can move back in that direction. Paper and glass are much easier to recycle or dispose of than these plastic items.

So, while we need to cut back on the production of plastic items that can be replaced with materials that can be reused, or really are not needed, there are still many plastic items that we must continue to produce.

On the former point, “Environmentalists and lawmakers in some states are now pushing for legislation that bans single use plastics, and for ‘bottle bills’ which pay customers to bring back their plastic bottles,” NPR said. “The bills have led to successful recycling rates for plastic bottles in places like Oregon and Michigan, but have faced steep resistance from plastic and oil industry lobbyists.”

"The real solution is to switch to systems of reuse and refill," Lisa Ramsden, senior plastic campaigner for Greenpeace USA, said. "We are at a decision point on plastic pollution. It is time for corporations to turn off the plastic tap."

Joshua Baca, vice president of plastics for the American Chemistry Council, criticized the Greenpeace view on plastics, and added that the industry is "on the cusp of a circularity revolution" regarding plastic recycling, and is "scaling up sortation, advanced recycling, and new partnerships that enable used plastic to be remade again and again."

Throwing used plastics in oceans and landfills has created a serious problem. It makes no sense to keep producing and then throwing away plastic items that are used once or a few times, like straws, wrappers, etc. Those items could be made from recyclable materials, or be made to be reused continuously.

Radical efforts in moving away from fossil fuels is very risky

May 23, 2023

There has been a lot of talk lately about gas stoves, and the possibility of them being banned.

A story from the January edition of Popular Mechanics magazine quoted Richard Trumpka, Jr., who is a commissioner on the U.S. Consumer Product and Safety Commission, as saying that due to concerns about health conditions such as respiratory illness, cancer, and childhood asthma, the federal government has a ban “on the table” to prohibit gas stoves in homes. “This is a hidden hazard. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned,” Trumpka said.

Trying to put concerns of a ban to rest, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm assured members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that the Biden administration does not seek to ban gas stoves.

“I will say that the Department of Energy is not banning any gas stoves, that we are doing our duty to make sure that appliances are more energy efficient as we are required to do under the Energy Policy Conservation Act of 1975,” she told the Committee. “Nobody’s taking my gas stove, nobody will take your gas stove. But in the future, gas stoves that are high-end, which is all that we looked at, can be more efficient.”

Also, at about the same time came news that in order to combat health and climate risks, the state of New York has banned the use of natural gas for cooking and heating in most new residential buildings. And, the Energy Department, “is proposing new efficiency rules for gas stoves that only about half of current models on the market would likely comply with,” The Washington Times reported.

Also, a number of cities in California, Massachusetts and Washington are working to end using natural gas in homes and other buildings.

Burning things like coal, oil, natural gas, kerosene and wood is not good for the environment, as we all know. Burning natural gas in stoves emits nitrogen dioxide (NO2) when it is burned at high temperatures in the presence of nitrogen in the atmosphere. This can irritate human airways and can cause or exacerbate respiratory problems. 

Smoking too much, drinking too much alcohol, and lots of other things are also harmful, but they are not banned, and in some cases not even heavily regulated. The key to this is knowing how harmful to people young and old is it to burn natural gas in homes. 

An article on the Scientific American website notes: “The American Gas Association (AGA), a natural gas industry group, issued a statement pushing back against the December 2022 study that linked gas cooking with asthma. The statement claimed the study authors did not conduct measurements of real-life appliance use and ignored some of the scientific literature on this topic. The AGA cited a separate study that found no evidence of a link between cooking with gas and asthma symptoms of diagnosis.”

While it is true that the AGA has a vested interest in opposing the idea that burning natural gas can potentially cause health issues, the Biden administration also has a vested interest: its mission to kill all fossil fuel use. But since American natural gas is the cleanest on Earth, is our use of it really that harmful to the environment?

And given the way China and India continue to increase their use of fossil fuels, and considering our efforts to make them cleaner, is our using them really a serious problem? Should the U.S. work at a pace to eliminate fossil fuels so fast that it will negatively affect its people, particularly when other nations increase their damage to the environment more than the U.S. reduces it?

Virginian Mark Christie serves on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). He wants people to understand the trouble the nation is headed toward with its current path on energy.

He joined the FERC panel in January 2021, prior to which he was a member and former chairman of the State Corporation Commission, Virginia’s energy regulator, for 17 years.

Appearing before a U.S. Senate committee earlier this month, Christie said that “The United States is heading for a very catastrophic situation in terms of reliability. The arithmetic doesn’t work,” he said. “This problem is coming. It’s coming quickly. The red lights are flashing.”

Christie bases his warning on problems in the recent past, such as the deadly energy catastrophe Texas experienced two years ago, and the problems in the eastern part of the country last year as Christmas approached.

Three other FERC commissioners joined him in the message to the Senate, and Virginia’s Governor Glenn Youngkin and Dominion Energy Virginia have expressed their concerns, too.

The message they are sending is that eliminating most or all fossil-fuel-produced electricity too rapidly, and replacing it only with wind and solar, is a recipe for failure. 

Wind and solar are nowhere near the point where they can carry the load alone. Solar panels and wind turbines produce nothing most of the time. Fossil fuels work all of the time.

Someday in the future wind and solar will have developed sufficiently through natural development to replace fossil fuels. We don’t need this radical effort to force it on the nation.

Fossil fuels do much, much more than just produce harmful CO2

November 1, 2022

While President Joe Biden and those in the green movement are working hard to rid the world of fossil fuels because of the CO2 they produce, a broader understanding of all the things fossil fuels do might help our perspective.

Oil, natural gas, and coal, are fossil fuels that we use for heat, electricity and to power vehicles. However, they are also a source of raw materials that are used in the manufacturing of many products. Among these is plastic. “Most of the plastics we use are of synthetic origin from petroleum,” according to Global Recycle. “They are simple to manufacture, and the processes are low cost.”

Yes, it is true that too much plastic in many ways causes some problems. But in other ways plastic is a very useful material. Think of all the ways plastic is used today, and all of the products that we would not have without it. 

The most common use of fossil fuels is to power vehicles and planes with gasoline, diesel fuel and jet fuel. But of the 42.6 gallons of oil in a barrel, only about 35 gallons are used for these fuels. The rest of the crude oil is used to manufacture other useful products.

Some of the other materials are petroleum jelly, asphalt, synthetic rubber, paraffin wax, fertilizers, pesticides, detergents, paints, upholstery, carpets, floor wax, insecticides, tires, nail polish, dresses, basketballs, soap, anesthetics, body lotions, deodorants, toothpaste, and even our food is preserved with a little help from fossil fuels.

During the campaign in New Castle, New Hampshire back in 2019, Biden said: “I want you to look at my eyes. I guarantee you, I guarantee you we’re going to end fossil fuels.” But that wasn’t all. He added, “No more subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. No more drilling, including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period,” he said of his energy policies if he won the election. “It ends.”

If he succeeds, there will be a hefty price to be paid by the people he was elected to serve, replacing thousands of jobs and the long list of products that we buy and use today that we get from fossil fuels. Biden has engaged in fulfilling his promise, cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline on January 20, 2021, and other actions that followed.

The idea that fossil fuels actually have beneficial qualities may shock some people. But it is the truth. Even some, or maybe many, of those who don’t buy into the catastrophic theme surrounding the use of oil, natural gas and coal may not realize the broad range of things that fossil fuels give us.

The negatives seem to be the controlling theme. Fossil fuels are bad because they produce CO2, which is dangerous to the environment, and to our existence. Nuclear energy and hydro energy produce no CO2, which is good. But many people also oppose these two alternatives.

Wind and solar power, on the other hand, are championed by the anti-fossil fuel group as the saviors of our planet. And if we don’t replace fossil fuels with them in a fairly short time, we are doomed, they tell us.

Yet, these same people oppose the processes involved in producing windmills and solar panels, like mining and great amounts of industrialization.

The author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, Alex Epstein, has a new book out. Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas — Not Less.

In chapter 10, he wrote that “Since 1980, the percentage of humanity living on less than $2 a day has gone from 42 percent to under 10 percent today.” This is attributed to “increasing productivity, which is driven by the increasing and expanding use of fossil fueled machine labor and the enormous amounts of mental labor it frees up.”

Making life easier and less expensive for millions of people across the globe, including the poorest of us, is certainly a positive development. And continuing improvement in pollution-control technology will make it possible for even more of the poorest on Earth to use fossil fuels “to lift themselves out of poverty with less and less pollution,” Epstein wrote.

“All of this means more first light bulbs, more first refrigerators, more first rewarding jobs, more first years with a consistently full stomach, more first years drinking consistently clean water, more first years being comfortable no matter what the weather,” he wrote.

He explains how much more there is to the story of fossil fuels than the CO2 they produce. And as technology advances, cleaner burning fossil fuels result. America produces the cleanest crude oil in the world. And we should also remember that CO2 is fertilizer for trees and other plant life that then produce and release oxygen into the air. 

Billions of people rely on inexpensive fossil fuels for energy, and that number continues to grow. But the more expensive “renewable” energy sources are beyond their financial means.

So, while technology works to clean up fossil fuels, and to make the cleaner renewable sources more functional and affordable, we need to utilize all the benefits that fossil fuels provide.

We desperately need leaders that can think beyond stage one

September 6, 2022

Nearly 20 years ago the brilliant Thomas Sowell — author, economist, political commentator, and social theorist — released a book titled, “Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One.” This applies to the immediate reaction to some idea to improve a situation, leading to action being taken without first asking, “and then, what will happen?” And then asking that question after each proposed next step.

Sowell gives an example: A state government decides it will help the state to raise taxes on businesses. The immediate result is more revenue for the state. And that is good, the government says. However, over the course of time, those affected businesses might move bits and pieces of their companies to another state, or new businesses may choose another state to place a new factory or operation. 

Over the course of time, the state will lose revenue because businesses will go to other states to avoid the higher taxes.

Had the state government indulged in thinking about what might happen after it raised taxes on business, they might have been able to foresee these very negative consequences. Higher taxes discourage business, therefore while in the short-term revenues will be larger, in the longer term, companies will see that doing business in the state will be more difficult, and some, maybe many, will leave. The state then suffers a loss of tax income, and lost jobs.

Finding examples of how this has worked is not difficult. Such examples are often the result of decisions made on emotion, because they seem to be great ideas to achieve desirable ends, and they feel good. The reality is usually very different.

Here is one example. The question being asked is, “How can we stop the mistreatment of civilians by police?” Well, if police departments have less money to operate on, they will have to do things differently, and the changes will benefit the public, as fewer officers will make fewer horrible mistakes against the public.

We can use social workers to respond to some calls, instead of armed officers. We can tell officers not to arrest people for minor crimes, lessening the number of police/public interactions, and lowering the number of people in jails and those having court proceedings.

Today, we see quite plainly how these efforts have failed. This solution has resulted in police officers quitting and retiring in large numbers. Finding new recruits is difficult, as potential recruits see what has happened, and want no part of a situation that makes them targets. 

Prosecutors do not prosecute all crimes anymore, and many persons charged with a crime are released without even paying a bond. These people are not discouraged or prevented from committing more crimes. Meanwhile, crime is doing well, rising to historic highs in some states and cities.

Another example is that the climate activists tell us that we have got to stop burning fossil fuels and reduce CO2 emissions. One thing we can do, they say, is to stop or substantially slow the production of coal, oil and natural gas in the United States. President Joe Biden, not the sharpest tool in the shed, did this on his first days in office. 

The result was that America’s recently regained position as energy independent and a net exporter of energy came to an end. And now we have to purchase some energy that had been coming from domestic sources from foreign countries, raising the cost of gasoline and other fuels, and helping a foreign country’s economy. The oil we buy from some of them is dirtier than our oil. 

Also, other countries that could be purchasing energy from us, and helping our economy, are instead buying Russian energy, which helps Russia’s economy, and that helps it fight its unprovoked war against Ukraine.

These results could fairly easily have been predicted with a bit of intelligent thought. And, in fact, these results were predicted by those who went beyond stage one and saw where these rash decisions would take us. Too bad Biden and his advisors did not consider the possible results of their plan. Or maybe they just don’t care.

So much of what the political left does or wants to do to “make America better” sounds good, or looks good on paper. But in reality, they often want to undo elements of our country that have worked well for more than 200 years, and the proposed solutions themselves cause problems that are often as bad or worse than the situation they sought to improve.

They don’t seem to understand that making changes to systems that have been in effect for a long time, and are deeply integrated in our way of life, need to be done thoughtfully, and that most of them must gradually evolve to replace existing systems, and not be implemented too quickly, causing chaos.

This is particularly true with climate matters. Clean energy sources like wind and solar power have not evolved nearly enough to take the place of fossil fuels. That will take many years. In fact, the reality is that we may never be able to not rely to some degree on fossil fuels.

Are gas prices too high for you? Just get an electric vehicle!

June 14, 2022

As the national average for a gallon of regular unleaded gas crosses the $5.00 mark, drivers across the country are finding it more and more difficult to keep gas in their cars. Those with diesel vehicles are in even worse shape.

In somewhat of a “let them eat cake” moment, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said recently that people struggling with rising gas prices should just get an electric car. 

Forget buying gas, the price of which has more than doubled in the past year or so. You can just stick your nose in the air as you drive by the gas stations in your new EV.

However, as with every idea, there is a reality that accompanies it, and reality is most often more difficult. 

For example, Kelley Blue Book tells us the average price of an EV was $56,437 in November 2021, and the average price jumped 6.2 percent from the same month a year earlier. The average price of a new compact car, however, was $25,240, less than half the price of an EV.

For an inside look at actually owning and traveling in an EV, we have stories from two people, Wall Street Journal reporter Rachel Wolfe, who described a trip from New Orleans to Chicago, and Emily Dreibelbis, a graduate student at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, who took a road trip from Princeton, New Jersey, to Arlington, Virginia and back.

Wolfe said at the beginning that she “thought it would be fun,” and plotted “a meticulous route” using an app that showed public chargers along the 2,000-mile round-trip route she selected.

Most of the chargers on her route, it turned out, were only Level 2. Those take eight hours for a full charge. Fast chargers give an 80 percent charge in about a half-hour, she noted. “Longer than stopping for gas — but good for a bite or bathroom break,” she reported.

 “Over four days, we spent $175 on charging. We estimated the equivalent cost for gas in a Kia Forte would have been $275, based on the AAA average national gas price for May 19. That $100 savings cost us many hours in waiting time,” she wrote.

She also noted that the Kia EV6 she drove had lower range than advertised, that the charging stations had slower speeds than advertised, that many charging stations had problematic cords, and that lots of the country had almost no fast-charging stations at all.

For the entire trip, Wolfe wrote, she spent 16 hours sleeping during the trip and 18 hours waiting to charge the vehicle, spread over 14 charges.

Dreibelbis, an avowed EV supporter, made a trip from Princeton, New Jersey, to Arlington, Virginia, and back. Traveling in her parents’ 2019 Chevrolet Volt, she experienced problems along the way, too.

During her 200-mile adventure, she experienced broken and slow vehicle charging stations, and also found not nearly enough of them. In Maryland, she found three chargers that didn’t work, and one that had an out-of-order sign on it that did work.

Of those that worked, the Level 3 “fast” charger takes about an hour for a charge that gives only 100 miles of range. Other chargers were slower. A Level 1 charger for home use can take up to 10 hours, and a Level 2 charger, like many found in public parking lots, may take up to four hours.

Dreibelbis Googled locations in Arlington and found one site was not accessible, as it was in a private complex, and the next one cost an $11 entry fee just to get to it. She wrote, “Frustrated, I surrendered the money. They only had Level Two chargers, so it took two and a half hours of reading a book in the cold until the car had enough power.”

In the manic drive to do away with fossil fuels, by 2030 the U.S. hopes for 50 percent of new cars sales to be EVs. Last year, EVs were only 4.5 percent of new car sales. 

To meet this goal, things will have to improve quickly. Charging times are long, and charging stations are far too few to service the number of EVs that is desired. Traveling long distances will take hours longer, given the charging times, and the potential waiting in line behind one, two or perhaps three  vehicles to get to the charger. And the price of EVs is often double that of conventionally fueled vehicles.

And then there is the reality of where the electricity comes from to recharge EVs: Much of it comes from fossil fuels: coal and natural gas. So, while driving an EV produces less pollution, generating the electricity to charge them will be producing lots more of it. And the more EVs there are, the more pollution will be required to keep them charged.

Further, the critical elements for EV batteries are being purchased largely from China.

When the time is right for EVs, we will transition naturally to them. That time is not yet, nor anytime soon. The biggest problem with the goals of the left is that they never want to wait until the time is right, but instead cause problems by rushing the issue.