Important to note that recycling some things makes sense, like metal. And recycling glass makes sense but sanitizing and reusing bottles makes alot more sense. There’s also been a push to compost as much paper product as possible since that makes way more sense than recycling paper. Our green bins now take any brown cardboard with no tape and pizza boxes.
This Plastic Mr. Fantastic
Submitted 13 hours ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/ed716233-a315-4bc5-a962-20487e01b79d.jpeg
Comments
F_State@midwest.social 2 hours ago
uniquethrowagay@feddit.org 1 hour ago
PET for example is also feasable to recycle. Problem with plastic recycling is mostly that plastic waste is not just one type of plastic.
blubfisch@discuss.tchncs.de 1 hour ago
How dies composting paper make more sense than recycling? From what I can tell we have pretty well established paper recycling mechanisms, at least here in Germany.
gallopingsnail@lemmy.sdf.org 1 hour ago
I would guess that it’s because recycling requires energy input, while compost doesn’t require hardly any energy.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 1 hour ago
Manufacturers have no responsibility or regulation in packaging. Buy some items made of metal, and you still generate immediate plastic packaging waste. Some of that plastic has recycling symbols on them, but they can be fake, and again, no regulation.
So all we really recycle is clear PETG. 90% of recycling plastics are landfill. We put stuff in blue bins to remove consumer guilt.
BussyCat@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Should just follow japans lead and incinerate the plastic for energy
sip@programming.dev 1 hour ago
idk man, in Rome, Italy you get fined if you don’t separate yo things.
Tyrq@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 minutes ago
Just because they fine you doesn’t make separating them any more or less recyclable
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 1 hour ago
Vote for trash burning power plants. Still worse than oil power plants, but better than plastic trash in the wild.
TomMasz@piefed.social 5 hours ago
I’m old enough to have both lead and plastic in my brain, lungs, and testicles. I envy you youngins with only plastic in you.
UltraMagnus0001@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Forever Chemicals
Donkter@lemmy.world 4 minutes ago
On the bright side, my nuts don’t stick to the side of my leg anymore cause I sweat PTFEs.
Tiger666@lemmy.ca 4 hours ago
Everyone, I mean everyone on the planet has PFOAs in them.
starlinguk@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
They didn’t invent plastic recycling. They are, however, using it as an excuse to make more plastic. The EU had regulations against over packaging (like putting cucumbers in plastic) for a while until plastic recycling became a thing and they went ‘meh’.
nullroot@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_America_Beautiful#Co…
It’s less that they invented plastic recycling and more that this is one of the first examples of corporate greenwashing and shifting the burden onto the public vs the corporations who made the problem.
luipaard0011@lemmy.zip 1 hour ago
Me watching op how he’ll eat beef this week
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
A lot of right-wing people use this fact as an excuse to not care about the environment at all…
WilliamA@mander.xyz 10 hours ago
Same thing with “carbon footprint”, which was invented by B.P to shift the blame for climate change onto the consumer.
I’m not saying don’t try to reduce your emissions by using electric vehicles, going plant based or at least reducing animal product intake, and limiting flying, just that it’s pretty meaningless in the whole scale of things, so instead of focusing on the individual, focus on organizing protests, disrupting, and other collective action.
BussyCat@lemmy.world 52 minutes ago
Individuals are essentially useless on a global scale but companies like BP aren’t drilling for oil to accomplish their sinister goal of warming the earth they are producing a product that all of us as individuals are purchasing.
It’s like you are in a dog park that’s covered in dog shit, just because there’s shit everywhere doesn’t mean you shouldn’t clean up after your dog. Telling other people they don’t need to worry about cleaning up their shit because the guy with the dog training school doesn’t clean up any of the shit that those dogs makes you bad.
You cleaning up after your dog isn’t going to clean the whole park but doing nothing until a petition is done that enforces cleaning up your dog isn’t the way. I’m not asking you to spend all day trying to clean the park but you should at least do your best to not make it worse
Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 hour ago
I’m not saying don’t try to reduce your emissions by…
I’ll say it. Don’t do these things because you think they reduce your carbon emissions. Do it when it’s the most frugal option.
Reduce and reuse are still something we should 100% being doing but trying to measure then inject carbon foot print is futile.
Every dollar spend it a better measurement of your contribution to emissions. Trying to calculate it yourself with incomplete data is pointless.
Don’t be fooled by some study you read that made you feel like a righteous person. No one knows. The methods we have for measuring and assessing our footprint are hilariously incompete.
The truth is buried in endless noise. We don’t know what we need to know because it is in the best interests of others that we not know it. Blindspots.
Buy less products because buy “better” is a personal fantasy. Where better is because some popsci idea made you feel guilty for not being better. What the fuck do these things know, they’re bullshitting. Yes people do that; not just on the internet but definitely there.
freebee@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
There is “buy better”, it is not but a fantasy.
Buy more local / regional produced food and products, less km travelled and support local people. Buy products made from longer lasting materials if there are different versions. Buy fairtrade when it’s available for coffee, cacao, bananas, pineapple, etc. Buy bio if available. None of it is perfect, but you are still voting with your wallet and not perfect is often still better than the cheapest there is.
If you can afford it.
Buying better definitely does exist and, for non-consumable goods, definitely can result in buying less. My washing machine is from the early nineties. I expect my steamdeck to last for 2 decades at least, because it seems repairable and software won’t ever be the bottleneck. I have sweaters I wear that are over 25 years old. Endless noise just makes it hard to identify which product is the better one, you’ll often only be sure long after the purchase… And the at first sight most frugal option will often not be the better buy.
ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 12 hours ago
fin@sh.itjust.works 2 hours ago
imagination, life is your creation
BurgerBaron@piefed.social 4 hours ago
I make the shit full time so I think I’m 50/50 ken doll/human by now.
J_N_F@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
You and me both, brother!
lectricleopard@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
I recycle when convenient. I have two can the same company empties, one for trash one for recycling. I’ll fill the recycling, and overflow goes in the trash.
My wife hates it, but the amount of plastic trash that factories produce just blows consumer household recycling out of the water. There are people whose jobs include fillling a whole dumpster each shift. No comparison. Im not bending over backward to be little Dutch boy with my finger in the dam while it’s got a backhoe digging out the foundation.
Tabula_stercore@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Typical dutch… Why even try to better the world? Why would I try to better myself if others dont? As long as my garden is green the world can burn
Ging@anarchist.nexus 12 hours ago
What are we supposed to believe will save the world now?
fading_person@lemmy.zip 1 hour ago
People uniting themselves against corporations, oligarchs and consumerism culture
Soup@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Being responsible off the chop would be nice. I just recently stopped buying a very popular brand of cookies because, for some fucking reason, they switched from cardboard to plastic packaging.
We’re constantly reacting to problems that we create(corporations, in this case) and it’s just getting so tiresome. We can just not do these things in the first place and we wouldn’t have nearly the same numeous, shitty problems we have right now.
Eq0@literature.cafe 4 hours ago
I avoid so many things lately because of packaging!
My biggest pet peeve at the moment is milk. There are so many dairy farmers nearby, all single use plastic containers :( while the same companies would have yogurt in glass jars that they ask back from the consumer and reuse. Why the difference?!
I barely shop at normal supermarkets anymore, and I’m glad I’m able to eat the cost increase (~10% overall).
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 12 hours ago
Rifles.
Scolding7300@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOtrvBdRx8I
someone still need to recycle stuff that’s being used. Not that I disagree that they’re trying to shfit to blame to consumers, just practically speaking
Evilsandwichman@hexbear.net 9 hours ago
I admit biology isn’t my field of expertise, but if there’s plastic in my danglies, does that mean my kids will be action figures, or will that take several more generations?
Akasazh@feddit.nl 7 hours ago
Matt Damon!
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
If you’d recycled more, there wouldn’t have been any plastic to end up in your blood, organs, etc… Who’s really the one shirking responsibility?
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 hours ago
Yeah that’s not true.
ObtuseDoorFrame@lemmy.zip 12 hours ago
Plastic recycling is one of the primary sources of microplastics. They use jets of air to remove labels, which creates an enormous cloud of microplastic. People who live near plastic “recycling” plants have more plastic in their bodies than people who don’t.
There are articles about this out there.
feinstruktur@lemmy.ml 9 hours ago
Source?
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Fine, I agree with all of you, let’s stop recycling.
renzhexiangjiao@piefed.blahaj.zone 9 hours ago
does it do more harm than dumping plastic in a landfill though?
WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
This would almost make sense if there weren’t thousands of corporations, and 8 billion other humans, doing whatever the fuck they want…
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Excuses, excuses. Enlist a friend to help, if you need it!
crumbguzzler5000@feddit.org 13 hours ago
Throw your plastic in the garbage! Many first world nations ship their unrecyclabe refuse to third world countries, don’t let your governments ship the problem away, make them accountable.
phpinjected@lemmy.sdf.org 12 hours ago
save yourself first before thinking of others
umbrella@lemmy.ml 2 hours ago
we can’t save ourselves without others
Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 13 hours ago
This meme is missing a third panel with a cancer patient in their death bed.
devdoggy@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
But I LOVE plastic!!
I <3 plastic!!