Corporations aren't recycling the stuff they say they are recycling.
World except America: I'm going to legally mandate what they do.
Americans: I'm going to get mad at the abstract concept of recycling.
World except America: I'm going to legally mandate what they do.
Americans: I'm going to get mad at the abstract concept of recycling.
Europe has great rates of recycling collection, but processing remains just as much of a problem there as it does anywhere in the global market for recycled plastic. Quite a bit of recycling that is collected does not actually end up being recycled.
Furthermore, Europe's recycling rate has declined over the past decade? Why? Probably the same difficulties that the entire globe faces -- China stopped allowing "recycling" imports because much of it ended up in the Yangtze. Now, a lot of the "recycling exports" are sent to countries in Africa with the same issues. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/06/90-of-plastic-pollut...
The reality is that the promises made by recycling companies in developing nations that accept the western world's recycling are not very rigorous to say the least. Much of your recycling sent to Africa is picked through for the most valuable stuff and the rest is burned or dumped.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d...
Also, Starbucks apparently introduced a different compostible cup in the EU just as new rules took effect after promising for 20 years to introduce them
https://packagingeurope.com/news/starbucks-to-roll-out-home-...
They also have stronger regulations about making claims like "widely recyclable" without evidence.
https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/circular-economy-top...
Maybe the magical technology is the regulations we made along the way.
https://www.ban.org/plastic-waste-project-hub/trade-data/eu-...
Don't get me wrong, the EU does a great job at reducing waste. But plastics recycling is primarily false propoganda created by petroleum and plastics industries in the 1970s. Most plastics are not meaningfully recyclable.
Those recycling symbols you see on the bottom of your bottle was invented by a US plastics industry lobbying group as propaganda to make you think all of the plastic you put in your recycling bin is being recycled.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/plastic-wars/
Are you regulating the companies that did all this propaganda to make them either do it or shut up?
Or are you getting angry at the abstract concept of recycling?
You keep talking about plastic recycling, but the EU rules made Starbucks stop using plastic for these cups! In America they use a hard to recycle plastic and lie about it to their customers.
Make the corporations pay for it with Extended Producer Responsibility laws and they'll use less plastic. They'll make what they do use easier to recycle. Because it will cost them money if they don't.
If the companies ship stuff abroad and that's bad then ban it. Like the EU has done.
https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/waste-and-recycling/...
> The new Regulation on waste shipments entered into force on 20 May 2024. It aims to:
> Ensure that the EU does not export its waste challenges to third countries and contributes to environmentally sound management of waste.
> Strengthen enforcement to prevent illegal shipments of waste occurring within the EU, as well as from the EU to third countries.
> Increase traceability of waste shipments within the EU and facilitate recycling and reuse.
The issue with "plastics recycling" is that it mostly doesn't exist. The plastics industry wants people to think it exists so that they don't realize the only real solution to plastic waste is to ban single-use plastics.
> If the companies ship stuff abroad and that's bad then ban it. Like the EU has done.
> Regulation on waste shipments entered into force on 20 May 2024.
First of all, as that page says, they didn't ban it, they implemented new regulations on it. And the impetus for those new regulations was, as I said above, the realization that foreign "recyclers" are not recycling, they are dumping/burning/etc.
Unfortunately, those new regulations will probably make no difference, because guess what? The EU is allowing the exporters themselves to commission their own audits.
Now, they could have banned exports entirely, but they didn't. And the reason they didn't is because they can't do it domestically. And they can't do it domestically because the technology to recycle them at industrial scale doesn't exist.. The entire concept is built on fraud.
There is only one type of plastic that can be recycled closed-loop at industrial scale: PET. Literally every other plastic mathematically is guaranteed to create waste. Even other plastics deemed "highly recyclable" at best require 80-90% virgin feedstock, and so the total possible amount you can recycle is only 10-20% of what is produced.
There are multiple solutions to "plastics recycling" and all of the answer are "do something else", e.g.: switch to a different material, incinerate, sequester in a landfill, ban their use, etc.