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Starbucks does not recycle plastic cups it claims are ‘widely recyclable’, report says
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 21 May 2026
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Plastic recycling basically everywhere is a scam. It requires direct government subsidization to be cost competitive with new plastic. Companies actually advertising that they do it or could do it are missing the forest for the trees or just greenwashing.
Because plastic is a byproduct of oil production. It is a way to get rid of fractions of oil that are not used as fuel. No matter how efficient plastic recycling gets, it will never be cost competitive with new plastic. Refineries will just drop the price of the new plastic to ensure all of it gets sold, since if they couldn’t sell it, they would have to pay to dispose of it.
The real value of plastics isn’t that they’re good materials for things, it’s that they’re a way for oil companies to push the responsibility of disposing of their waste products on to public waste management by laundering it through packaging and cheap junk.
Not exactly true. There are many companies making profit off of recycling. The collecting costs here are by property taxes. Recycling plastic is still less cost than manufacturing virgin material. The sorting is effort, but the repelletinzing is not highly complex. As with anything for sale, for a company to stay in business their product has to cover costs and make profit. Recycled plastic is cheaper than new, sometimes not by a huge %/but enough that when oil prices rise the plastic part manufacturers reach out and order a lot more recycled material.
The plastic that is not easily converted back into consumer materials, is repelletized into fuel pellets. These are used in heating and incinerator systems in place of oil, coal and gas fuels. Its still just hydrocarbons at the end.
Not saying every country is doing this, and often not every city. But where I'm at 96% of collected material is recycled.
Is it all made from byproducts or are some plastics made specific from a batch of crude that is refined in a specific way to yield lots of a specific molecule that is needed? I am seriously asking since I dont have a clue.
As in: us there always e ought waste to create plastic no matter what? As long as we refine car propellant, that is.
I learned this from playing Satisfactory. I mean, I probably actually learned it in school at some point, but Satisfactory really drove it home. One of the first things you learn after unlocking oil is how to process all the excess oil by-product into plastic... And then straight into the shredder for those sweet sweet Ficsit coupons
Another side of the issue is that recycling is not government mandated - companies can choose on their own to recycle, and this is costly. When we as a society expect companies to maximize profit, it can come as no surprise that they do not voluntarily pay to be ecologically responsible.
This sounds like cardboard propaganda. When everyone knows cardboard is just a way for lumber companies to dispose of their unused tree parts from 2x4 production.
Yah, but hear me out, growing trees doesn’t make the planet get hotter.
It in fact has the opposite effect.
Yeah that just sounds like you'd like humans to live in caves again