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I was a dutiful recycler until links here on HN taught me that plastic thrown in the main garbage stream would end up safely in a landfill, but 20% of recycled

I was a dutiful recycler until links here on HN taught me that plastic thrown in the main garbage stream would end up safely in a landfill, but 20% of recycled plastic ends up in the ocean!

ars 4y ago
> but 20% of recycled plastic ends up in the ocean! I'm virtually certain that's not even close to true. I remember reading a study that pretended like that was the number, but looking closer the "study" was basically "let's make up numbers, and extrapolate them", and they didn't collect any actual data.
- MockObject 4y ago
  Is this the reporting you're criticizing? "Want to save the oceans? Stop recycling plastic "If you put your plastic in your recycling bin, there’s a decent chance it will end up in the seas off east Asia. If you put it in landfill, it’s going nowhere" https://inews.co.uk/opinion/landfill-better-recycled-plastic-ends-up-sea-1891207 https://inews.co.uk/opinion/landfill-better-recycled-plastic...
  - ars 4y ago
    That article isn't terrible, but it links to https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344922003512?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092134492... which essentially calculated that since x% of trash in a country goes to the ocean, then a similar % of recycled material that that country receives also goes to the ocean. (It's not the study I read, but it makes the same error.) This is a false connection. Countries pay money for recycling, they are not going to turn around and dump that valuable material in the ocean. Contrary to what many people think, recycling producers do NOT pay poor countries to accept plastic, it's the other way around.