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I stopped recycling plastic when it became clear that 70% of the collected plastic was being burned just like the regular trash. The only things I will recycle
by armada651 2y ago
I stopped recycling plastic when it became clear that 70% of the collected plastic was being burned just like the regular trash. The only things I will recycle are PET bottles, glass, aluminum cans and paper.
At the start of this year my municipality recognized that collecting plastics separately was simply a net loss environmentally and economically and removed all plastic waste containers (except for PET). Instead they will now simply try to recover some of the useful plastics for recycling from the mixed trash and burn the rest with the trash.
When the plastic recycling stream contains 70% trash that you can't use, then recovering the 30% from the plastic recycling stream is barely more economical than recovering that from the mixed trash stream.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Symmetry 2y agoThe real danger with plastic is that it'll go to some under regulated recycler which picks out the 30% of plastic that it can recycle and then dumps the rest in the nearest river. If I put it in the trash in a modern country I can be sure it'll at least end up in a land fill or the equivalent. And in contrast to the incredibly wonderful glass and aluminium recycling systems plastic recycling doesn't really save that much production energy.