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Comment by NotAnOtter | Hacker News Reader

> ‘recovery’ means any operation the principal result of which is waste serving a useful purpose by replacing other materials which would otherwise have been used

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

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The 2023 report is here: https://ar.return-it.ca/ar2023/pdf/Return-It_2023_Annual_Rep...

> 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.

That's nice but it doesn't really refute my extreme counter example. Maybe all that plastic is shipped off, the recycling plant collects a bunch of state/federal grants (e.g. CRV), and the plants in BC or Alberta convert all that plastic into just a couple of products. Not making a dent in the actual production of new container.

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

Ok, you're describing some kind of scam. I have no reason to believe yet that that's what's going on here.

> 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?

The goal is to remove plastics from the environment. They eventually break down. So recycling it into new products just makes it wind up in the environment later on.

Less plastic is the goal. Not reusing it.

Recycling plastic makes people use more plastic because they think it's being reused.

Leaving plastic in use reduces overall emissions, no? These things don’t just stay in the landfill they eventually decompose.

They take thousands of years to decompose in a landfill. Out in the real world they decompose much faster thanks to environmental factors(mostly physical abrasion). They break down into microplastics and chemicals which mimic hormones, among other issues.

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.

>Ok, you're describing some kind of scam

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.

Have a look at the rest of the report maybe and let me know what you think.

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