"The solution to the plastic waste crisis? It isn’t recycling", byJohn Vidal.
Excellent article, right on point.
"The plastic makers and supermarkets are rightly held to account, but it is the voracious “take-make-dispose” industrial model identified by people such as Ellen MacArthur that has led directly to the state we are now in. The plastic waste crisis is just the symptom of a single-use culture."
The only way to ever make something circular like that is going to be recycling... I doubt people are going to accept used goods as readily as new goods.
They don't have to be "new" though, just recycled. Trends and technology are always changing, we just need to recycle and reuse the raw materials with sufficient energy input to make new things. Nuclear can give us all the power we ever need, from there it shouldn't be chemically impossible to reprocess goods.
Is it wasteful? Well of course it is. But a large amount of the economy is based on what we want, not what we need. It may seem wasteful to want the newest model of phone, but that is what helps push that technology forward. We can't be throwing away a trillion phones into a landfill each year, but we also should be finding ways to melt them down into new models.
@greylaw89 It's an interesting view point - but a lot of value is lost when you recycle certain materials.
For example, a book or a DVD.
The paper on the book has minimal value, while the words, the contents might make that particular copy precious, since there might be no other one around, or the price is high.
I enjoyed reading and seeing the reference that the Brits are more accepting of used goods and look for them. I think there's a lot less disposable income there too, compared to a more prosperous American urban area (along the Coasts, for example).
As things change and the costs, available materials, quality of goods change, people might be more accepting of used goods. Sometimes much higher quality than new articles made to be disposable and keep the retail space in profits.
What you are referring to with Books or DVDs is the transfer of sentimental value in an older book or movie. While this certainly exists (and I've bought a few old books myself) this isn't necessarily something that an economy of scale is going to involve. Sentimental value of something is very specific between the individual and the product.
In your examples we've already found vastly superior (both economically and environmentally) means of distribution (that being digital). For any product that is a conveyance of information,
digital production of that product is a moot point.
A book might be sentimental because it is the last copy. In that case its just waiting to be scanned into a PDF for its digital immortality, followed by sitting in a museum somewhere. It might even be more valuable for its age and character that comes with age, to certain people.
Forward onto a phone, no ones cracked screen is going to be sentimental to anyone else. People want new things, and will gather used things based mostly on savings. While we could say, de "externalize" the environmental costs of production, there will still be a substantial majority of people that buy new things. Recycling will be more and more necessary to sustain this in the future.
Depends on what you mean by durable... if there is a single book somewhere then one can assume reasonably that Kindles backup and recovery system is superior to something that vulnerable to fire or mold.
But yes, if the internet was ever destroyed then I suppose its good to have physical copies. Provided that people aren't all dead, still can read, and the physical copy can last until people have time to appreciate it again.
@greylaw89 I believe the digital alternatives have value, but limited durability compared to hard copy.
And it sh1t hits the fan, as might happen, a local book collection might become the core of a local library. I do not discount that possibility.
Besides, not everything gets into a digital format, one way or the other.
The main value I assign to a printed book is the actual content (words, images, ideas), versus it's value as a cultural artifact.