[baroffoos]

The rules are just insanely complicated and depend entirely on what suburb you are in. There are countless different kinds of plastics which all have the recycling triangle on them but you have to actually check the number inside and remember all the kinds of plastics there are and which ones your local council can recycle as well as keeping up to date if this changes. And then you have to deal with the fact that loads of products use 2-3 different kinds of plastics on one product so you have to sit there breaking it up in to its basic materials.

[TeMPOraL]

And then you're supposed to wash the plastic if it's a food container, which completely defeats the point of recycling. There's no way individuals hand-washing plastic bottles with hot water and detergent aren't wasting significantly more water and energy in total than a centralized solution would, and you can't rely on people doing it anyway, because it makes dealing with trash two orders of magnitude more complicated.

I actually suspect that even with actually recyclable materials, if individuals have to wash them before giving for recycling, it would be a net benefit for the planet for them to just throw that trash into a landfill.

[pixl97]

I love the bottles that have the recycling symbol, but the number is so small an ill defined you can't actually read it.