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Comment by a2dam | Hacker News Reader

The aluminum collected from aluminum drives in WW2 wasn't really used all that much, but it did make everyone feel like the war was important and that they were contributing. Similar thing with blood drives after 9/11, most of which was thrown out.

Even if recycling plastic doesn't do much (a claim I'm not certain about), it makes you think about the planet every time you throw something away. This can carry over into other behaviors, i.e. making people more adherent to recycling metal (or anything at all!), composting, reusing items, or whatever. It's important to be right about these things and not just correct.

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I don't need to do meaningless tasks to remind myself thst we should find better ways to treat our habitat and the resources in it. Less consumption and more robust and reusable packaging is the solution, not doing pointless tasks for awareness.

Again, it’s not meaningless; it likely changes your behaviors in ways you aren’t conscious of, and the plastic is actually reused.

Also, I’d suggest you aren’t the median person. Even if it had zero effect on your behavior, that likely isn’t true for others.

Sure, but I can craft an equally plausible opposite effect: by recycling plastic, the average person is tricking themselves into thinking they’re not actually creating more trash, that what they just put in the bin is going to be reused. This feeling lowers the barrier to use more single use plastic.

We don’t know which is the more powerful effect, so you can’t really say if recycling plastic is meaningfully good or bad on the whole.

My only worry with the “reminder” aspect here is the idea that “well if I just recycle I’m doing my part” which is… not going to do much to address any of the problems we have in the environment.

Whereas the blood drives and even World War II were much shorter and acute problems. They didn’t require actual permanent lifestyle changes from the doing your part perspective. I.e. something like never flying again or never buying plastic water bottles.

But if it is all ineffectual, then maybe it has the opposite effect.

If people think they are already doing something, they might see less need to make the hard choices.

That came to mind reading it too. I'm sympathetic that not all the recycling is making it into reused materials, but I do think the behavior change in people was a success on the whole. Eco-friendly materials continue to be a focal point for many consumers, though not all of them.

And there's probably a lesson in there about how long it takes to effectively shift consumer behavior with the right campaign. I feel like it took about 2 decades to get everyone on board with recycle bins and general eco-friendliness, both using carrot and stick methods.

I find this attitude disgusting. There should be a law against the government purposefully lying to us for propaganda purposes, no matter how good the cause might be.

What’s the lie? The plastic is indeed reused.

Sure but you are assuming the government or our representatives (or even you yourself) know what the truth even is in order to lie about it.

Looking at the government as monolithic and omniscient, sure. But its the same as any organization: made up of tons of people who don't all know everything, who disagree with each other about things, while generally trying to do the right thing. And sometimes they get it wrong (I too remember the food pyramid)

Every time I throw away a piece of plastic in the communal bin I think about that it should have never been manifactured from plastic, but from some plant / glass / etc.

I’m listening to a book on learning. Massed repetition sure feels like you are learning a lot. But the gains are short-term and soon disappear altogether if there is no repetition. A double downside: poor metacognition and poor learning outcomes.

But at least you’re only fooling yourself when it comes to personal learning. Doing “social good” which isn’t deludes both yourself and everyone else you influence. That’s a game for chumps.

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