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Plastic is not a material. Styrofoam doesn't get recycled in practice. But polypropylene and PETE are extremely recyclable. The type of plastic matters. Anyon
by dragontamer 1y ago
Plastic is not a material.
Styrofoam doesn't get recycled in practice. But polypropylene and PETE are extremely recyclable.
The type of plastic matters. Anyone who says "10% of plastic" is already worse than wrong. They aren't even talking about the details that matter.
- koolala 1y ago"As of 2015, less than 1% of polypropylene generated was recycled.[57] Heating degrades the carbon backbone more severely than for polyethylene, breaking it into smaller organic molecules, because the methyl side group of PP is susceptible to thermo-oxidative and photo-oxidative degradation." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polypropylene https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polypropylene
- dragontamer 1y agoWoops. I seem to have gotten confused. Polypropylene is the easily reused one that cleans off easily. So I guess that means do reuse these but don't plan on recycling. In any case, we need to get specific about the different kinds of plastics.
- ZeroGravitas 1y agoThe 10% figure bothers me for other reasons. Only 75% of people have clean water. Why would anyone use that figure to argue against expanding clean water access to 100%? Or for rolling that progress backwards. And if we can't even sort out clean water for a quarter of the globe then it makes sense they're not going to be recycling. Perhaps more relevantly, nearly half of all global waste is "uncontrolled" so isn't recycled, composted, incinerated or even landfilled (and that's not even accounting for the quality of any of those systems). So should we give up on landfills, indoor plumbing etc? It's such a fundamentally stupid talking point, it could only sustained by propaganda.