|
|
|
|
|
|
by lstamour
1858 days ago
|
|
|
As TFA says: > Plastic recycling was invented by the plastics industry in the 1970s to assuage environmental concerns without substantially reducing plastic consumption, according to Max Liboiron, an expert on plastic waste and a professor at Memorial University. > It has never worked. Despite decades of effort, only about nine percent of Canada’s plastic waste is currently recycled, according to the 2019 ECCC-commissioned study. |
|
|
California has 87% of its plastic beverage bottles recycled.
British Columbia implemented an extended consumer responsibility policy that allows the mixed-stream plastic to get recycled through an automated sortation, shredding and sortation system. Their recovery rate of plastic beverage containers was 73.9% in 2017.
Paper produces vastly more carbon than plastic for most disposable items. The existential risk to humans is climate change, more than litter.
We need to control litter and excess plastic by increasing recycle rates. The unwillingness to adopt better recycling infrastructure is due to unwillingness to adopt taxes to fund the conversion (the cost of converting mixed streams is greater than the market price of the output commodity), not because it is technologically infeasible.
The constant theme of recycling that works is government policy that increases the cost of plastic packaging, and uses those funds to stabilize markets or invest in the expensive equipment that it takes to process the material. But it's worth it to do that compared to the wasteful, CO2 blasting approach of "just switch to paper."