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The plastics need to be stopped at the source. The plastic recycling logo is a meme created by some PR geniuses trick us into accepting pollution and passing th
by andersrs 3y ago
The plastics need to be stopped at the source. The plastic recycling logo is a meme created by some PR geniuses trick us into accepting pollution and passing the problem down to the public.
No institution wants to tell you it's all a lie. My municipality pick up this trash under the name of 'recycling' meanwhile some naive people are busy washing out single use containers.
Decades ago when plastic was more expensive society did it right. For example Milk and beer was sold in glass bottles you'd return. Jack up the price of these nasty materials and suddenly the easiest thing to do is actually 'recycle'.
- dboreham 3y agoExactly: plastics recycling is a genius jedi mind trick from the oil industry. The penny dropped for me when taking the family plastics waste to our recycling drop off. There was a notice saying you couldn't put thermoformed pet items (Raspberry clamshells) because if that stuff was found in the 40' container the entire load has to be dumped in landfill. Thermoformed PET has the same number as molded PET (water bottles). I think "whaaaat are those symbols with numbers for then???" pulled out my phone, did some searching and discovered that the entire scheme is BS.
- ouid 3y agoThe problem with plastic recycling is not that it doesn't work. It doesn't, of course, but that's not the problem with it. The problem with plastic is that it leaks into the environment. The only problem with a landfill solution for plastic is that not all of the plastic makes it into the landfill.
- eternityforest 3y agoWouldn't plasma gassification be a much better way to recycle plastic? In theory it might even give a way to recycle some of the metal that makes its way there.
- ouid 3y agoThat requires a lot more infrastructure than a hole in the ground.
- eternityforest 3y agoInfrastructure creates jobs and inspires tech progress, and holes in the ground take up space
- ZeroGravitas 3y agoYes, various types of burning with energy recovery are better than landfill on various metrics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_hierarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_hierarchy You can extract metals from the ashes as you mention. For regularly used things like drink containers it's not quite as good as recycling them though. And as more renewables enter the grid, theres less fossil fuel to displace but if the RDF (resource derived fuel) can be stored then it acts as a kind of storage.
- laurencerowe 3y agoThe problem with glass bottles is that they're heavy so transporting them results in far higher carbon emissions than making the plastic bottle.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gersg 3y agoAnd you can't drop them, you can't crush them to make them take up less space in the rubbish... they are objectively worse in all regards I can think of