People are so into recycling, but I fail to see how I can make a difference by recycling. It just seems like the problem is too massive at this point.
While there are some uses for recycled plastics, I fear that we'll likely continue to see a lot of single-use plastics until some economic force makes plastic unprofitable. Maybe public anger drives new regulation, maybe we use up all the oil, maybe we ween off of oil and it's too expensive to pump oil just to make plastics. In any case, I think we need to embrace some short and medium term solutions to mitigate environmental damage from single-use plastic.
Your instinct is right that recycling does not help much. It is more of a ritual to allow people to consume guilt free than an effective way toward a less polluted world.
I do think you raise a great point that it's a little silly to put this on the shoulders of individual consumers, and let the corporations off the hook. This is a problem that does need to be addressed with policy, and companies shouldn't be allowed to continue polluting this planet with no consequences. I don't know how what the solution should look like, but this is a specific example of where free markets can fail us - the costs of producing all this unnecessary packaging was externalized starting 60 years ago, and is now starting to catch up with us. Because the delay between market forces and outcomes can be a century, we need to be more careful about just letting things run wild.
Or you give people an excuse to consume more because now they can feel good about their consumption. Recycling does not solve any problems, as the revelations of the past decade have shown. Reducing consumption is the only solution, and recycling was the excuse sold to the public to keep the consumption music going.
I would say that paper recycling has been working, it's plastic recycling that isn't currently working. I would also say that it's not that plastic recycling can't work, it's just that it hasn't been working.
I am curious why it's not working. Would mandatory recycling help? Is it the recycling services cheating, taking money to recycle but throwing it away instead? Is the issue public mistrust of municipal water? I do suspect there are ways to make a much bigger dent than we have by better understanding what's happening.
Anyway, all that said, I tend to agree with you that recycling is being used ironically as a way to continue consumption and avoid responsibility rather than start the real work of reducing plastic production.
Yeah I don't know. I'm a little torn, I don't want to give up all hope on plastic recycling, but I think you're right, we probably need amputation more than stitches.
Problem number one is expecting people to put forth the time and effort into sorting all of their recyclables. The whole situation is so complicated and rules so difficult to enforce, I don't see how it can be considered a feasible solution.
The vastly easier, far more high impact solution is to reduce consumption.
I've personally watched people ignore recycling signs on purpose, or get flustered by multiple bins because they've never seen more than one, but ultimately I just don't buy the argument that this takes extra time or effort, I'm convinced that is a mental block or resistance to change and not a real physical problem. It's like saying I can't be bothered to figure out where my dirty dishes go, and I can't understand the difference between the trash bin and dishwasher and cupboards, so I'm going to throw everything away. My neighbors are perfectly fine with putting yard waste in a separate bin, zero people screw that up.
If sorting is the biggest impediment to recycling, then I think that we have hope of fixing recycling and maybe reducing consumption at the same time. Sorting is the easiest problem to fix of all. It'll be easier to get people to understand sorting than it will be to get people to understand that municipal water is cleaner, cheaper and easier than their favorite bottled water brand.
I'm with you about reducing consumption being the best option. I'm not sure about easy, but no question it'll be the highest impact.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/It-is-...
This site has some good links:
https://phys.org/news/2020-03-recycling-broken.html
> recent Greenpeace report found that some PET (#1) and HDPE (#2) plastic bottles are the only types of plastic that are truly recyclable in the U.S. today; and yet only 29 percent of PET bottles are collected for recycling, and of this, only 21 percent of the bottles are actually made into recycled materials due to contamination.
>China used to accept plastics #3 through #7, which were mostly burned for fuel. Today #3 – #7 plastics may be collected in the U.S., but they are not actually recycled; they usually end up incinerated, buried in landfills or exported. In fact Greenpeace is asking companies such as Nestle, Walmart, Proctor & Gamble and Unilever that label their products made with #3 -#7 plastics as "recyclable" to stop or it will file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission for mislabeling.
On my street, people put out 2 bins, one for recycling, and one for non recyclable trash. We put all our recycling in one bin, paper, plastic, metal, etc, and everything else in the trash that you don't think is recyclable. And no one is checking which number plastic is placed in the bin. I assume it all goes to landfill.
Fair.
> Reducing consumption is the only solution
Reducing waste is the important part, which may or may not involve reducing consumption.
Better waste management is also an alternative solution.
And consumption of everything increases consumption of fossil fuels since basically everything requires energy to move mass from one place to another.
Usually just buying less helps a lot.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't try to reduce the amount of plastic you use. But the end consumer wasn't responsible for the huge rise of plastic products, and there's only so much they can do to fix it.