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And we burn most of it anyways. It's not like Japan got plastics and glass recycling to work, some of us hoped around the turn of the century that with the rapi

And we burn most of it anyways. It's not like Japan got plastics and glass recycling to work, some of us hoped around the turn of the century that with the rapid progress of technologies at the time we soon will and did the legal prepwork. At the end of the day it was a bit of a dedicated self driving lane.

lobochrome 3y ago
Is that so? Do you have any sources for that? Honestly curious.
- numpad0 3y ago
  There won't be readily available and easily digestible English sources for these topics but... ~20% of total wastes are recycled[0], of which: - 86% of plastics are "recycled", of which 56% is "thermally recycled", the rest 25% is only quoted as "chemical recycling and material recycling combined" in most PR materials, which I think is enough indication that it's not going back into bottles.[1][2] - I was wrong about glasses: 70% of glass bottle source materials comes from recycled materials[3], and use of reusable bottles have declined over the years and converging into 50%[4](by numbers of bottles?). - Papers and milk cartons[5] are fine as had always been; I think those were recycled to toilet papers. ... but the bottom line is 76% incinerated, 1% buried[0], rest recycled of which major part is by "thermal" means. So most of it is burned. Personally I think there won't be rapid drastic changes in this front and it's possibly more worthwhile to find green sources of plastics such as grain straws and fruit skins(but I think I did see a lot of such presumably failed attempts at it in the past couple decades) 0: https://www-cycle.nies.go.jp/magazine/kenkyu/202008.html https://www-cycle.nies.go.jp/magazine/kenkyu/202008.html 1: https://www.sustainability-hub.jp/column/learn/about-chemical-recycling https://www.sustainability-hub.jp/column/learn/about-chemica... 2: https://www.wbsj.org/activity/conservation/law/plastic-pollution/article/2020-07/ https://www.wbsj.org/activity/conservation/law/plastic-pollu... 3: https://www.glass-3r.jp/data/ https://www.glass-3r.jp/data/ 4: https://kyushu.env.go.jp/content/900177400.jpg https://kyushu.env.go.jp/content/900177400.jpg 5: https://www.jpa.gr.jp/states/used-paper/ https://www.jpa.gr.jp/states/used-paper/

lobochrome 3y ago

Is that so? Do you have any sources for that? Honestly curious.

numpad0 3y ago
There won't be readily available and easily digestible English sources for these topics but... ~20% of total wastes are recycled[0], of which: - 86% of plastics are "recycled", of which 56% is "thermally recycled", the rest 25% is only quoted as "chemical recycling and material recycling combined" in most PR materials, which I think is enough indication that it's not going back into bottles.[1][2] - I was wrong about glasses: 70% of glass bottle source materials comes from recycled materials[3], and use of reusable bottles have declined over the years and converging into 50%[4](by numbers of bottles?). - Papers and milk cartons[5] are fine as had always been; I think those were recycled to toilet papers. ... but the bottom line is 76% incinerated, 1% buried[0], rest recycled of which major part is by "thermal" means. So most of it is burned. Personally I think there won't be rapid drastic changes in this front and it's possibly more worthwhile to find green sources of plastics such as grain straws and fruit skins(but I think I did see a lot of such presumably failed attempts at it in the past couple decades) 0: https://www-cycle.nies.go.jp/magazine/kenkyu/202008.html https://www-cycle.nies.go.jp/magazine/kenkyu/202008.html 1: https://www.sustainability-hub.jp/column/learn/about-chemical-recycling https://www.sustainability-hub.jp/column/learn/about-chemica... 2: https://www.wbsj.org/activity/conservation/law/plastic-pollution/article/2020-07/ https://www.wbsj.org/activity/conservation/law/plastic-pollu... 3: https://www.glass-3r.jp/data/ https://www.glass-3r.jp/data/ 4: https://kyushu.env.go.jp/content/900177400.jpg https://kyushu.env.go.jp/content/900177400.jpg 5: https://www.jpa.gr.jp/states/used-paper/ https://www.jpa.gr.jp/states/used-paper/