4 ms·

This past year, I've taken to throwing all of my plastic waste directly in the recycling. It saves me time from trying to figure out if it's compostable or recy

This past year, I've taken to throwing all of my plastic waste directly in the recycling. It saves me time from trying to figure out if it's compostable or recyclable.

wahnfrieden 4y ago
When you add the wrong things it lowers the value of the surrounding batch of material at the plant. So you aren’t playing it safe, just smug.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  If he lives in a sane country, that cost will be passed onto the firms making the packaging, and they'll have further financial incentive to stop making non recyclable packaging. In countries run by and for faceless corporations they'll call it wishcycling and it becomes your fault.
  - wahnfrieden 4y ago
    no economy today prices in all these externalities. the form of capitalism you're defending is a fantasy, not a purer form that it can be reformed into
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      Extended producer responsibility has been around for decades now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_producer_responsibility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_producer_responsibili...
      - wahnfrieden 4y ago
        my point stands
    - shapefrog 4y ago
      My recycling all goes in the same bin - plastic, paper, glass etc barbaric as that is. If it turns out boxes from X are not recyclable - then I can only hope that the mass of them "reducing the profits of big waste corp" triggers a phone call from them to X and action happens - either the two parties come to an agreement or the waste company spends 50c sending me a flyer saying "please dont cost us $1000 by putting that packaging in your bin" or alternatively spends $5 an hour having someone on the line pick them out. Its capitalism, not even a liberal fantasy land model of capitalism, but a filthy greedy sweatshop child labour exploititive form of capitalism - thats how it is meant to work.
      - wahnfrieden 4y ago
        That doesn’t happen, there’s no market solution for this
mhb 4y ago
You can save even more time by throwing it directly in the trash. Even Greenpeace now admits the obvious: recycling doesn’t work: https://www.city-journal.org/greenpeace-admits-recycling-doesnt-work https://www.city-journal.org/greenpeace-admits-recycling-doe...
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  That guy writing the article is the same climate change denier who fronted the campaign that allowed the US to fail so miserably at recycling while other countries succeeded. A possibly phyrric victory since, as he points out, he hates Greenpeace USA's fallback position even more than he hates recycling, but that's a noose he created for his own neck. He told people recycling was impossible, Americans believed him, and now Greenpeace USA is successfully using that belief to leverage even greater moves to limit the use of single use plastics. You can now see places like Reason.com, that share his politics, desperately switiching to supporting recycling plastic, when the alternative is bans: These Environmentalists Want To Ban Single-Use Plastics Because Recycling Them 'Will Never Work' And yet infinitely recyclable plastics are on the horizon. https://reason.com/2022/05/31/environmentalists-ban-single-use-plastics/ https://reason.com/2022/05/31/environmentalists-ban-single-u... Oh, I wonder how they got the idea it would never work? https://reason.com/category/energy-environment/recycling/ https://reason.com/category/energy-environment/recycling/

This past year, I've taken to throwing all of my plastic waste directly in the recycling. It saves me time from trying to figure out if it's compostable or recyclable.

wahnfrieden 4y ago

When you add the wrong things it lowers the value of the surrounding batch of material at the plant. So you aren’t playing it safe, just smug.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
If he lives in a sane country, that cost will be passed onto the firms making the packaging, and they'll have further financial incentive to stop making non recyclable packaging. In countries run by and for faceless corporations they'll call it wishcycling and it becomes your fault.
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  no economy today prices in all these externalities. the form of capitalism you're defending is a fantasy, not a purer form that it can be reformed into
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Extended producer responsibility has been around for decades now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_producer_responsibility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_producer_responsibili...
    - wahnfrieden 4y ago
      my point stands
  - shapefrog 4y ago
    My recycling all goes in the same bin - plastic, paper, glass etc barbaric as that is. If it turns out boxes from X are not recyclable - then I can only hope that the mass of them "reducing the profits of big waste corp" triggers a phone call from them to X and action happens - either the two parties come to an agreement or the waste company spends 50c sending me a flyer saying "please dont cost us $1000 by putting that packaging in your bin" or alternatively spends $5 an hour having someone on the line pick them out. Its capitalism, not even a liberal fantasy land model of capitalism, but a filthy greedy sweatshop child labour exploititive form of capitalism - thats how it is meant to work.
    - wahnfrieden 4y ago
      That doesn’t happen, there’s no market solution for this

mhb 4y ago

You can save even more time by throwing it directly in the trash. Even Greenpeace now admits the obvious: recycling doesn’t work: https://www.city-journal.org/greenpeace-admits-recycling-doesnt-work https://www.city-journal.org/greenpeace-admits-recycling-doe...

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
That guy writing the article is the same climate change denier who fronted the campaign that allowed the US to fail so miserably at recycling while other countries succeeded. A possibly phyrric victory since, as he points out, he hates Greenpeace USA's fallback position even more than he hates recycling, but that's a noose he created for his own neck. He told people recycling was impossible, Americans believed him, and now Greenpeace USA is successfully using that belief to leverage even greater moves to limit the use of single use plastics. You can now see places like Reason.com, that share his politics, desperately switiching to supporting recycling plastic, when the alternative is bans: These Environmentalists Want To Ban Single-Use Plastics Because Recycling Them 'Will Never Work' And yet infinitely recyclable plastics are on the horizon. https://reason.com/2022/05/31/environmentalists-ban-single-use-plastics/ https://reason.com/2022/05/31/environmentalists-ban-single-u... Oh, I wonder how they got the idea it would never work? https://reason.com/category/energy-environment/recycling/ https://reason.com/category/energy-environment/recycling/