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TIL Only about 9% of plastic ever produced has been recycled.
(en.wikipedia.org)
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this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2024
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80% of the shit you put in your recycling bin goes straight into a landfill. plastic recycling was a giant greenwashing scam by the oil industry
Quite honestly, going to a landfill seems so so so much better than the alternative: going into the environment and oceans, turning into microplastics and getting into food chains.
At least landfills are contained. Bury the shit until we have the tech to deal with it.
Some day, between the plastics, nutrients from organics, e-waste, landfills are going to be a goldmine.
Eh, it pretty much does all that bad stuff from the landfills
How does buried plastic cause microplastics to leech everywhere?
Weathering (sun, exposure, abrasion caused by plastic being moved by wind and sea) is a significant part of microplastic formation.
Here you go:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2468584422001088
You may have a misinformed concept of what landfills are; most garbage is not buried and covered, it is mostly exposed in open pits and just plain old mountains of garbage everywhere. However, even buried, it still decomposes into microplastics as explained in the paper linked
I read the snippets and abstract. I'm not seeing how these micro plastics are getting out of the landfills.
Never knew that!
That's scary, microplastics can absorb and spread pollutants!
But I'm not seeing anything about how they're getting out from a landfill. I even read a few of the referenced articles. But nothing about if or how they're getting out.
Landfills leak all the time. There is no actually contain all the toxic pollutants in there, specially not the microscopic stuff
https://www.colorado.edu/ecenter/2021/04/15/hidden-damage-landfills
Fair enough, there's potential for landfills to leak.
But if its between that, dumping it in the ocean, or exporting it, the landfill wins.
Why are we full of microplastics then?
Most microplastics come from car tires and washing of clothing with plastic in them. (both abrade the plastic causing uncountable tiny pieces of microplastics to enter the water or the air)
Then there are a lot of places that dump plastic into rivers or the ocean instead of into landfills.
I recall a episode of penn and teller that goes over this in detail. Even talks about how landfills are engineer to gather the gasses that are released to reuse as fuel.
Do you have a source for that?
sorry, it's 50% to the landfill, 22% illegally dumped or burned, and 19% incinerated.
https://www.oecd.org/en/about/news/press-releases/2022/02/plastic-pollution-is-growing-relentlessly-as-waste-management-and-recycling-fall-short.html
Yep. I don't even bother recycling plastic anymore. It's fucking pointless. I just recycle glass and tin cans.