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Plastic recycling remains a 'myth': Greenpeace study

• mrjin 4y ago
  It's simply not economical to recycle most if not all plastics a.t.m.. So unless taxes on new plastics get increased dramatically, we will never ever seem any substantial recycling in play, period.
  • bell-cot 4y ago
    True. But there a lot of "can't be bothered to" going on here. And just burning it for energy (in a ~clean, modern facility) seems a lot better than having old plastic crap everywhere across the landscape, lakes, rivers, and oceans.
    • Manu40 4y ago
      So, upvoted cause ultimately we do need to do something with it... But I used to work in a industry that would bundle its used plastic and burn it to get rid of it... (I know, I know... terrible) Let me tell you. That stuff doesn't burn easily unless there is already a damn good fire going, or some helper combustibles. Sure, it will burn just fine when you put a few in a fire, etc. But once you get to the kinds of loads that occur with bails of plastic... It's going to mostly smolder and offgas from my experience. It got so bad they stopped burning it, and started selling it to some company that found a way to recycle it. Ironically enough.
      • sgent 4y ago
        It should not be "burned" as in a bonfire (like is done in many places). It needs to be burned in an electric arc furnace or mixed with coke for steel at temperatures in excess of 1000k.
        • Manu40 4y ago
          OH, for sure. I agree. But that is what most people tend to do when they do this sort of thing. Even the 'furnace' they had was just a bonfire essentially in a enclosed can with vents. And that was specially bought from a company that sold it for that purpose. I forget the name though, sorry.
  • WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
    I would interpret it in the sense that there's no such thing as cheap plastic. We've been riding on this wave of ubiquitous cheap plastic because it's cheap to produce, but getting rid of it in an environmentally responsible fashion is where's the bulk of the "price" goes. I'd say, bite the bullet and add the recycling costs to the production costs. Pay it upfront. If unsure, make it even more expensive.
    • Sharlin 4y ago
      Indeed there’s no such thing as cheap almost anything. Someone is going to have to pay the full price of our "cheap" commodities sooner or later.
    • Lutger 4y ago
      Eventually we need to outlaw 99% of plastic use. We just can't keep doing this. The earlier we start with the easy stuff, the better, so why not start with it now?
      • cowtools 4y ago
        On an inter-national basis?
      • WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
        Outlawing it is asking for a huge backlash. Like, the next government may eat babies for all it’s worth, once they promise to make plastic cheap again, they have won the elections.
        • actionfromafar 4y ago
          Outlawing and adding costs to production amounts to the same thing for many plastic products. If plastic producers were forced to pay the externalities, many cheap plastic things would disappear. Those politicians would vow to remove "the predatory plastic taxes".
          • 4y ago
  • lm28469 4y ago
    > It's simply not economical to recycle most if not all plastics a.t.m.. "It's simply not economical to build a sustainable system right now" Well too bad then, I guess humanity has to commit suicide because it's the path that consumes the less amount of paper bills with made up numbers on them
    • mrjin 4y ago
      Oh well, it's a game with costs not everyone want to pay for but eventually as you said, everyone has to pay.
    • HPsquared 4y ago
      You are assuming plastic recycling is necessary to have a sustainable system.
      • lm28469 4y ago
        It sure sounds better than landfill or straight up burning it
      • AshamedCaptain 4y ago
        It is, by the definition of the word sustainable. Another, perhaps valid question, is whether the current method is really effective at it.
      • e12e 4y ago
        > You are assuming plastic recycling is necessary to have a sustainable system. A total ban outside certain medical use-cases would probably also work. Do you think that would be cheaper?
    • DarkWiiPlayer 4y ago
      Welcome to capitalism. If profit and self-preservation are at odds, profit wins.
      • robertlagrant 4y ago
  • mcv 4y ago
    Taxing the creation of plastic to pay for the cleanup sounds like a great idea to me. Either it discourages the use of unnecessary plastic, or it provides funds to clean it up/recycle it.
  • PartiallyTyped 4y ago
    I'd go as far as to argue that many forms of recycling are causing economical damage by contributing to moral fatigue. Anecdata; when I am very stressed, or tired, or working on a big project, I really can not care less about recycling or sorting trash. Yes I understand the moral obligation, but in the grand scheme of things, ... it does nothing.
  • ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    And yet, if you force those same companies to pay for whatever they choose to do, but otherwise give them a free hand, they'll choose recycling, because it's the cheapest option. It's a real mystery.
  • bagacrap 4y ago
    taxing plastic is not something our economy is likely to withstand. Sure, tech workers can afford a few more cents per plastic item. But inflation this year has shown just how precarious the world's economy really is when it comes to handling even small percent increases in cost of living. I think we just need to do a better job of disposing of plastic, but it's not clear how to accomplish that. Also every solution is destined for failure because it would have to be adopted by the entire world, but that will never happen.
• PainfullyNormal 4y ago
  These guys are doing a better job of it than most governments[0]. It's amazing the variety of items these guys are able to create out of used plastic bottles. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrothersMake/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/BrothersMake/videos
  • londons_explore 4y ago
    The general pattern is that plastic items cannot be made into the same kind of items 2nd time around. Plastic bags require pure refined plastic so they don't have random holes and thick spots in. But then you can melt down 1000 bags into a big lump and use that as a chair...
    • Ekaros 4y ago
      And how would such chair compare to your standard injection moulded chair from mostly pristine materials? From whole lifecycle perspective.
      • londons_explore 4y ago
        Typically it is much heavier. Like 5x the weight. For example it might look like this: https://www.recycledfurniture.co.uk/Benches-and-Seating/Park-Seat-with-Back https://www.recycledfurniture.co.uk/Benches-and-Seating/Park... And obviously a heavier product has itself a larger environmental impact when it finally comes to be disposed of - weight is a rough proxy for environmental impact.
  • Sharlin 4y ago
    Plastic bottles are pure PET, the easiest to recycle type of plastic along with HDPE. Unfortunately, many if not most everyday plastics are much trickier.
  • snehk 4y ago
    I don't want to be a Debbie Downer but what about this is revolutionary here? They're making plastic items on a really small scale using plastic. I'd also guess that the energy they're using for this is causing more environmental pollution than they save through reusing the plastic. This doesn't look like a net benefit at all.
• cameronh90 4y ago
  Genuine question: how much does plastic recycling benefit us? My understanding was that producing new plastic is quite energy efficient and only contributes to under 5% of global carbon emissions, which is pretty impressive for the amount of plastic we make. I'm all for eliminating single use plastics where sensible to do so, and arguably the possible biological effects of plastic should make us consider reducing overall plastic usage, sustainable or otherwise.
  • lm28469 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_pollution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_pollution
    • cjblomqvist 4y ago
      It's probably a lot easier to burn than recycling it though... If the problem is the waste
      • lm28469 4y ago
        I'm under the impression that burning it simply displace the problem from land to air, it's still pollution/waste.
        • actionfromafar 4y ago
          Sort of. CO2 wise it's worse burning. But free floating plastic creates problems from toxic addivites causing hormonal problems, and from the microplastics (which all plastic degrades to in the ocean eventually) clogging the stomachs of krill etc. Burning the plastic in a properly fitted plant largely "cleans" the toxic additives by burning them too. Plastic in nature will eventually turn into CO2, just slower and with a lot of bad side-effects. "Recycling" the plastic has been shown to instead be sold to whatever-place-du-jour which ignores laws. Often it's burned in open pits, creating both immediate CO2 release, as well as new toxins created in the imperfect burning, and leaching of the old toxins, as well as large chunks of unburnt plastic floating in the wind. And burning plastic is a waste, but a lesser waste, because it's turned into some electricity. Upholding recycling structures for plastic also creates a false sense of "this is fine". Instead, it should be treated as low-level-dangerous refuse which should be burnt and only used for applications where this trade-off is acceptable.
• softwaredoug 4y ago
  Isn’t plastic going to landfills pretty close to carbon capture?
  • mort96 4y ago
    If the plastic is made from CO2 in the air, sure. But plastic is generally made from oil that's freshly pumped out of the ground.
    • softwaredoug 4y ago
      Where do I invest in CO2, carbon negative plastics? :)
  • johnkpaul 4y ago
    If it was coming from the atmosphere and not underground, I could see the analogy. Currently it starts from oil that’s already”captured” in this sense.
  • saiya-jin 4y ago
    Switzerland (well, at least Geneva and cantons around it) doesn't even separate plastic waste apart from few very specific plastic bottles. For the rest, just put it into general garbage, no false feeling of helping planet when in reality doing the opposite. One can't really suspect swiss to be lazy or cheap on anything, in contrary. I don't know details about general waste lifecycle here but it seems other places could take some inspiration and focus energy and resources on more sane parts of waste processing.
  • helen___keller 4y ago
    If you assume the that the plastic production happens regardless and look at the end outcomes for the already-created plastic, i would say yes. But in that context, recycling could (in theory) reduce the demand for further plastic production so it's still better. Still, if we're looking at comparative effort for GHG reduction, I agree in principle that landfilled plastic might as well be considered nearly carbon neutral: extracting oil, creating plastic, then landfilling the plastic is a "closed loop" in the sense that the carbon starts in the ground and ends in the ground (minus waste in the intermediate processes, of course). It's not "sustainable" because we don't have infinite oil, but it's not going to be the primary cause for climate change. This is in contrast to using fossil fuels for energy and transportation, wherein we extract oil/gas from the earth and then burn it to transform into heat, electricity, or kinetic energy for your car. In all of these, the carbon's end state is in the atmosphere, which is worse than a landfill. To that end, I would much rather spend effort tackling petrol cars, oil and gas heated homes, and fossil fuel power plants. Plastic is an ugly problem, but not the worst problem.
• kinnth 4y ago
  Why are plastics 3-7 allowed if they are unable to be recycled? Also it seems to me that a tax on plastic might incentivise glass and metal usage. Plastic is only used for convenience and cheapness, let's make it less convenient and cheap than glass and metal.
  • e_i_pi_2 4y ago
    I agree with this as a general solution - if it's easier/cheaper to do the bad thing, then we use law/taxes to change the incentives. Here's a couple counterarguments I hear a lot: 1) "Personal responsibility - if people choose to do the wrong thing that's on them". I think we've seen that choices are influenced by the environment and not largely within the control of any random individual. People are rational actors relative to their situation but that can often mean choices that aren't rational in a larger context. 2) "Too expensive - some people need the cheaper to produce products". I think this is where markets are useful, we should be able to switch up the landscape and have the gaps filled. I think the big risk here is not having appropriate social safety nets in place to cover people while there are still gaps. 3) "Laws should be about what's 'right', not a way to control people". This seems like ultimately the same thing, someone decides what's 'right' and then makes it a law so other people will do it. We generally agree murder is wrong but it get's a lot more hazy with stuff like taxes and clear that it's a way to incentivize behavior.
    • vanderZwan 4y ago
      > "Personal responsibility - if people choose to do the wrong thing that's on them" Another counter-argument by example: if people choose to smoke and I sit in their second-hand smoke I suffer the consequences of their actions. Similarly, plastic waste is not a problem that stops at the individual. The whole "personal responsibily" argument has always been a lame excuse by companies to offload responsibility to the customer.
    • bandie91 4y ago
      it annoys me a lot: media appeals to personal responsibility a lot; people in my area disregards those who ostendebly cares for sustainability, saying they're weird as not following the herd, and "one single man can not switch the tide" attitude. which if you respond to like "why don't you do it too?" - they reply "others would reckon me weird"; so not "because that certain behaviur does not make sense". These people calims a heigher power, ie. government, should step in and regulate. The same people who gets utterly rebelious if they face a slightest little new regulation in any area.
• bilsbie 4y ago
  First world problem but I always ponder what I’d do if we ever stopped recycling plastic. It would take up so much space in my trash can I’d be emptying three times a day. I’m pretty sure I’d still separate the plastic and cardboard into a separate bin just for sanity?
  • art0rz 4y ago
    A new waste processing plant was recently opened near my hometown (Amsterdam) which is able to sort plastic from waste automatically, so we're able to mix plastic and waste in one bin. It's pretty amazing, but plastic packaging can be so bulky that my bin has started filling up much faster than before and trips to the bin outside have become much more frequent.
    • KerrAvon 4y ago
      you could still separate internally for your convenience and just combine them at the exterior bin, you know
  • raspberry1337 4y ago
    How much plastic do you trash per day !?
    • pixl97 4y ago
      In theory it could be very little by mass, but a large space by volume. There are are any number of clamshell plastic containers and Styrofoam replacements covered under this. Very hard to crush unless they remain under pressure. In a home they commonly require cutting into smaller pieces. If someone is running a small business from their house the amount of trash produced per day can be staggering.
      • BeetleB 4y ago
        > There are are any number of clamshell plastic containers and Styrofoam replacements covered under this. Not sure where you live, but everywhere I lived does not accept these into recycling - so I assume these don't account for what the commenter was saying.
• boplicity 4y ago
  Why not license plastic distribution -- and have an associated fee that gets reduced by actual recycling. This fee could slowly be ratcheted up, to allow for a transition, but, in short, it would make reusable plastic increasing expensive unless nearly all of it was provably recycled.
  • ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Thats basically what Europe does and a few pioneer US states are doing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_producer_responsibility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_producer_responsibili... Similar to renewable power, we basically already know the answer but we like arguing about problems more than solving them so progress is slow.
• vesinisa 4y ago
  For an organization that should supposedly promote recycling, I think this takes an regrettably gloomy POV. My local newspaper did an article recently on plastic recycling in my home city. Most households already recycle their plastics and plastic recycling containers will be mandated by law for all multi-family dwellings from the start of 2023. The recycling rate for single-use plastic packages is at 41%, which means we are well on our way to the target of 50% by 2025. The recycling rate for plastic beverage bottles is even higher due to a deposit system (0.15€ per bottle redeemable at automatic deposit collection machines at any grocery store.) After recycling, the plastic still needs to be sorted by its chemical variety. This is done fully automatically using an optical sensor and compressed air. The success rate of the sorting phase has been optimized in co-operation with plastic packaging manufacturers (plastics that are dyed black are more problematic for the sorting process.) And there is certainly consumer demand for recycled plastics even if it's more expensive than pristine plastic. Using recycled source material allows companies to brand the end product as more ecofriendly. The recycling plant that processes the plastics for my city is already operating at fully capacity, able to sell 100% of their output and looking to expand. The end product of the recycling process are small plastic granules that can be used just like pristine plastic to make new plastic products. Only limitation is the granules are not food-grade, but then again there are tons of non-food plastic products. Also, if there is ever lack of demand for the recycled plastic it is possible to ban the use of pristine plastic for certain products to increase demand. But as said, currently the organic consumer demand for recycled plastic products already surpasses production capacity. Commercial link: https://www.fortum.com/products-and-services/recycling-waste/fortum-circo https://www.fortum.com/products-and-services/recycling-waste...
  • ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    I think their actual stance is basically the old "reduce, reuse, recycle". So should you recycle single use plastics? Only if you can't avoid needing them in the first place and you can't re-use them. Basically it's a sign of progress that they're putting more emphasis on the earlier two steps as public opinion starts to shift in their direction.
  • derbOac 4y ago
    I had a similar overall reaction, and I'm confused about pieces like this, which have really increased in the last few years. I admit I'm probably not as knowledgeable as I should be, but I have read many pieces on this issue and I'm only left more confused than I was before. I do think single-use plastic is far too common, but there are reasons why is is used, and in many cases moving to other materials (glass or metal, for example) would create additional problems that are never addressed by pieces like this. Here's my questions; I'm genuinely curious about them and not trying to be antagonistic to the idea of reducing traditional plastic use, which I am supportive of in general. 1. If mixed single-stream recycling is a problem, why not return to sorted recycling, like we did for years? Yes, getting people to recycle correctly is a problem but it seems like part of that was an educational/system issue (not educating people about what can actually be recycled, making it truly easy for them to do so by supplying the right things, etc.), and if it solves the problem at least by a substantial percentage points, isn't that better? 2. Why not focus on improvements in recycling engineering and plastic production than plastic recycling per se? I can forsee some situation where someone makes it very efficient to recycle plastic, and then we'll be in a position of "undoing" all the "plastic recycling is a myth" pieces like this. Also, what happens when we produce plastic in some kind of sustainable way and end up with compostable plastic? Won't this be confusing to people? Why not focus on specifics? 3. I get the idea that new plastic is cheaper and more efficient to produce than recycling old plastic. But then there's often a leap to something like "we should use aluminum instead because recycling old aluminum is very efficient and cheap compared to producing new aluminum". However, this is not the same as saying "recycling old aluminum is more energy efficient than producing new plastic" or even "recycling old aluminum is more energy efficient than recycling old plastic". When I've read articles about this, it's confusing because they generally have said that producing the same item in either new or old aluminum is more costly environmentally/energy-wise than anything with plastic old or new. This seems like a common error in sustainability campaigns, not fully accounting for the energy costs involved in switching materials due a focus on end-of-life considerations alone. 4. What about all the supply-chain problems introduced by eliminating plastics? I'm thinking weight, damage, etc. It seems just as arbitrary to say "plastic recycling isn't economical" versus "everyone everywhere just get your deodorant and yogurt in reusable containers". Sure, it can be done, but realistically in the modern age? If it's so appealing why don't you see yogurt container deposits taking off? 5. Along those lines, aren't the economics of this somewhat arbitrary and malleable? I don't mean this in a naive way, I mean: taxes and government incentives shift this stuff around. There are also successful companies who base their entire business model on recycled plastic -- aren't they supplying a demand? 6. Also along those lines, much of this seems kind of overgeneralized. I know of locales that, through these sorts of government policies and so forth, push the economics of this all around to create these kinds of opportunities. Putting aside of "scaling this up", it seems a little overstated to say "plastic recycling is a myth" when there are places doing it. Maybe it doesn't usually work, but fighting against it in general seems kind of like the wrong place to put effort. 7. Let's say you successfully recycle 5% of your plastic. "Successfully" in all senses. Isn't that still 5% less plastic, which is a lot? Again, I'm not trying to be hostile to the idea of reusing and reducing, as opposed to recycling, and I make an effort to avoid plastic when feasible. I'm very much in favor of those things, to the point of probably annoying many people around me. But this anti-plastic-recycling campaign has left me scratching my head when I've looked into it.
• gonzo41 4y ago
  Unpopular opinion. We 'Australia' should try and use some of the big holes we've dug in remote places to store landfill enmasss. If plastic is burried it's not doing much more than it was when it was oil. In parallel, we should look to invent / promote full cycle plastics that can fill the gap and see about the economics of trying to replace low value plastics with glass and metals where we can. I would be all for a tin metal box revival!
  • luke0016 4y ago
    > If plastic is burried it's not doing much more than it was when it was oil. Unless it's sequestering something inside. Like water. It terrifies me to think about how much water is locked away for centuries in bottles underground.
    • TOMDM 4y ago
      Better start damming rivers too, we don't want all that fresh water sequestered in the ocean where it becomes unusable due to salt contamination.
    • detritus 4y ago
      Why would that 'terrify' you, out of interest? - ed : are you thinking that microbes and germs and whatnot might lie there dormant until they're dug up again, unleashing some plague on unsuspecting descendants? If so, I imagine the chemicals leeching from the plastic will kill or retard their essential survival/replicative mechanisms...
    • gizmo686 4y ago
      We have plenty of water on the surface. Most of it is in the ocean. While that is not fresh water, it is where bassically all non sequestered water will end up. The limiting factor of fresh water is the how quickly the water cycle can produce it, which does not decrease if some water gets sequestered somewhere. To the extent that net water in the water cycle is relevent, we would have the opposite problem where we are introducing far more water that had been sequestered (mostly in the form of glaciers), causing sea levels to rise. It would be great if we could find a way to sequester all of that extra water; but even putting a dent in that would nake carbon sequestration look trivial.
• LatteLazy 4y ago
  Plastic recycling is (like most environmental "progress"), a case of people pretending a lot is being done while actually nothing is being done. Lots of places mark things recyclable when they are not. Governments refuse to require proper labelling or better yet tax or ban non-recyclable plastics. Companies routinely lie about the recycled content of their plastic. Municipalities insist waste is sorted, then just throw it all in the same landfill. You've heard of security theatre? We have recycling theatre and emissions agreement theatre and 101 other similar stitch-ups
  • helen___keller 4y ago
    It can be compelling to think that recycling theatre exists for commercial interests: for the environmentally minded, if you can fool yourself into thinking that the recycling bin is effective, then you feel no guilt about buying multiple drinks in plastic cups and bottles every day. Without the plastic containers, many sources of revenue disappear. People are conditioned to pay for plastic water bottles, but often expect water fountains to be free. As a wealthy consumer, it's much more convenient to buy a bottle of water when I need it, rather than carry a metal bottle with me everywhere for when I need it (and then refill at water fountains). The $1 cost of the bottle is negligible to me, so the only thing holding me back is the guilt of knowing that I am contributing to unsustainable economic practices. In truth however, the same could be said for the meat I eat, the car I drive every day, my luxurious single family home with grass lawn, the luxurious levels of heating / AC I use every year, and so on. Very little of what I consume is 'sustainable' so even if we didn't have recycling theatre it's easy to get sustainability fatigue and buy the plastic bottle of water anyways.
• cpascal 4y ago
  I often wonder if it is currently more environmentally responsible to dispose of plastics in the trash rather than the recycling. If we can't recycle plastic or it ends up in the ocean/waterways, then landfill seems like a better alternative.
• ouid 4y ago
  The goal is not to be able to recycle plastic. Plastic recycling typically turns plastic into microplastic, like polyester fiber. If your goal is to reduce the impact of plastic on the environment, you should be profoundly opposed to recycling. Even the "most suitable" plastics for recycling are recycled, they break down in the process, and leak macro plastic into the wild through the various additional transport chains that are required for consumers to mail their used plastic to a recycling facility. The best place for plastic that has been used is buried in a giant pit, and the second best place is burned to CO2 in a high oxygen furnace.
• steeve 4y ago
  Given the amount of disinformation Greenpeace puts out about nuclear energy, I would be very cautious about whatever else they put their eyes on.
• BirAdam 4y ago
  Perhaps the best way to prevent pollution of the environment with plastics is to ban the export of plastics as garbage. Currently, much of the plastic pollution is due to dumping in 2nd world and 3rd world countries where rules on disposal are very lax. So, while many people are actually quite conscientious and dispose of their waste in the appropriate manner, the garbage then just gets exported and not disposed of in any way that is responsible. Stopping the export also forces the originator of the garbage to deal with their waste creation... so dual benefit. Of course, eWaste is also a sizable contributor to plastic pollution and most people don't even think about disposable of these items. They either sell them, or they toss them in the garbage... sometimes with lithium batteries still in them which is extremely hazardous.
  • crazygringo 4y ago
    Not sure why banning exporting would change anything. Plastic would just wind up in domestic landfills. It's not like countries are running out of landfill space.
    • poulsbohemian 4y ago
      I suspect that is the parent commenter's point: If you can't externalize the problem, you are forced to deal with it. If you have to deal with it, chances are you won't just dump it in a landfill.
      • SilasX 4y ago
        The parent's point was that, given the non-scarcity thereof, they would just dump it in a landfill.
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
    • marcosdumay 4y ago
      Landfills almost do not pollute. Plastic pollution is caused by bad management of it (and accidental loss) that spreads it into nature. Placing them in landfills is the right thing to do.
• zxcvbn4038 4y ago
  Plastic recycling was never real, it was just sticking it all into a shipping container and sending it to China. All that fell apart a few years before covid when China stopped accepting America's garbage. After that everything started going into incinerators and landfills because paying local people to properly sort and clean plastics so they CAN be recycled just costs too much.
• spaetzleesser 4y ago
  There was a thing on NPR a while ago. It basically claimed that plastic recycling was invented as PR strategy by the oil/plastic industry. When you look at the facts it makes sense.
• joemaller1 4y ago
  Here's the actual report: https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/circular-claims-fall-flat-again/ https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/circular-claims-fall-... Why can't journalists ever link to their sources?
  • guywithabike 4y ago
    News sites have long pushed for regulations that would require companies like Google and Facebook to pay for excerpting and linking news articles, so part of me wonders if this is an intentional policy to avoid being held liable for paying, in turn, their sources of information should those regulations ever come to pass. Deeply funny to me, honestly.
    • culi 4y ago
      Interesting hypothesis but I doubt an org like Greenpeace would complain about coverage. Same with a lot of research published in open access journals
      • tomjakubowski 4y ago
        I think Guywithabike is saying that phys.org doesn't want to have to pay Greenpeace for citing them, should that future come to pass of Google paying news sources for snippets.
  • PragmaticPulp 4y ago
    Thank you, this is enormously helpful for having some context to add to discussions. I've talked to a lot of people in recent years who have seen these headlines and concluded that all recycling, including aluminum and paper products, is actually a lie. We really need more clarity around the recycling situation so people stop drawing their only conclusions from random headlines.
    • Tagbert 4y ago
      My understanding is that aluminum is actually recycled at a pretty high rate. Metal stock has more value to begin with and the process of remelting do not degrade the metal the way that plastics are.
• TheDesolate0 4y ago
• mensetmanusman 4y ago
  Yeah, it’s sad because I now consider my recycling bin to just be another trash can honestly. We can only really do cost effective recycling if we transition to aluminum only packaging.
• MomoXenosaga 4y ago
  In my country they used to ship everything to China. Now they ship it to Turkey for recycling. Out of sight out of mind... There's always someone desperate enough.
• moneycantbuy 4y ago
  anyone know what percentage of plastic we put in the recycling bin actually succeeds in becoming recycled?
• Bellamy 4y ago
  > She named Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Unilever and Nestle as prime offenders. People could vote for their money.
  • bdcravens 4y ago
    Or only buy their products that are plastic-free (like aluminum cans). It doesn't feel as just, but the reality is companies respond better to underperforming products than to boycotts.
  • lozenge 4y ago
    Which has worked approximately once in all of the history of capitalism. (Boycott of apartheid South Africa). Only the political system can deliver systemic change. It has managed to use money to insulate itself from the will of the people, though.
• zumu 4y ago
  We need to be careful about this narrative as we risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Keeping pushing "recycling plastic" is useless and people are going to stop recycling all around. The real message here should be to focus on PET and HDPE and for local recyclers to be more transparent about what plastics they can recycle. Reuse is good and all, but it's not the whole solution. Single use plastics aren't going anywhere. Since China banned imports of waste, Japan has been working on improving recycling capabilities at home. They collect something like 86% of their plastics properly sorted and are developing new more readily recyclable plastics. We should follow their lead.