(Image from: http://www.sustainability-ed.org/pages/what3-2.htm)

It looks bad now. But if you look at this graph in 2039 AD, the cost of recycling of plastics will be very much below the cost of materials. Or maybe it may come the next year? Inventions are unexpected.

  PROBLEM

From the waste we put into the "sorted-waste-collection" bins, the plastic is probably the worst. Paper, glass, iron, wood are not so bad. Plastics take long to degrade and are far from inert. And lots of the waste ends up in the nature as litter. Hemant wrote about it here: http://climatechange.thinkaboutit.eu/think2/post/do_we_really_care_about_our_planet_think_twice_before_answering/

Why do you think people throw things away? Because the things have no value to them. At present plastic waste is worthless. Producers of plastic do not buy platic waste from people, so it has no value.

Why are producers so little interested in recycling?

At present  recycling is not competitive. The costs are higher than the benefit.

NO recycling company can survive, if its costs are higher than its sales. You too cannot survive, if you eat less than the energy your body needs.

Yes, it is an irony, isn't it. We hear so many calls for "sustainability" from the environmetnalists. And then it turns out that their own green-recycling-technologies are not economically sustainable themselves. If you use them, you go bankrupt.

SOLUTION

 Look at the graph. Twenty years later new inventions will come and the technologies will be better. Recycling will be cheaper. It will be cheaper to recycle old junk than to mine and refine new material.

 So the only thing you need to solve the waste pollution problem is… go to your lab and invent something. Think of your greed - imagine how rich you can get, if you make a worthy patent? If an investor invests into research, it pays back - due to patent fees later. If you invest into an incompetitive junk, it does not pay back.

 The point is, that once recycling is competitive, it will spread automatically. Without the need of government regulations, subsidies and bans. Companies will not mine ore for 10 USD, when they can get the material at 5 USD from the household waste. The capitalist bastards are greedy, but they are not stupid.

 Then a new form of business can arise. The companies can set up special collection points, where they will purchase plastic waste directly from households. So when you go shopping, you will take your bag full of plastic bottles, take it to them and… they will give you money!

 Who do you think will throw empty plastic bottles in the forest then? Only dumb people, who cannot count to ten. And even if they keep littering the woods… the homeless people will come, they will collect the plastic waste and sell it at the collection point. Just like do it now with glass bottles. In human society the homeless function as the fungi in nature - utilising things that the others consider waste.

Dumps and landfills will suddenly change into a gold mine. Prospectors will come to harvest the plastic waste from 1990s. It will be easier and cheaper than mining new minerals in deep underground shafts.

 EXAMPLE

New inventions come every year at an amazing speed. For example the company Omnia Reacycling Ltd. recently invented this: "Traditionally different types of plastics had to be recycled separately, resulting in high costs... Omnia products are made from completely mixed plastic waste using our own, unique recycling process. For every tonne of mixed plastic material sent in to us one tonne of product is manufactured, leaving no waste and nothing goes to landfill, incineration or export."

Read here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/west_midlands/7210143.stm

And here: http://www.omniarecycling.co.uk/productsandservices.php

So have patience and don't freak out. The green skepticism about technical progress at the peak of industrial revolution sound plain ridiculous.

How does it feel, environmentalists? Knowing that the capitalists you dislike so much are the real saviours of our planet? You just talk, whereas they really DO SOMETHING.

DEAD END

So this is the solution. Stop chatting on the internet. Stop doing tcktcktck campaigns. Stop the green bans, regulations and subsidies. Stop bullying us, it is not necessary.

I heard some of the enviornmentalists say, that the key problem is the greed.  The evil greedy capitalist money-based system. So we should redesign human character? I think it is not necessary. Instead  of futile plans for mental and social engineering, try to use our selfish motives for the public good. Free market can solve our problems, you just do not know how to use it (maybe someone should write some "User's Manual to Capitalism").

Look, if you subsidise the present incompetitive companies, they see no reason to invest into research. Because they can get their cash anyway - from our subventions, from our taxes, without moving a finger. This is not a good way to motivate selfish humans.

So what to do? First, call off the Copenhagen conference -  it is just wasting the money we could invest  into research directly. Unexpected inventions will solve our problems. Not fat politicians in suits. Second, go to your lab and start doing something useful, for God's sake.