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Such a waste of time.

Now we will spend a decade arguing which plastic is really recyclable, and if you can recycle it once is it enough, or should be 2 times? or does it degrade on its own? bio plastic (which turns out sometimes is worse than current common plastic) and etc.

Coca Cola's 'Please Recycle' on the caps makes me boil with rage, how about 'Please Don't Make it'?

There must be supply chain changes, probably 95% of my plastic is from the supermarket, it is increasingly more difficult to buy without plastic.

This must be banned, it will take decades until the free market regulates itself.




The free market does not regulate itself. The big plastic producers have lobbied and muddled the waters endlessly to confuse the public and blame consumers on their awful environment damaging products. Less than 10% of all plastics across the world have ever been recycled

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/plastic-p...


i think it will regulate as the new generation is growing to be more and more aware, and they (hopefully) they will hurt the plastic producer's bottom line, but it is super slow, and this is assuming that plastic producer's propaganda wont grow in sophistication

look how long it took for tabacco, and it still lost despite all the lobbying, but it is incredibly slow


Even tobacco is still going strong after all these years of exposure to the reality (and ads on rehab programs).


You should follow the local rules on recycling. Only the company picking up the recycling knows what they can really handle.

Unfortunately this information isn’t always as easy as it should be to look up. It should be a simple web search away.


> Only the company picking up the recycling knows what they can really handle.

Yes unfortunately they never tell you. Sure they'll tell you the easy stuff like cardboard, paper, cans etc. But there's a near infinite variety of stuff that you might be able to recycle. What about a metal coathanger? What about a plastic-coated metal coathanger? Etc.

We have to put paper and cardboard in different containers. What about card? No idea!


If they don't explicitly say they can take it, assume it's not recyclable.


I doubt that is true. Surely anything with significant metal content is separated magnetically for example. Card isn't explicitly mentioned but I'm pretty sure if they can recycle cardboard and paper then they can recycle card.


This is an example of "aspirational recycling" where you guess what they will do.

Unfortunately we never get any feedback about whether we were right or wrong. It could all be sent to the landfill and we will never know.


Here they mainly incinerate it, and the goal is to make 25% recyclable by 2030 (which is for some definition of recyclable).

The reality is: reduce, reuse, recycle, where recycle is absolutely last resort and I actually consider it harmful as it releases some kind of valve from people, and they think everything is going to be alright.




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