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When Is “Recyclable” Not Really Recyclable? When the Plastics Industry Gets to Define What the Word Means.

Is there anything more pathetic than a used plastic bag?

They rip and tear. They float away in the slightest breeze. Left in the wild, their mangled remains entangle birds and choke sea turtles that mistake them for edible jellyfish. It takes 1,000 years for the bags to disintegrate, shedding hormone-disrupting chemicals as they do. And that outcome is all but inevitable, because no system exists to routinely recycle them. It’s no wonder some states have banned them and stores give discounts to customers with reusable bags.

But the plastics industry is working to make the public feel OK about using them again.

Companies whose futures depend on plastic production, including oil and gas giant ExxonMobil, are trying to persuade the federal government to allow them to put the label “recyclable” on bags and other plastic items virtually guaranteed to end up in landfills and incinerators.

…

Eatspancakes84 ,

Household plastic is essentially non-recyclable. No way is plastic waste ever sufficiently sorted by the type of plastic, or cleaned sufficiently from food rests etc. The focus should be on Reduce, Reuse, and properly dispose. That most likely means burning it. Great? No way. Better than in nature? Hell yeah. Better than shipping it to Asia for pretend recycle? Definitely.

HubertManne ,

The crazy thing is the reduce is so easy. Im just old enough to remember soda being in aluminum cans and glass bottles and nothing else. It worked fine. There are some things were plastic has a significant benefit like medical but man. We don't need to use plastic for pop. Getting meat from the butcher with butcher paper was pretty good to.

jmp242 ,

Vacuum sealing meat kind of requires plastic though. And that’s by far the best way to keep the meat good / fresh especially for freezing.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

They said reduce though, not eliminate. I don’t know that we will eliminate petroleum-based plastic until we find a viable, economical alternative, but we can sure use less of it. There’s really no reason for all the plastic soda bottles apart from companies saving money.

HubertManne ,

I mean it might be good if we went back to an idea of buying what you need for the day or week and not so much for the month or year. At least in general. I mean its not like folks did not eat meat before plastic and without slaughtering it in their apartment.

reddig33 ,

Yep. What isn’t recycled should be burned for power plant fuel. It’s made from fossil fuels anyway. It doesn’t belong in a landfill.

We really need to tax single use plastic for the REDUCE part. It would make a huge dent.

BakerBagel ,

But that would inconvenience corporations, so it is out of the question. Instead we can just keep using the recycling code that makes you think your plastic is recyclable even though it isnt.

peopleproblems ,

Hmm. The waste-to-energy facility in my town makes a whole lot more sense. Neat

SnotFlickerman ,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Because by it’s very nature, recycling always costs more than first-round-use products. It takes more energy and more time to recycle goods into something else.

Further, it’s a misnomer, because many, many, many, many plastics flat out cannot be recycled into anything else no matter how much we wish it so.

Cosmonauticus ,

Which I why it goes REDUCE, REUSE, recycle.

catloaf ,

Not always. Aluminum takes a lot of energy to extract from bauxite, but not nearly as much to recycle.

ch00f ,

I was surprised to learn this when driving by an aluminum refinery adjacent to a hydroelectric dam in Washington State.

It uses so much power that it’s more efficient to move the ore to where the electricity is.

Digital_man ,

Recycling the original greenwashing

fpslem OP ,

Plastic recycling, definitely. Aluminum/aluminum recycling is very effective. Approximately 75% of aluminum that has ever been mined and processed is still in use, and it can be re-used and recycled a functionally infinite number of times. But you’re totally right about greenwashing in plastics. Even the easiest plastics to “recycle” (like PET or PETE) can only be reprocessed once or twice before the polymers break down too much for re-use.

derf82 ,

The famous ad with the Native American crying about litter? It was literally funded by the single use plastic industry to shift the blame from them producing trash to people not throwing things away. Also, the guy was Italian.

MediaBiasFactChecker Bot ,

Propublica - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)Information for Propublica:
> MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: High - United States of America
> Wikipedia about this source

Search topics on Ground.Newshttps://www.propublica.org/article/plastics-industry-redefine-recyclable-ftc-grocery-bags

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