Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I've heard that much of the recycling campaigns from the late 80s were actually spearheaded by the plastics industry in what was ultimately a successful attempt to shift blame from the producers to the consumers.

View on HN

And that a lot of what’s recycled is rejected by industrial manufacturing as unusable and sent to a landfill anyway. I have to admit I don’t know the numbers, but the fact that these issues aren’t more widely discussed makes me suspicious that the popular positive consensus around recycling is the product of marketing and politics which would be par for the course.

This is optimistic - what actually happens is the plastic is shipped to Asia for sorting, where they may put the low quality stuff in landfill, or may just throw it in the nearest river.

Ironically, putting most plastic waste in the landfill bucket is probably more environmentally sound than “recycling” it.

This is exactly how the great Pacific garbage patch was formed, since the rivers will eventually empty into the oceans.

For decades plastic was sent to East Asia to be "recycled" but recently even those countries have refused to import it. Since then we've seen western governments freaking about about plastic waste.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com