I hate to be that guy but, I think many would be surprised to know this is pretty common. They used to dump the recycling bins into trash bins at a few places I was at believe it or not.
Unfortunately it’s far too common. This was pretty eye opening for me a few years ago: https://youtu.be/c8aVYb-a7Uw?si=GzBHCEA9YkXg0mLM
Didn’t this all start falling apart when China stopped buying our trash? It’s been a minute since I read up on this…
Not sure honestly what the cause is (I doubt there’s a singular explanation, nothings black and white like that ever)
I do know there are some common problems with contamination, costs (China might’ve grabbed this opportunity), market demand for whatever the output of the recycling operation is fluctuating, logistics, and I’m gonna argue that there’s not really much legislation to push for this.
The good news is they recently were able to make graphene with plastics (very high demand, tough to produce) which could be huge for civ as a whole. Things like space elevators are more plausible with advances like these
Don’t use this as an excuse to not recycle. I do my part by recycling what I can. It’s a failure on our leaders not the people. I will continue to recycle with the piece of mind I did what I could. We can’t force companies to change that’s the government job all we can do is complain.
I beta test products and always ensure I give feedback on packaging to at least try to convince companies to not use styrofoam and plastic and just use cardboard.
Reviews and feedback of packaging and non-sustainable materials is significant.
Businesses are extremely unlikely to change out of their own good will, unless there is some sort of review and something more sustainable ends up being cheaper. They’ll only change due to consumer pressure.Recycling eventually will catch up with our expectations.
Plastic may not be recycled now (well, certainly not to our expectations). But it will be, eventually. And hopefully the demand for recycled plastics will improve the whole cycle, where companies use recycled materials.I always appreciate cardboard packaged products
If you read up on the history of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, you’ll find our plastics really aren’t recyclable (much).
And your home recycling is a feel-good measure.
If you want to make a difference, start with verifying exactly what your city/county/state do with “recyclables”, and follow that with looking into the recyclability of different plastics and how much each is produced.
It’s eye opening.
Plastics absolutely are recyclable. It’s just not cost effective to do so because it’s so cheap to produce new plastic. We need to charge more for the production of plastics and force the producers to take back used plastic.
I think that’s the best angle to improve things right now, minimizing packaging, use other materials in place of plastic where we can, and what used to be the first R, Reduce consumption. The last one has a lot of parts to it, and attacking planned obsolescence is a big one. Things should work longer and be repairable.
Lastly, I hope there is a Hell and Edward Bernays is in it. Look him up to learn about the father of consumerism and how he changed how people act for the worse.
Recycling is literally pointless.
Most plastics, yes. Glass and metals? Those are entirely recyclable. The only thing pointless is giving up or selling out. Which one are you?
Most of what people are talking about when they say recycling is plastics.
We know glass, steel, aluminum are heavily recycled already, and consumer is largely uninvolved in that process.
And plastic recycling today is a joke. Look into what your local facility actually does. Everywhere I’ve lived I’ve looked into it, and they aren’t really recycling. Often, they’ll dump it right in with the trash.
Everything you say is pointless.
Did you guys read the article? It says that the recyclables are “sitting in an open lot, waiting to be recycled” but the processing facility doesn’t have the machinery to do so yet. It will in a few months, when it is scheduled to start recycling plastics.
I’m the first person to bring upthe whole “tons of recyclables just end up on a garbage dump” thing, but this article (or at least the way it’s posted here on lemmy) feels rage-baity.
Im sure enough my recycling likely does not get meaningfully recycled that I would hate to add an airtag to the waste to find out.
Well yeah, no shit. To be recycled, plastic has to basically be pristine, and the very nature of plastic packaging means it usually ends up covered in paint, adhesive, or food. Mostly all three. The first two aren’t impossible to get rid of, but the third is a bitch. Just sorting the clean vs contaminated plastic is tough, but then you also have to worry about the type of plastic. Most varieties are straight up impossible to recycle.
Ya no shit. They iirc less than 2% of all plastic made is recycled. They just burn it all. But you should still recycle metals like aluminum and copper.
