this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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Recycling is mostly a scam. Most recycled trash is just dumped on third world countries.
Metal and paper recycling is super useful.
But yes, plastic recycling is a massive lie that probably does quite a bit more harm/waste than it would be just to throw it in the landfill
Metal and glass are recycleable. And if they do get into the environment, they are really just purified rocks and will gradually become sand in the weather. (Not that it’s great to have soda cans and broken glass in the sea, but to some extent it’s not as bad as microplastics).
Paper is recycleable.
Paper, wood, and other plant products (e.g. cotton) are biodegradable and come from plants that can be farmed.
In terms of sustainability it’s something like:
But also even more important than that, it’s far better to reuse something many times than to use single use products, regardless of the material they are made of.
This is wrong, please stop spreading this misinformation.
It probably differs from country to country, but in Germany, for example, between 38-48% of plastic is recycled (source). Sure, that‘s far from all of it, but still far, far better than nothing. Falsely claiming that recycling is mostly a scam and, by that, implying that it doesn‘t make sense to try to recycle you trash, is a horrible idea and only makes the situation worse.
Germany is the best at recycling plastics in the world, yet they recycle less than half of all plastics... I won't call that misinformation based on this. Also please don't twist our words, we aren't saying recycling is a scam in general, just plastic recycling is a scam,
When we call plastic recycling a scam, we are advocating for not using plastics. Reduce, reuse, recycle, remember that.
Firstly, I‘m not twisting words, there is no mention of „plastic“ in the post I was replying to, just plain „recycling“.
Secondly, I’m sorry, but I really don‘t understand how a non-perfect rate makes plastic recycling a scam. Recycling is hard. There‘s no magic recycling machine, which just converts 100% of plastic waste to newly usable material. There are so many reasons for a less than perfect recycling rate (non-separated trash, contamination, badly designed packaging, technical limitations when sorting etc.pp.), that I find it just very strange and unhelpful to call it a scam without substantial support for that claim.
Sure, not using plastic would be best, but that‘s just more idealistic than realistic. I think that plastic is such an integral part of our lives right now, that it‘s not going to go away anytime soon. And that makes recycling, for now, an important step to reduce the total amount of plastic we use.
In addition to recycling quota OP also claimed that supposedly recycled trash is trash dumped on poor countries while it's actually a trash management issue. The first comment is just pure populistic misinformation as you said.
Thread OP didn't specify that
The other person called plastic recycling a massive lie that causes more harm than good. That is misinformation plain and simple.
Since the lie that plastic can be recycled resulted in a massive increase in the amount of plastic being used over actually recyclable materials like glass and aluminum, it does, in fact, do more harm than good.
Yeah I get all of that, but for a person living in Germany, the original comment is just plainly false and potentially harmful, so it should rather have been "plastic recycling is a scam in most of the world", which makes regional differences clear and does not appear like there was something inherently non-functional with recycling plastic.
It's pretty true in the United States at least.
And Australia.
I‘m not even sure about that. According to EPA, the rate of recycling seems to be improving overall, paper and paperboard are recycled at 68.2% (2018), which is honestly a great rate. Sure, there‘s always going to be landfilling, be it because of the waste‘s quality, capacity issues, or, yes, even a bad actor. But generalizing recycling as a scam only leads people to think that it doesn‘t matter if you try to recycle or not. And that leads to 76% of recyclables never even getting the chance of being recycled.
Some more info from climate town
https://youtu.be/PJnJ8mK3Q3g
That’s just Germany though. They said most, so unless Germany is responsible for most plastic recycling, globally, it’s not misinformation.
Yes it is.
Generalizing something as a "scam" without any sort of facts to back up that claim is plain and simple misinformation. If OP did, for example, say that they're referring to the US specifically and that the issue isn't really the recycling part, but the corruption part, I'd be completely fine with their claim. The way it's written right now is misleading at best, and straight up false at worst.
Also, no, it's not just Germany.
Right away that wiki says that only 9% of plastic produced has been recycled, and only about 1% has been recycled more than once. So… yeah, most plastic recycling advertised is a lie…
Sorry that I can't really take your argument seriously, but which recycling advert claims to recycle every bit of plastic ever produced on earth? That's what those 9% are.
I'm sure there are misleading ads in the recycling industry. Those are practically everywhere. But I'd really like to see that one.
The percentages which are probably actually used in promotional material, because they actually have something to do with what your local recycling plant is responsible for, and not what has been polluting the environment since the early nineteen-hundreds, can be seen in the table for Regional Data, which I've previously linked to.
If you still want to stick to the claim that because only 9% of every bit of plastic ever produced by all of humankind (1% more than once) makes plastic recycling in general a scam, I'll be genuinely envious of your ability to reach mind-twisting conclusions from data which has absolutely nothing to do with the actual argument and your persistence in keeping that opinion. Maybe you can teach me sometime.
That regional data link is broken for me. Goes to the larger recycling article, not a regional data table. That must be why I missed it.
Still though, if only 9% of it gets recycled, then the general claim that plastic is recyclable does seem like a scam, which is likely what the commenter above was referring to.
Plastic recycling specifically in the US has previously used empty ships going back to Asia to ship 'recycling' there. Nominally, they would sort it to be recycled. But since it's only economical to recycle a few sorts of plastic, most of it is burned. This has terrible health effects for the country, hence why several countries blocked the US from shipping it to them.
More info from climate town https://youtu.be/PJnJ8mK3Q3g
Thanks! Though I still think it's not a good idea to dismiss plastic recycling in general when it's just undermined by dickheads or not implemented well in someone's country, I think I understand why some people here have such strong reservations against it.
Even in that article, they’re talking a bout collecting 48% of plastics but actually recycling 39%. I’m all for giving credit where it’s due, because it’s much better than we do here on the US. But is it not still a scam that so much that people attempt to recycle never is?
No, I don‘t think it is.
Not everything that isn‘t working perfectly is automatically a scam. There are many factors that might prevent a relatively large amount of trash from being recycled, like, for example, contamination with other substances or additives, unseparated composite materials or simply technical limitations.
That‘s not a scam, though, that‘s just the current state of the available technology.
Here in Germany, it‘s pretty common knowledge that these limitations exist. Recycling is still very common, as ~40% is still far better than 0%.
Here in the us, consumer recycling rates are highly variable, depending on where you are, but the common mistake is single stream recycling. Even in areas with high rates of recycling, that much worse sorting means a lower quality waste stream less likely to be recyclable
Less than half of your plastic is recycled. I don't see how anything OP said was misinfo.
You took the implication you wanted. Plastic recycling, as-is, is very much a scam, green-washing, or whatever, in all but a select few exceptions.
52-62% being not recycled still qualifies as "most".
Are you sure that's still the case? I know china stopped accepting it ages ago - that's why most recycling just goes to domestic landfill now.
It's still the case. India was a destination, too.
Even back then it just immediately started going other placed, eg Malaysia.
My area has recycling presort. So we have two bins that get picked up by the trucks. One garbage, one recycling. They dump them into the same hole on the truck. They drive the truck into the same building. The only thing the comes out of the building are loaded train cars. They all look the same. So all the neighbors presort their trash. And the trash company mixes them back together. Thanks trash company!
My area has separate trucks for each type of trash (regular, recycle, compost). And fines people for throwing the wrong things in the wrong bin.
My area supposedly does the same thing. I've always wondered how they figure out who the trash belongs to.
That's a good question. I've wondered that too. I don't know any cases of single households being fined.
I know the apartment complex I used to live in got fined for not recycling enough.
Basic economics dictates that recycling plastic isn't profitable otherwise industry would be doing it, itself. –That doesn't make it a scam. It's more like bad marketing.
Some of it will be truly recycled like with hdpe. Some will be used more conscientiously by being sent for plasma gasification. Lots of it will still get sent to the landfill, but that's better then sending all of it. Something rarely mentioned is that most plastics become less stable each time they're melted down, making them increasingly difficult to recycle.
It's believed that ~75% of all Aluminium that has ever been produced is still in use because it's economically more viable to recycle old aluminum than refine new. Alumium refinement is a highly energy intensive process.
Does this include aluminum used in chip bags?
Single stream recycling is a scam. Multi stream is much better. I recycle my paper and metals separately from glass and plastics for this reason. Wish there was an easy way to recycle glass too, but the collection networks aren't as widespread as the other two.