Comment on I'm doing my part!

• Gloomy@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Germany is doing okayish:

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  • tetris11@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Arent they still off-sourcing the actual recycling to anither country?

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    • basxto@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Especially for paper no … or rather it’s complicated. There is demand for recycled paper and we have lots of products which are made with these.

      If I understand it correctly, Germany imports more waste paper than it exports. But the quality between those two differs

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    • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Nah, at least not most of them. Electronics recycling however is one where i wouldnt be surprised if it gets offloaded to elsewhere.

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• Krudler@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I’ve ranted in various places over the years but it’s 100% true in my city in Canada.

  Decades ago we built a massive publicly-funded recycling system because the City could actually draw profit from the collection and sale of materials.

  But about 15 years ago China stopped buying the waste, and it became a new shell-game of collecting the material but literally unable to do anything with it or sell it, so it any that gets does get sold mostly ends up in the down-stream recycling economy, where the bulk of it ends up being burned. The rest goes into the regular old landfill. Even waste cardboard has no value anymore.

  People who separate recycling in our city now, are just pre-sorting it for the waste management company and keeping it out of their regular waste (profit) stream.

  We do have our ewaste centers but knowing people that work there, I can say anecdotally I’ve been informed that the metal and rare metal waste is collected and sent for processing in Ontario, the rest of the bits (all the plastic which is 90% of eWaste) goes into the regular waste stream where it’s buried or burned, but never recycled.

  Notice how Pepsi and Coke don’t use recycled plastic? If that doesn’t condemn the whole recycling “meme” as a sham, I don’t know what would.

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  • basxto@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Regarding the wording. In German(y) we have two kinds of “Verwertung” (utilization). The material one (recycling) and the energetic one (incineration). Both is viewed as reusing the waste. Sometimes energetic utilization can supply the power and/or heat needed for material utilization.

    Burning it doesn’t have to be as bad as burying it.

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  • Dicska@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    But about 15 years ago China stopped buying the waste

    Guess where that waste used to go

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    • Krudler@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Don’t be that smart ass that thinks he’s cool and guarding some super secret information, and he only speaks in riddles.

      Everybody knows where that plastic went.

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      • Dicska@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Wow. You got it perfectly right: everybody knows where that plastic went. This is why I wrote it like that, and didn’t have to explain how it got dumped in the ocean all along. I wasn’t playing riddles, I assumed it was otherwise obvious and common knowledge. Jeez, sorry if it didn’t come off the way I meant.

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• Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I think a lot of first world countries like do it (e.g. the UK sends around 60% away), because recycling elsewhere is cheaper than doing it at home.

  And it’s cheaper still if you don’t bother to check that it hasn’t just ended up in a landfill in Bangladesh or something.

  I think also part of the issue is that plastic can be recycled, but not in the same way as metals or glass. That plastic bottle might get shredded and used in road surfacing (where it will doubtless leak micro plastics everywhere), which is probably not what most people envisage when they clean it up and separate it nicely.

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  • jaennaet@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I had to check, and it looks like at least as far as plastic goes, in Finland it’s either sent to two domestic recycling plants, and everything they can’t handle is shipped to Sweden’s Site Zero in Motala (dunno where they go from there.)

    But yeah, something like using shredded plastic for road surfacing definitely isn’t what I’d call a sensible way to recycle the material. It’s just adding an extra step before getting to “microplastic endocrine disruptors EVERYWHERE”

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