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Comment by JulianMorrison | Hacker News Reader

It was an illusion. Specifically, it was an illusion that allowed capitalism as normal to largely continue, with a bit of greenwashing here and there.

Things you can actually recycle: Aluminium, iron/steel scrap, and to a lesser extent glass.

Plastic was never recyclable in the sense of "circular economy indefinitely".

Recycling was never an effective way to save resources, compared to its ugly stepsisters "reuse" and "reduce". But they didn't accord with "buy it, use it, bin it".

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If done properly, PET bottles can be recycled into PET bottles.

Consumers have to do their part though. But that is possible. 83% of PET-Bottles in Switzerland get recycled, this is done without any bottle depot. Recycling cost is between 1.9 and 2.3 cents per bottle.

For all other trash, the most environmental friendly way to dispose it is to burn it and use the energy.

Overall, top countries recycle more than 50% of all trash. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling_rates_by_country

Paper must be recyclable, or else all of these "made from 100% recycled paper product" things wouldn't be possible, nor the many actual plants the recycle paper.

There's a category of things that can go once or twice around the carousel. Paper, becomes low grade paper, become toilet paper, and gone. Plastic, becomes "bags for life", becomes bin bags, and gone.

I refuse to call them recyclable. The circle isn't closed.

Sure. But it's only clean paper that's recyclable. And not just clean paper, but the right kind of paper. Low-lignin paper and high-lignin (e.g., newsprint) can't be mixed.

Some are things like the scraps from the factory when they trim the edges of the sheets of paper. But some things are labeled as having some "post-consumer" recycled paper content.

> Things you can actually recycle: Aluminium, iron/steel scrap, and to a lesser extent glass.

Agree, with one caveat: Very specific plastics can be recycled as well, but it requires source sorting by consumers and industry and that's just not gonna happen.

Not into things of equal quality. You can just melt and re-cast glass, but with plastic, it's going to be something lesser, like a tile or a bag.

Glass quality also lessens due to impurities, which is one important reason why certain glass types, like beer bottles, have a mandated deposit and collection system.

Public utilities manage residential trash pickup and incinerators. The state also owns and manages landfills. Yes, there are private or at least nominally private exceptions to both, but state-owned facilities have unavoidable economic calculation problems, and these — along with legislation that permits certain levels of pollution — spill over into other distortion.

We seem to agree that the cost of waste disposal is too low. It isn’t capitalists who are setting that price.

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