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Thread: Recyclable Plastic Is A Lie!

  1. #1
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    Recyclable Plastic Is A Lie!

    A program on National Public Radio recently referenced and recapped the 4-part PBS Frontline documentary, Plastic Wars: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/plastic-wars/

    The bottom line is that all five points made in that documentary are still true:

    1. Virtually all plastic products and plastic containers have a recycle symbol on them.
    2. That symbol is there because the plastics industry wanted to improve their image by fooling everyone into thinking plastic is recyclable.
    3. The only plastic that really get recycled is milk jugs and soft drink bottles.
    4. All the other plastic ends up in a landfill because recycling those other types of plastic is so difficult and expensive that it's a lot cheaper to make new plastic instead of recycling the old plastic.
    5. Putting those non-recyclable plastics in your recycle bin hurts the recycling process because the recycling companies have to spend money sorting them out from the recyclable milk jugs and soft drink bottles and disposing of them.

    So for the most part everything you see and hear about recycling plastic is a plastics industry propaganda lie.

    If there are any local programs where you know for a fact that other types of plastic actually get recycled with a lower environmental impact than making new plastic. Feel free to contradict both me and Frontline.

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    On one hand it makes life easier as one doesn't have to try to clean and recycle plastic anymore.

    Although I have done pretty much NO recycling of anything the whole pandemic. It's freeing. Usually the only way I can recycle is take recyclables over to my mom's house, but I stopped that over worry of fomite transmission, which turns out kind of not to be a thing. So I guess I'll try to recycle non-plastic again. But woohoo never washing out another plastic container ever.

    The biggest scam ever is California CRV, they charge us a tax on bottles/cans to recycle stuff, so it's a tax, but left recycling places in private hands and they all were unprofitable and closed down, so we're still paying taxes, that are allegedly refundable, with no way to ever get one's money back.
    Trees don't grow on money

  3. #3
    Senior Member bae's Avatar
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    Recycling of many materials appears to be a scam.

    https://zerowastechef.com/2019/11/13/recycling-scam/

    On the island here, our waste flow is very visible, and an object of community interest. All garbage and recycleable materials have to be removed from the island at some considerable expense, and the organization that does that is pretty transparent about their costs/issues.

    I comfort myself in thinking that landfills will some generations from now be wonderful sources of concentrated resources, and mined by whoever survives us. I don't waste any of my precious life energy engaging in hairshirt environmentalism.

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    Senior Member razz's Avatar
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    It keeps coming back to what one brings into one's life or home and the frequency of doing so. Choose wisely from the start and continually. I do a lot of composting of plant matter and strive to bring in as little landfill materials as is possible.
    As Cicero said, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.”

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    Just this week, I got a note from our trash people that they are now taking more plastics, including cottage cheese type tubs, along with the soda and milk jugs. We recycle at lot, but most of it's cardboard and paper, which I'd work on composting over trashing, if it comes to that! We already use cardboard on parts of the barn "floor", where it just disintegrates. I shred paper for mulch, too. It's not pretty but it works. I try to NOT buy things I can't reuse or recycle. Plastic bags go to a grocery that accepts them, even though we don't shop there. I hate trash!!

  6. #6
    Senior Member JaneV2.0's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bae View Post
    Recycling of many materials appears to be a scam.

    https://zerowastechef.com/2019/11/13/recycling-scam/

    On the island here, our waste flow is very visible, and an object of community interest. All garbage and recycleable materials have to be removed from the island at some considerable expense, and the organization that does that is pretty transparent about their costs/issues.

    I comfort myself in thinking that landfills will some generations from now be wonderful sources of concentrated resources, and mined by whoever survives us. I don't waste any of my precious life energy engaging in hairshirt environmentalism.
    I am beyond recycling at this stage of life, having done it for decades--and I'm suspicious of how much (if any) good I've done over all. So, though I'll continue to half-heartedly bundle stuff up, I have the same thoughts you do. Landfills will be the midden heaps of the future, and will give archaeologists much to contemplate.

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    Senior Member catherine's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JaneV2.0 View Post
    I am beyond recycling at this stage of life, having done it for decades--and I'm suspicious of how much (if any) good I've done over all. So, though I'll continue to half-heartedly bundle stuff up, I have the same thoughts you do. Landfills will be the midden heaps of the future, and will give archaeologists much to contemplate.
    The 21st century "pit bing"
    "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?" Emily Webb, Our Town
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    Senior Member Rogar's Avatar
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    My local recycling center requires everything to be pre-sorted and only takes #1, #2 and #5 plastics. I'd like to think that pre-sorted indicates there is some recycling value, but that's an assumption I'll continue to separate and save plastics. I have my doubts about single stream recycling and suspect only limited amounts of their total volume gets recycled.

  9. #9
    Yppej
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    Where I am soda bottles have a deposit and if you put them in your recycling bin someone will come by and take them out long before the trash truck shows up.

  10. #10
    Senior Member catherine's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Yppej View Post
    Where I am soda bottles have a deposit and if you put them in your recycling bin someone will come by and take them out long before the trash truck shows up.
    We have 3 choices up here: 1) take bottles and cans to the local transfer station; 2) bring bottles and cans to the redemption center. 3) Bring bottles and cans down to Burlington and put them all in front of my son's apartment and within a half hour they are all gone.

    When I can I always take Option 3.
    "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?" Emily Webb, Our Town
    www.silententry.wordpress.com

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