[Schwan]

I grew up in a normal german household on the 'countryside'.

I alwasy recycled. Never thought about it much and my family is not 'alternative or whatever'.

3 Years ago i see a documentation telling me, that dark plastic can't be recycled and gets burned. Thin plastic can't be recycled and will be burned.

We have a system called 'green point' which basically means that the producer has to pay a little bit of money for the packaging they produced so that other company in germany takes it, its called the yellow bin.

So you have your black bin for garbage and you have a yellow bin for the green point which are 99% plastic (pringles has that sign on it as well). I thought, they would have a high recycling rate. Nope 40% of that already recyclematerial is recycled. 60% is just burned.

I could have thrown this shit away uncleaned, unseperated in my normal garbage bin for years and you know what? Everyone around me is doing exactly that.

Don't get me wrong, i will not become a pig, i will still put my plastic into that and sort and clean and recycle but wtf...

[ZeroGravitas]

Burning is better for the environment than landfill. It's getting less good comparitavely as grids become carbon free via renewables, but especially for district heating its probably going to be a good thing for a while. Half recycled and half used to avoid burning coal seems a pretty good deal, especially if its paid for by the producers. So why the big overreaction?

[Schwan]

We are not landfilling that stuff we are burning it.

And it doesn't matter thats not the issue. The issue is, that plastic is used every single day and its not reused/recycled it gets burned. This not sustainable at all.

the 'big overreaction' comes from the fact, that the weather is changing due to co2 emissions and we are far far away from any sustainable setup while already seeing the impact it has.

Its the 3th year of a draught in germany. Where i never encountered a drought. It is a green country and the trees around me have damages from the drought. When they are dying of, a tree which was growing for 30-40 years will be gone.

The co2 reduction of corona was around 8% and we would need to have 7% every year to combat climate change. 8% was doable with a lot of inconvienience. It doesn't give me a lot of hope when we are not able to recycle fucking plastic.

[google234123]

There's no chance that buring is better than a landfill. There's so much empty (useless) surface area on earth. Burning puts poison into the air and requires a ton of energy.

[Schwan]

At least here we do have high requirements for burning stuff so you do have proper filters etc.

At the end of the day you probably have concentrated toxins after the burning but handling this shit is probably easier and cheaper than undoing a landfill in 30 years.

[ZeroGravitas]

Burning generates energy.

[bserge]

To be fair, 40% is better than 0%

[Schwan]

True; So how does that make it any better?