Cups tossed in recycling bins at Starbucks tracked to incinerators and landfill

I see some commenters claiming that plastic recycling is not a thing and that the concept have been pushed by big-plastic in (what I assume is) a greenwashing attempt.

While you can be as jaded as you want, it's always worth checking if your oppinion has any merit before posting it on an online forum for the rest of the internet to read.

Plastic recycling is a thing. It's more difficult than paper and metal (for instance), due to degradation of polymers and the difficulty of seperating different polymer types from one-another. It's less widespread than some companies would like you to believe (how many times haven't you read "this product was made by X% recycled plastic"?). Most plastic still ends up burned as fossile fuel substitute due to a lack of cost-effective recycling programs, but that does not mean the programs does not exist.

One success story is PET, which is found in drinking bottles. Polymer degration in PET can be repaired and countires with a PET recycling program usually seperates that plastic from other sources before entering a waste compound (such as through designated waste bins). When PET polymers are too damaged to make new bottles they are instead downcycled into synthetic fibers (similar to how degraded paper fibers are downcycled to toilet paper). If you want to read more on the process, why not have a look at Wikipedia?

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_recycling

Recyclable or not, it's completely absurd that one-time-use cups are used for on-premises consumption in the first place. Given that it (surely!) takes vastly more resources to manufacture from scratch, transport to the place of use, and then dispose of an entire plastic cup than to rinse out a reusable container, there is clearly something desperately wrong with the accounting of the "invisible hand", which is meant to eliminate such inefficiencies.

I've no doubt that it "costs less", but in any sane world it shouldn't.

Recycling for most materials is effectively rate limited. Storing donations that exceed capacity would require constantly expanding storage space, so the only option left is to dispose of it.

It's far more effective to reduce and reuse than recycle.

Not sure what's up with all the "plastics aren't recyclable" posts in this thread. Recycling plants have been ramping up here in .au for a while and I'm pretty sure we're lagging way behind the rest of the world: https://circularplasticsaustralia.com/

The funny thing about this investigation is that I don't think you could actually recycle plastic cups with air tags stuck to them anyway. Plastic recycling is somewhat delicate & precise, so the electronics & non compatible plastics in air tags would probably foul things up.

I'm not convinced there's much benefit to trying to recycle single use plastic containers anyway. We should be reducing their use, but as long as they end up in landfills instead of waterways, it's not too bad - the carbon will remain sequestered there until either future generations reprocess it or the earth turns it into oil over millions of years. In theory you could recycle all types of plastic via pyrolysis (less so for PVC), but it's expensive & inefficient & you still end up losing material & likely releasing CO2. I did some reading on it a few months ago & came to the conclusion it's probably better to pyrolize organic material & just bury the waste plastic for now. (Pyrolysis of wood, organic waste, etc. can produce chemical feedstocks & fuels & still be carbon negative if it's run on solar/nuclear b/c of the bio char fraction).

The biggest harms around plastic pollution come from the fishing industry, mass dumping in 3rd world countries, & shady international "recyclers" who end up dumping the plastic or burning it in open air.

I hardly ever drink coffee, but don't people generally prefer a ceramic mug?

This seems like a cost-cutting measure from Starbucks to save collecting and washing cups and mugs.

Well Starbucks, you designed them to be recycled and you certainly have the volume and the existing logistics network, how about you collect and recycle them yourselves?

Plastic is not recyclable and never has been. The myth that it is was created by the plastic companies to shift blame from the producers to the consumers.

The best thing for plastic is impossible, that’s for it never to have been. The second best is the landfill. If by some miracle it does get sorted and processed it gets shipped overseas where most of it ends up in the ocean anyway.

Plastic recycling is a well-known scam.

no shit. recycling doesnt work