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Comment by DataWorker | Hacker News Reader

They have these issues due to corruption, greed and negligence. With recycling as with other stuff, China cheats and poisons people to make a quick dollar, decades go by and nothing changes and nobody goes to prison. Think of how many people use Chinese made pots and pans, or knives, and have no clue they’re poisoning themselves and their families just to save a few bucks by buying the cheap Chinese version.

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> just to save a few bucks by buying the cheap Chinese version.

Or not knowing they're buying a cheap chinese version.

Yeah, with the problem Amazon US (maybe elsewhere too?) has with fakes which get mixed in with the real stock at the distribution centre, and the problem I have on Amazon UK where no matter what household product I search for all the results are from brands I've never heard of, many of which are obviously Chinese from the name, or I'd guess are Chinese from the weird English or the mystery chunky quotation marks all over the description, it's not so easy to know any more.

I have a new rescue cat and I was going to buy some cat toys but after half an hour on Amazon I felt increasingly unsure that any of the products were safe for my cat to sink her teeth into, so I guess all the toys she's getting will be coming from the local pet megastore, the only pet shop left on this side of town.

I recently got a dog and had a very similar experience. The only toys I could see that I could attempt to trust were Kong toys, but they were more expensive on amazon, weren’t covered by prime and the delivery time was 2-3 days.

Who is sending the recycling there rather than actually recycling it?

Corruption, greed and negligence seems to be everywhere.

Everyone? Seriously, there is no recycling. There is trash that ends up in the United States and trash that ends up in Asia.

There is recycling for paper and, hard plastic and metal. There is also recycling for foodwaste.

The problem is that it cannot be contaminated so it either needs to be separated or it does become trash.

To be fair, when someone is caught doing this in China, they are executed. In the US, their fancy lawyers get them off with a slap on the wrist.

Generally, they blame a "temporary worker", bribe a disinterested party official, and stop putting the poison in that particular product... For now, anyway.

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