Plastic is better off just going in the trash. The ability to recycle it is largely a lie. Especially plastic that touched food as it needs to be clean to recycle.
Recycling only works when the price of the material is high enough to justify the reclamation process. It doesn’t work for plastic because of the insane subsidies given to the petroleum industry. If we had a significant enough carbon tax, you’d start seeing more actual plastic recycling.
In Germany, between 38-48% of plastic is recycled (source). Sure, that‘s far from all of it, but still far, far better than nothing.
The recycling rate might be lower in other countries, but just giving up and putting everything in the regular trash is probably the worst thing you could do.
What kills me is that just a couple morons can contaminate a large batch of recyclables, that could’ve otherwise been perfect. But I guess humanity will always have this sort of problem, until it kills us.
Plastic is better off just going in the trash. The ability to recycle it is largely a lie. Especially plastic that touched food as it needs to be clean to recycle.
It could be recycled, it’s just that the world is too cheap to bother with it.
Recycling only works when the price of the material is high enough to justify the reclamation process. It doesn’t work for plastic because of the insane subsidies given to the petroleum industry. If we had a significant enough carbon tax, you’d start seeing more actual plastic recycling.
Recycling has always been a lie to make you feel good about consumption. If it’s not a valuable commodity, it just goes to the dump anyways.
It can be IF its
Even after all that, it’s really only useful in downcycling.
This is absolute nonsense.
In Germany, between 38-48% of plastic is recycled (source). Sure, that‘s far from all of it, but still far, far better than nothing.
The recycling rate might be lower in other countries, but just giving up and putting everything in the regular trash is probably the worst thing you could do.
Still there is the issue, that recycling plants seem to pollute their surroundings with microplastics by just washing the plastic
Obviously recycling is good, but with plastic it seems we’re not in a place to handle it reasonable in any way…
What kills me is that just a couple morons can contaminate a large batch of recyclables, that could’ve otherwise been perfect. But I guess humanity will always have this sort of problem, until it kills us.