> contributed to the reduction of 125.2 thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) being released into the atmosphere
(presumably from decomposition?)
Genuinely asking, is that particular example a scam?
Whereas this carbon you see coming out of the tailpipe of this car is colored ominously darkly, is clearly wearing an angry expression, and for some reason, is substantially "spikier" carbon than the stuff coming out of our environmentally-responsible incinerator. Much more dangerous stuff. You wouldn't want to meet this carbon in a dark alley at night!
It's all quite simple, really.
By the definition, 75% seems very good. I'm not sure if that definition is a legally sanctioned term or if your municipality has some screwy definition of 'recovered'. But if it really translates to "If this service didn't exist, we would 4x our production of plastic" - then that does not seem like a scam at all.
With that definition, a plausible extreme is they take 75% of waste plastic to create one single plastic cup. Meaning the production of plastic would not change if this program did not exist. If that's the case - then yes scam.
TL;DR not enough info
> Plastic
> Plastic containers were sold and shipped to a recycler in Canada to their facilities in British Columbia and Alberta. The commodity is cleaned and pelletized to become FDA-approved new raw material for manufacturers of various plastic products including new containers, strapping material and fibres.
> Recovery: 78.50%
We should use less plastic! But it's not true that "it just ends up in the landfill" or "it just gets burned", at least not everywhere.
The existence of plastic being used in new products doesn't help anyone - it's only beneficial if it helps reduce the production of new plastic
> The existence of plastic being used in new products doesn't help anyone - it's only beneficial if it helps reduce the production of new plastic
I can't follow your logic. It's legal to produce plastic containers. This system here collects them and turns ~80% of it into a new product. You're saying this system shouldn't be in place because we're not changing anything about the amount of plastic we produce?
Less plastic is the goal. Not reusing it.
Recycling plastic makes people use more plastic because they think it's being reused.
Any reduction in new plastic is offset by people using more plastic because they think it's recycled.
Again, the goal is to remove plastic entirely from the ecosystem. Recycling encourages more plastic use. That is the entire reason that plastic manufacturers and petrocompanies pushed for plastic recycling so hard, people use more plastic if they think it's recycled. The only real solution are plastic bans in consumer goods/spaces.
Yes, exactly. I'm not accusing them per se, I'm just saying the info you provided does not declare itself to not be a scam. It's like if you asked if killed someone and I replied "I don't own a gun" - it does not sufficiently answer the question
"We recover 80% of plastics" does not mean "We reduce the generation of new plastics by 80%", and the second one is the one that matters.