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Just fyi, this was completely intentional[1]. There was a big concern about increasing plastic use in the 1990s. So, the plastics producers started producing ad
by snarf21 5y ago
Just fyi, this was completely intentional[1]. There was a big concern about increasing plastic use in the 1990s. So, the plastics producers started producing ads and adding the recycling symbol to plastics. The consumer assumed they were doing "good" and left it for the municipalities and recyclers to figure out or to just dump in the landfill. A lot of plastics can be shredded up and reused to some degree but not recycled in the truest sense. I honestly think we need to be recycling only aluminum and cardboard (from the curb). We also need to start taxing all the excessive plastic packaging and single use mindset. As long as convenience is so cheap, we'll never consider alternativess.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...
- bzbarsky 5y ago> we need to be recycling only aluminum and cardboard And glass?
- pr0zac 5y agoOnly about 30% of "recycled" glass is actually recycled in the USA and its going down with a lot of municipalities removing it from their programs completely. In short because glass breaks and contaminates paper and aluminum plus needs to be sorted by color it costs too much to handle and economics are more important than environmental externalities.
- snarf21 5y agoThere are concerns about the weight of glass (energy cost), the energy required to create and recycle, the likelihood that even things like "reusing beer bottles by just washing" have risks with glass chipping or having cracks that extra costs to reuse. I'm less up to speed on all of these costs and risks so take with a grain of salt.
- denton-scratch 5y ago> energy cost It takes less energy to melt recycled glass than to make new glass from sand.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]