23 ms·

Industry spent millions selling recycling, to sell more plastic

279 points by ctack 7y ago

lnsru 7y ago
I am afraid, that environmental topics will drown in current pandemic. There will be millions units of medical safety equipment disposed in coming months. Probably this will be incinerated since contaminated. It’s basically all sorts of plastic. Maybe this will push forward recycling industry to deal with large amount of plastic waste. Maybe not. I can speculate, that more and more products in the stores will be wrapped to create safety feeling for the buyers. “Buy here, our food is well packed and clean!”
- Retric 7y ago
  Environmental issues always come down to scale. Disposing of excess medical equipment is a tiny issue relative to shutting down the economy.
  - colechristensen 7y ago
    Shutting down the economy and reduced pollution that resulted will far far outweigh increased medical supply disposal. Just go look at the skies in India and China.
- remarkEon 7y ago
  Disagree. If the pandemic becomes severe enough that supply chains are significantly disrupted, it may become easier to convince people that reusable materials are better than single-use plastics that are dependent on mass scale manufacturing overseas.
  - ip26 7y ago
    We've been down this road before, quite a few times. Once the crisis ends, everyone quickly returns to their old ways. I'm not that hopeful for a permanent shift away from disposable everything.
lukifer 7y ago
Plastics in general make me nervous. I watched a talk from an endocrinologist that many plastics and their byproducts can bind to chemical receptors, throwing off the production and ratios of various hormones and neurotransmitters. We made a big push against BPA-free plastic years ago, but there may be other varieties that are just as harmful: https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/03/tritan-certichem-eastman-bpa-free-plastic-safe/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/03/tritan-certi... (I'm also very nervous about "biodegradable" plastic which appears to break down granularly, but persists microscopically in the environment.) As much as I applaud the effort to use cloth bags at the grocery store, the vast majority of the products we place in them are still wrapped in huge quantities of single-use plastic. While metal cans and glass jars are at least somewhat more recyclable/reusable, I'm not even sure we have a good replacement for the necessary evil of food-safe containers. If someone more knowledgable than myself had suggestions on how to look for safer/greener plastic varieties, or general strategies to reduce their use, I'd love to hear them.
- goda90 7y ago
  Unfortunately, metal cans have a plastic liner too. We use plastic in so much it'll be really hard to get away from it.
  - xvilka 7y ago
    The film is thin, and it will burn away during melting. So it will certainly help to reduce the plastic pollution compared to pure plastic bottles and cans.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  Metal cans are lined with plastic. You're basically limited to glass and wax paper.
  - barney54 7y ago
    And while it is possible to recycle glass, in practice it is tough. Glass is heavy and therefore costly to transport. It also generally has to be sorted by color before it is recycled (and this is a problem with U.S. multi stream recycling collection). https://cen.acs.org/materials/inorganic-chemistry/glass-recycling-US-broken/97/i6 https://cen.acs.org/materials/inorganic-chemistry/glass-recy...
darepublic 7y ago
"Reducing" takes discipline, "Recycling" maybe just delusions.
- Iwan-Zotow 7y ago
  Nonsense. "Reducing" requires proper pricing, that is it
Afforess 7y ago
We need to ban most consumer uses of plastic. Plastic is much like nuclear waste, it's harmful to life, and takes thousands to millions of years to degrade. Outside of uses like medical devices or smaller electronic devices, plastic is just wasteful. At the supermarket, I just cringe when I see a single banana or apple wrapped in plastic wrap. And I shudder to imagine the future health effects all the microplastic beads in the water supply are doing to us.
- hammock 7y ago
  You are being downvoted because this is an extreme position, but you back it up with reasoning and I believe it deserves to be heard.
- hnhg 7y ago
  Don't forget its use in cigarette filters.
- nitrogen 7y ago
  The plastic-wrapped fruit lasts longer so there is less food waste (and less carbon wasted on shipping wasted fruit).
  - limomium 7y ago
    There would also be less food waste if the stores just, you know, gave away the products about to spoil to people who, you know, aren't rich enough to be picky about their bananas.
    - nitrogen 7y ago
      That does happen with bread at least. I grew up in a place where shopping at the "canned food store" and "bread store" was common. These were places that sold food that had expired off the shelves of other stores at steep discounts. Sometimes the food was just given away by grocery stores, too.
- hristov 7y ago
dpix 7y ago
Even if we had 100% recycling, most if not all forms of recyclable plastic can only be recycled once into the "Made from recycled materials" type of plastic which cannot be recycled again. So the Oil industry will still have massive demand for new plastics if every piece of existing plastic got recycled only once. For recycling to work, we need a solution that makes it easy to re-use many many times. This is why recycling really isn't the answer to solving the plastics crisis anyway
- pestaa 7y ago
  It's a bit more complicated I believe, because with each cycle the material loses some degree of quality, but there are several categories to begin with. So the thin water bottles (PET) might be reused only once, but advanced plastic required by medicine containers, infant food packaging, or even thicker bottles, may get recycled multiple times.
- mraudiobook_com 7y ago
  Also why recycling plastic is a massive scam perpetrated by the producers themselves
laCorona 7y ago
>many plastics and their byproducts Woah woah. Many? Plastics are useful because they are inert. They are gigantic chains that basically don't react. Byproducts are part of the process, not the actual plastics. And I'm not sure what you are referring to here. Sure BPA is potentially unstable, but it's pretty easy to figure out if a chemical is dangerous. Chemicals aren't free, so you know what you are buying. Source- chem Engineer who worked in polyurethane seating
DubiousPusher 7y ago
Something I've wondered about for a while is if we just decreased the variety of things we allow to be put into combined recycling if that would help. For example, if we eliminate paper and glass entirely from recycling programs and all recycling was plastic and metal. Would this help? I know a some amount of paper is carbon neutral at this point because planting is required which offsets use. And a deposit could be charged for glass which would help that. If we focused on metal, which is profitable and plastic which seems to be most problematic would we be better off?
- droopyEyelids 7y ago
  I think you're right, but we'd eliminate plastic- paper and metal are economically recyclable. Paper is a huge problem, too. It's one of the most polluting industries, up there with mining. And, I believe, that is just the production of paper- not including the forestry that is also required.
- _delirium 7y ago
  Some single-stream systems have stopped taking glass. Paper/cardboard seems to be cost-effective so there isn't a real pressure to remove that. If anything it's one of the few things (along with metal) that the recycling systems actually get decent recovery rates from. The reasons for removing glass in particular seem to be: 1) it's the heaviest component, so removing it decreases transportation/processing costs, 2) after China stopped accepting exported glass, there's a lack of processors who will take it, and 3) broken glass shards contaminate more valuable things in the stream, plus damage machinery. Plastic isn't really cost-effective either and has low recovery rates, but it's at least lighter than glass and doesn't break into shards as easily, so a lot of places still take it, if only to make people feel good. Links: https://wamu.org/story/19/04/26/arlington-ends-curbside-glass-recycling/ https://wamu.org/story/19/04/26/arlington-ends-curbside-glas..., https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/news2/glass-containers-no-longer-required-in-curbside-recycling-program/ https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/news2/glass-containers-no-long..., https://www.recyclingtoday.com/article/recycling-programs-phase-out-glass-2018/ https://www.recyclingtoday.com/article/recycling-programs-ph...
  - 7y ago
daxfohl 7y ago
I feel like there is another side too, of "plastic replacement" industry that also doesn't particularly have our interests at heart either. Do I really think reusable aluminum drinking straws are the answer to humanity's next crisis? Are plastic straws even in a top 1000 list of humanity's problems? Is the change even a net positive if the average person uses an aluminum one three times and throws it out? Or is it just someone (maybe even well intentioned) looking to make a quick dollar?
- capableweb 7y ago
  > Is the change even a net positive if the average person uses one three times and throws it out? Well, the point of the aluminum drinking straws is that you don't throw them. What's the point if you're gonna throw them in the end anyways? Just wash it, like the rest of utensils that you use. Anyways, I think we can all survive without straws. McDonals where I live has started just not giving you straws at all, and the cup has a message that if you want straws, ask the people working there for one. Looking around me when eating there, most people seems to be able to drink their sodas just fine without straws.
  - pestaa 7y ago
    No straws??? What are they planning to do next, taking away our lids?!
    - stallmanite 7y ago
      They’ll just have you cup your hands under the fountain. 100% reduced plastic waste.
    - capableweb 7y ago
      Yeah, the same McDonalds are obviously not using the lids as the lids are only there for putting a straw in and you cannot drink from the cup with the lid on, so they are also served without lids. Guess the next step is to replace the paper/plastic (not sure what material it is, guessing a mix) cups with actual glasses that gets washed instead of thrown.
golemiprague 7y ago
I think in those times of corona plastic proves to be very beneficial, I wish shops still had those good old plastic bags rather than me carrying around my "recyclable" bag with who knows what kind of diseases and contaminations. That's assuming I remembered to take one out of the 20 I got which I bought every time I forgot to take one.
Iwan-Zotow 7y ago
If it is 100% recyclable+degradable, I don't care how much they sell
baron816 7y ago
I’ve heard a sentiment from people that it’s ok to drink lots of bottle water, use plastic utensils, etc. because they can be recycled. Plastic won. Try to tell people that they’re wasting their time trying to recycle and they’ll freak out.
- bagacrap 7y ago
  the same is true of compost. It's been shown people will use more disposable utensils if they're told they're compostable (like those corn ones). "Reduce" comes before "recycle" in the old marketing adage, but unfortunately it seems they're genuinely at odds.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    "Reduce" is at odds with people's desire to consume. Unfortunately, due to the way evolution optimized humans to select mating partners, it's going to be nigh impossible to address the cause of the problem.
    - DangitBobby 7y ago
      There may be some evolutionary aspects, but mostly it's a consequence of our culture. When disposable one-use items and containers did not exist, society was fine (for the most part). We would be fine if they largely disappeared as well. What ultimately allowed the shift to occur was that the externalities of disposables were never correctly priced into their production and usage. We can certainly fix that.
lucisferre 7y ago
As everyone in the media wakes up to the fraud that is recycling I'm reminded that Penn and Teller looked into this in 2004. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0771119/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0771119/
- hristov 7y ago
  Penn and Teller are full of it as usual. Glass/metals recycling is perfectly beneficial. Paper recycling is generally beneficial if you can get people to recycle the correct paper. But in situations where paper waste is relatively uniform (such as printer paper in offices, schools, etc.) paper recycling can be very efficient and profitable. It turns out that plastics recycling (at least at the consumer level) is not that beneficial and probably just an elaborate marketing campaign. If Penn and Teller dug in and did their research and outed plastics recycling as a marketing campaign I would say they are great public intellectuals and forward thinking visionaries. Instead they just recycled (get it?) some long refuted right wing lies about all recycling and thus ensured nobody would take them seriously. And if part of their argument was correct that was completely coincidental.
  - lucisferre 7y ago
    Did you actually watch it? They point out that at the very least aluminum recycling make sense. At the time glass and paper recycling seemed to have some questions around profitability. They mostly spent the episode dedicated to plastics. They also admitted that despite their findings they found it very difficult to personally give up on recycling. That's what makes the lie so effective. We want to believe we are helping, that we are doing something effective that makes up for our wastefulness and excess consumption. We aren't.
- Der_Einzige 7y ago
  These are the same people who claim that anti-tobacco campaigns are bullshit and that tobacco is not nearly as bad as claimed. News flash: they're wrong about that. They lost all of their credibility to me with one episode
pmiller2 7y ago
Yep, industry promotes recycling to sell more plastic, and they also discouraged littering to reduce their responsibility to make biodegradable packaging. See https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-indian-crying-environment-ads-pollution-1123-20171113-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec...
29athrowaway 7y ago
From the initial 3Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle, people have opted for recycling because it's the only one that does not actually require you to do much. But the 3Rs are hierarchical, with the first one being the most important: reduce your waste output. Then: buy used instead of new, avoid single-use items. You can start with a reusable shopping bag, mug, water bottle, bowl, utensils, cloth napkin.
- redis_mlc 7y ago
  That's is good, constructive advice. Just to drive the point home, recycling bins are largely land-filled in the USA. They're only recycled if the municipality can strike a deal with private recycling contractors. Often they just say no, or ask to be paid to handle it. So off to the landfill. The bins sure make people feel good, though.
blunte 7y ago
Wow. Fuck these people. These are the same group of selfish assholes who have setup this unfathomably-dysfunctional government and economic system in the US (and have managed to spread it to Europe). What pains me most is that these motherfuckers will be dead before the reckoning comes. Their offspring will suffer along with us and ours.
AgentOrange1234 7y ago
This kind of dishonest dealing seems to be just absolutely everywhere. It is really depressing. How do you even fight it. It probably is all legal, but it is corrupt as hell and condemns everyone else to pay hugely for a small group’s gain. Maybe we can support 7bn people on this earth, but not this way.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

279 points by ctack 7y ago

I am afraid, that environmental topics will drown in current pandemic. There will be millions units of medical safety equipment disposed in coming months. Probably this will be incinerated since contaminated. It’s basically all sorts of plastic. Maybe this will push forward recycling industry to deal with large amount of plastic waste. Maybe not. I can speculate, that more and more products in the stores will be wrapped to create safety feeling for the buyers. “Buy here, our food is well packed and clean!”

Retric 7y ago
Environmental issues always come down to scale. Disposing of excess medical equipment is a tiny issue relative to shutting down the economy.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  Shutting down the economy and reduced pollution that resulted will far far outweigh increased medical supply disposal. Just go look at the skies in India and China.
remarkEon 7y ago
Disagree. If the pandemic becomes severe enough that supply chains are significantly disrupted, it may become easier to convince people that reusable materials are better than single-use plastics that are dependent on mass scale manufacturing overseas.
- ip26 7y ago
  We've been down this road before, quite a few times. Once the crisis ends, everyone quickly returns to their old ways. I'm not that hopeful for a permanent shift away from disposable everything.

lukifer 7y ago

Plastics in general make me nervous. I watched a talk from an endocrinologist that many plastics and their byproducts can bind to chemical receptors, throwing off the production and ratios of various hormones and neurotransmitters. We made a big push against BPA-free plastic years ago, but there may be other varieties that are just as harmful: https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/03/tritan-certichem-eastman-bpa-free-plastic-safe/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/03/tritan-certi... (I'm also very nervous about "biodegradable" plastic which appears to break down granularly, but persists microscopically in the environment.) As much as I applaud the effort to use cloth bags at the grocery store, the vast majority of the products we place in them are still wrapped in huge quantities of single-use plastic. While metal cans and glass jars are at least somewhat more recyclable/reusable, I'm not even sure we have a good replacement for the necessary evil of food-safe containers. If someone more knowledgable than myself had suggestions on how to look for safer/greener plastic varieties, or general strategies to reduce their use, I'd love to hear them.

goda90 7y ago
Unfortunately, metal cans have a plastic liner too. We use plastic in so much it'll be really hard to get away from it.
- xvilka 7y ago
  The film is thin, and it will burn away during melting. So it will certainly help to reduce the plastic pollution compared to pure plastic bottles and cans.
kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
Metal cans are lined with plastic. You're basically limited to glass and wax paper.
- barney54 7y ago
  And while it is possible to recycle glass, in practice it is tough. Glass is heavy and therefore costly to transport. It also generally has to be sorted by color before it is recycled (and this is a problem with U.S. multi stream recycling collection). https://cen.acs.org/materials/inorganic-chemistry/glass-recycling-US-broken/97/i6 https://cen.acs.org/materials/inorganic-chemistry/glass-recy...

darepublic 7y ago

"Reducing" takes discipline, "Recycling" maybe just delusions.

Iwan-Zotow 7y ago
Nonsense. "Reducing" requires proper pricing, that is it

Afforess 7y ago

We need to ban most consumer uses of plastic. Plastic is much like nuclear waste, it's harmful to life, and takes thousands to millions of years to degrade. Outside of uses like medical devices or smaller electronic devices, plastic is just wasteful. At the supermarket, I just cringe when I see a single banana or apple wrapped in plastic wrap. And I shudder to imagine the future health effects all the microplastic beads in the water supply are doing to us.

hammock 7y ago
You are being downvoted because this is an extreme position, but you back it up with reasoning and I believe it deserves to be heard.
hnhg 7y ago
Don't forget its use in cigarette filters.
nitrogen 7y ago
The plastic-wrapped fruit lasts longer so there is less food waste (and less carbon wasted on shipping wasted fruit).
- limomium 7y ago
  There would also be less food waste if the stores just, you know, gave away the products about to spoil to people who, you know, aren't rich enough to be picky about their bananas.
  - nitrogen 7y ago
    That does happen with bread at least. I grew up in a place where shopping at the "canned food store" and "bread store" was common. These were places that sold food that had expired off the shelves of other stores at steep discounts. Sometimes the food was just given away by grocery stores, too.
hristov 7y ago

dpix 7y ago

Even if we had 100% recycling, most if not all forms of recyclable plastic can only be recycled once into the "Made from recycled materials" type of plastic which cannot be recycled again. So the Oil industry will still have massive demand for new plastics if every piece of existing plastic got recycled only once. For recycling to work, we need a solution that makes it easy to re-use many many times. This is why recycling really isn't the answer to solving the plastics crisis anyway

pestaa 7y ago
It's a bit more complicated I believe, because with each cycle the material loses some degree of quality, but there are several categories to begin with. So the thin water bottles (PET) might be reused only once, but advanced plastic required by medicine containers, infant food packaging, or even thicker bottles, may get recycled multiple times.
mraudiobook_com 7y ago
Also why recycling plastic is a massive scam perpetrated by the producers themselves

laCorona 7y ago

>many plastics and their byproducts Woah woah. Many? Plastics are useful because they are inert. They are gigantic chains that basically don't react. Byproducts are part of the process, not the actual plastics. And I'm not sure what you are referring to here. Sure BPA is potentially unstable, but it's pretty easy to figure out if a chemical is dangerous. Chemicals aren't free, so you know what you are buying. Source- chem Engineer who worked in polyurethane seating

DubiousPusher 7y ago

Something I've wondered about for a while is if we just decreased the variety of things we allow to be put into combined recycling if that would help. For example, if we eliminate paper and glass entirely from recycling programs and all recycling was plastic and metal. Would this help? I know a some amount of paper is carbon neutral at this point because planting is required which offsets use. And a deposit could be charged for glass which would help that. If we focused on metal, which is profitable and plastic which seems to be most problematic would we be better off?

droopyEyelids 7y ago
I think you're right, but we'd eliminate plastic- paper and metal are economically recyclable. Paper is a huge problem, too. It's one of the most polluting industries, up there with mining. And, I believe, that is just the production of paper- not including the forestry that is also required.
_delirium 7y ago
Some single-stream systems have stopped taking glass. Paper/cardboard seems to be cost-effective so there isn't a real pressure to remove that. If anything it's one of the few things (along with metal) that the recycling systems actually get decent recovery rates from. The reasons for removing glass in particular seem to be: 1) it's the heaviest component, so removing it decreases transportation/processing costs, 2) after China stopped accepting exported glass, there's a lack of processors who will take it, and 3) broken glass shards contaminate more valuable things in the stream, plus damage machinery. Plastic isn't really cost-effective either and has low recovery rates, but it's at least lighter than glass and doesn't break into shards as easily, so a lot of places still take it, if only to make people feel good. Links: https://wamu.org/story/19/04/26/arlington-ends-curbside-glass-recycling/ https://wamu.org/story/19/04/26/arlington-ends-curbside-glas..., https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/news2/glass-containers-no-longer-required-in-curbside-recycling-program/ https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/news2/glass-containers-no-long..., https://www.recyclingtoday.com/article/recycling-programs-phase-out-glass-2018/ https://www.recyclingtoday.com/article/recycling-programs-ph...
- 7y ago

daxfohl 7y ago

I feel like there is another side too, of "plastic replacement" industry that also doesn't particularly have our interests at heart either. Do I really think reusable aluminum drinking straws are the answer to humanity's next crisis? Are plastic straws even in a top 1000 list of humanity's problems? Is the change even a net positive if the average person uses an aluminum one three times and throws it out? Or is it just someone (maybe even well intentioned) looking to make a quick dollar?

capableweb 7y ago
> Is the change even a net positive if the average person uses one three times and throws it out? Well, the point of the aluminum drinking straws is that you don't throw them. What's the point if you're gonna throw them in the end anyways? Just wash it, like the rest of utensils that you use. Anyways, I think we can all survive without straws. McDonals where I live has started just not giving you straws at all, and the cup has a message that if you want straws, ask the people working there for one. Looking around me when eating there, most people seems to be able to drink their sodas just fine without straws.
- pestaa 7y ago
  No straws??? What are they planning to do next, taking away our lids?!
  - stallmanite 7y ago
    They’ll just have you cup your hands under the fountain. 100% reduced plastic waste.
  - capableweb 7y ago
    Yeah, the same McDonalds are obviously not using the lids as the lids are only there for putting a straw in and you cannot drink from the cup with the lid on, so they are also served without lids. Guess the next step is to replace the paper/plastic (not sure what material it is, guessing a mix) cups with actual glasses that gets washed instead of thrown.

golemiprague 7y ago

I think in those times of corona plastic proves to be very beneficial, I wish shops still had those good old plastic bags rather than me carrying around my "recyclable" bag with who knows what kind of diseases and contaminations. That's assuming I remembered to take one out of the 20 I got which I bought every time I forgot to take one.

Iwan-Zotow 7y ago

If it is 100% recyclable+degradable, I don't care how much they sell

baron816 7y ago

I’ve heard a sentiment from people that it’s ok to drink lots of bottle water, use plastic utensils, etc. because they can be recycled. Plastic won. Try to tell people that they’re wasting their time trying to recycle and they’ll freak out.

bagacrap 7y ago
the same is true of compost. It's been shown people will use more disposable utensils if they're told they're compostable (like those corn ones). "Reduce" comes before "recycle" in the old marketing adage, but unfortunately it seems they're genuinely at odds.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  "Reduce" is at odds with people's desire to consume. Unfortunately, due to the way evolution optimized humans to select mating partners, it's going to be nigh impossible to address the cause of the problem.
  - DangitBobby 7y ago
    There may be some evolutionary aspects, but mostly it's a consequence of our culture. When disposable one-use items and containers did not exist, society was fine (for the most part). We would be fine if they largely disappeared as well. What ultimately allowed the shift to occur was that the externalities of disposables were never correctly priced into their production and usage. We can certainly fix that.

lucisferre 7y ago

As everyone in the media wakes up to the fraud that is recycling I'm reminded that Penn and Teller looked into this in 2004. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0771119/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0771119/

hristov 7y ago
Penn and Teller are full of it as usual. Glass/metals recycling is perfectly beneficial. Paper recycling is generally beneficial if you can get people to recycle the correct paper. But in situations where paper waste is relatively uniform (such as printer paper in offices, schools, etc.) paper recycling can be very efficient and profitable. It turns out that plastics recycling (at least at the consumer level) is not that beneficial and probably just an elaborate marketing campaign. If Penn and Teller dug in and did their research and outed plastics recycling as a marketing campaign I would say they are great public intellectuals and forward thinking visionaries. Instead they just recycled (get it?) some long refuted right wing lies about all recycling and thus ensured nobody would take them seriously. And if part of their argument was correct that was completely coincidental.
- lucisferre 7y ago
  Did you actually watch it? They point out that at the very least aluminum recycling make sense. At the time glass and paper recycling seemed to have some questions around profitability. They mostly spent the episode dedicated to plastics. They also admitted that despite their findings they found it very difficult to personally give up on recycling. That's what makes the lie so effective. We want to believe we are helping, that we are doing something effective that makes up for our wastefulness and excess consumption. We aren't.
Der_Einzige 7y ago
These are the same people who claim that anti-tobacco campaigns are bullshit and that tobacco is not nearly as bad as claimed. News flash: they're wrong about that. They lost all of their credibility to me with one episode

pmiller2 7y ago

Yep, industry promotes recycling to sell more plastic, and they also discouraged littering to reduce their responsibility to make biodegradable packaging. See https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-indian-crying-environment-ads-pollution-1123-20171113-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec...

29athrowaway 7y ago

From the initial 3Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle, people have opted for recycling because it's the only one that does not actually require you to do much. But the 3Rs are hierarchical, with the first one being the most important: reduce your waste output. Then: buy used instead of new, avoid single-use items. You can start with a reusable shopping bag, mug, water bottle, bowl, utensils, cloth napkin.

redis_mlc 7y ago
That's is good, constructive advice. Just to drive the point home, recycling bins are largely land-filled in the USA. They're only recycled if the municipality can strike a deal with private recycling contractors. Often they just say no, or ask to be paid to handle it. So off to the landfill. The bins sure make people feel good, though.

blunte 7y ago

Wow. Fuck these people. These are the same group of selfish assholes who have setup this unfathomably-dysfunctional government and economic system in the US (and have managed to spread it to Europe). What pains me most is that these motherfuckers will be dead before the reckoning comes. Their offspring will suffer along with us and ours.

AgentOrange1234 7y ago

This kind of dishonest dealing seems to be just absolutely everywhere. It is really depressing. How do you even fight it. It probably is all legal, but it is corrupt as hell and condemns everyone else to pay hugely for a small group’s gain. Maybe we can support 7bn people on this earth, but not this way.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]