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starman2112@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

Recycling does literally nothing, like it’s actually 0% helpful, as long as we’re producing more plastic than ever before every single year. We’re closing in on 500 million tonnes of plastic produced —not total, produced—annually. Every single person can put every single piece of plastic in the recycling bin, and we’ll still have more plastic than existed 50 years ago. There are many things that individual action can accomplish, and this is not one of them. We need legislation for this.

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tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
IIRC plastic recycling is basically bullshit (except maybe PET bottles?) but aluminum is actually effective. Makes you wonder why we don’t use more aluminum packaging in general.

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- starman2112@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Yeah, I’m going to update my comment. Metal recycling is genuinely good, and recycling makes an enormous impact on the production of new metal
  
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- JcbAzPx@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Any recycling you can’t get money back for is either a scam or just not being done. Most city recycling programs just ship the trash to some other country, for instance.
  
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- BananaIsABerry@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Even the aluminum containers are coated with plastic (soda cans, for example)
  
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unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Plastic isnt the only material that you can recycle…

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- starman2112@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  True, that honor belongs solely to metal. Glass is mostly recyclable, though most types of it that aren’t bottles will just be thrown in the trash. Paper is in theory recyclable, but putting that in recycle bins is basically just as effective as putting plastic in. Neither of those actually helps as long as we’re producing more and more paper and more and more glass every year. The only thing that helps is reducing production.
  
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  - Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Paper can be composted or burnt, and will decompose relatively quickly if dumped. I can’t see any post-use situation where paper is anywhere nearly as bad as plastic.
    
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    starman2112@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    What does that have to do with the production of new paper? Deforestation remains an ever increasing problem
    
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