[legitster]

Too bad we spent so much time getting people to be really good at recycling. It turns out that municipalities making recycling free was just a subsidy for more plastic. (I mean, I'll still recycle. It's free garbage service!)

I think if we just made it clear that plastic is garbage and goes in a garbage bin and needs to go to a landfill and you have to pay for the garbage bin, we may be surprised by how much needless low quality plastic packaging would disappear.

But still - plastic is pretty dang useful stuff. I'm sitting in a faux leather chair typing on a 15 year old plastic keyboard wearing comfy polyester-blend clothing. I don't begrudge oil companies for somehow forcing me to buy this stuff. And I would rather oil get used for stuff like this than burned and turned into CO2.

[Arnt]

The underlying premise of all that is that Americans are really good at recycling, good enough that that has an effect. Well, are they? Compared to Canadians, Mexicans, Portuguese or Japanese for example? (Those are just four countries directly-ish north, south, east and west.)