this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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This was already discovered some years back. The estimate of recyclables not being recycled was way beyond high. I can't remember the number so I'm not quoting it.
Demand corporations reconfigure their packaging operations instead of letting them gaslight into thinking we're the problem.
This is the answer. The best way to deal with the plastic problem is to stop producing it. The three R's are in the order they are for a reason. Recycling is the last thing to try.
One of the big issues with recycling plastics is that plastic has a very specific chemical makeup that gives it the properties it requires, and one major way to mess up that composition is heat. So, even if you can perfectly sort plastics into their respective types, simply heating them up to re-cast into pellets or something else can affect their properties to a state that they're not usable anymore. Add on top the fact that you will not be able to perfectly sort plastics by composition so you will always end up with a significant amount of impurity makes recycling very difficult.
Almost NO plastics are recyclable. That little recycling icon means absolutely nothing. Plastic producing companies should be paying to clean this planet up for their catastrophic deception.
Fuck yes.
A company that massively produce plastic consumer goods should at the very least, have some kind of way to recycle what they produce. Leaving that in the hands of the everyday people won't cut it.