[haccount]

There's an entire big and celebrated business sector that spends every working hour taking intact plastic products and grinds then into fine shreds, a process likely to contribute more than a fair share to microplastic dissemination. Maybe worth investigating, a good candidate for more microplastic release than the clothing industry.

Name of that business sector? Plastics recycling.

[arcticbull]

Plastics recycling also kinda barely exists. Only 5% of plastic in the US is recycled, the whole thing was a greenwashing operation by oil companies to encourage additional consumption. Realistically putting the plastic deep underground back from whence the hydrocarbons came is not a bad sequestration strategy.

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...

[DebtDeflation]

The way we used to "recycle" plastic was to put it on a container ship along with glass and aluminum and send it to China. Once it arrived, they would recycle the glass and aluminum and bury or burn the plastic. We reduced the quantity of (valuable) aluminum and glass over time until China got mad and told us to stop shipping them just the garbage (plastic). That was largely the end of the show.

[brnt]

The US is at the back of the pack though, in Europe some countries recycle more than half of plastic.

[pkaye]

Do they recycle or just burn it for energy?

[greenavocado]

Countries like Sweden, Denmark, and Switzerland incinerated 50-80% of their plastic waste. Germany incinerated around 50%. Countries in Eastern and Southern Europe generally had lower incineration rates and higher landfill rates. Approximately 42% of plastic waste in Europe was being incinerated in waste-to-energy facilities.

[brnt]

Recycling is not burning.

[redwall_hp]

Same for aluminum, which is highly recyclable. A ridiculous amount of it ends up in landfills for no reason other than people can't be fucked.

Plastic recycling is just another American "we tried nothing and are out of ideas." Much of the lack of recycling for plastics, when it comes to bottles, isn't some grand conspiracy so much as people just throwing bottles in the trash or on the side of the road, because:

* There aren't omnipresent recycling bins to go alongside trash cans.

* There aren't local programs for recycling pick up.

* Some people can't be bothered and the government isn't punching them in the face, as it should.

Only a half dozen states have a can/bottle deposit, even. Each state should be required to have deposits and municipal recycling pickup in any city of appreciable size, and heavy penalties for littering, or all sorts of federal funding should be withheld.

[mistrial9]

> Plastic recycling is just another American "we tried nothing and are out of ideas."

not sure where this comes from -- this statement is definitely not accurate. Is recycling of plastics "going well" ? no. Please note that USA is composed of States, and then Counties. In the USA law system, counties have the most jurisdiction over most waste laws. Some State laws override those, including toxics handling; then Federal laws including interstate commerce (transportation) and many more toxics regulations.

Counties do vary dramatically. In fact most counties in the whole USA are different in important respects. There is no single USA this way. Overall, recycling is very dependent on economics. It costs money to recycle, and sometimes you get some of it back on materials markets. The costs to the environment are not accurate with respect to markets.

The comment then proceeds to dictate advice to "each state" and that is never going to happen, by definition, for legal matters under the jurisdiction of states, in simple terms.