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[...] buried in each used nappy [diaper -Ed.] are hidden treasures, according to Marcello Somma, who is head of research and development at Fater, an Italian joint venture between Procter & Gamble and Angelini Group.
Fater has developed what it claims is the first industrial-scale process that can extract these valuable materials, and it is already up and running in Treviso, Italy. Now, as part of a project called EMBRACED, it is building a biorefinery next door to make best use of these recycled substances.
Technical minds have been trying to recycle nappies since 1992, says Somma, but it has proved to be a ball of trouble.
"When you change a nappy you wrap it onto itself and so basically you have a kind of bomb of four waste types intimately linked with each other," says Somma. "There is plastic waste – polyethylene and polypropylene, paper waste – because there is cellulose, a super-absorbent polymer and the organic fraction – the human contribution."
Fater, which has been trying to recycle disposable nappies for a decade, has found the trickiest stage is at the start: opening it.
Hmm, the baby's first diapers must be especially valuable, containing the black tar they do.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 09 2018, @02:59PM (5 children)
Disagree. The time, expense, and effort spent actually *recycling* the materials should be part of the upfront cost. When you buy that big bag of disposable diapers, you have ALREADY PAID for the recycling. Makes sense to me. Will that cost make them prohibitively expensive? Maybe - maybe not. Personally, I don't care. We've already discussed an alternative which costs nothing, or so close to nothing as to be forever invisible, to recycle. When you've finally finished with that 100% cotton rag, you can put it in the mulch heap. Cotton takes a pretty long time to decompose into mulch, but it does finally mulch.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 10 2018, @07:31AM (4 children)
Why? The materials aren't valuable in themselves or all that scarce. And recycling probably uses up more resources than it saves.
Someone still has to wash it. Few things are more valuable than time. And you still have that waste stream to deal with (unless you're paying for recycling baby poop too).
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 10 2018, @02:23PM (3 children)
Why put the cost of recycling right up front, as part of the purchase price? Welll - Americans especially are notorious for not bothering to recycle, even when it's free. We're too fat and lazy to separate aluminum from glass from mulchables from hazardous from garbage. Seriously, I wonder how many are just too fat and lazy to even take their trash out to the curb. Anyway - putting the cost of recycling into the purchase price will help somewhat to encourage people to recycle. It also puts the money into the recycling SYSTEM. No one wants to handle trash and garbage for a living. They sure don't want to do it for free, and they don't want to do it much more at minimum wage. Maybe if starting positions for recyclers were minimum wage plus 50%, we could get more people interested? Maybe. I'm willing to try. Instead of convicts picking up trash along the highways, maybe we would see more entrepreneurs, capitalizing on that recycling money.
Someone has to wash diapers? Oh, boo-hooo-hooooo!
Every couple days, you spend a whole HOUR rinsing, washing, and folding enough diapers to last for the next couple days. It's something that needs done - you do it. Most people spend more time than that in the bathroom, staring into the mirror.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 11 2018, @01:36AM (2 children)
The elephant in this room is that it just isn't worth recycling most of that stuff - and in practice a good portion of that waste stream doesn't actually get recycled. Now, you're asking those people to spend that time to do something of negative value with the would-be recyclers often just dumping that stuff into the landfill anyway.
Which we could just not do by not using washable diapers. As I noted before, time is more valuable than the resources that go to diapers and baby poop.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday October 11 2018, @02:34AM (1 child)
Opinion noted. And, I disagree. You seem to be rationalizing some of the worst traits of Americans, and their wasteful, disposable society. Note the use of the word "rationalizing", because you can't justify our wastefulness.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 11 2018, @08:58AM
And you seem to think recycling a small amount of resources is worth more than the parents' time.