1209
submitted 6 months ago by HowRu68@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

Plastic producers have known for more than 30 years that recycling is not an economically or technically feasible plastic waste management solution. That has not stopped them from promoting it, according to a new report.

“The companies lied,” said Richard Wiles, president of fossil-fuel accountability advocacy group the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), which published the report. “It’s time to hold them accountable for the damage they’ve caused.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] VelvetStorm@lemmy.world 37 points 6 months ago

We have known that less than 2% of plastic has been recycled for years. This isn't new news.

[-] Death_Equity@lemmy.world 8 points 6 months ago

I remember them talking about how little actually gets recycled in the late 90s. My guess is everybody assumed things had gotten better.

We don't even have the capacity to recycle paper products appropriately.

[-] BombOmOm@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

We don’t even have the capacity to recycle paper products appropriately.

You burn them or put them in a landfill where they decompose, which turns them into CO2, then elsewhere you grow a tree, which turns it back into wood, to turn into pulp, etc. Paper recycling is pretty much always done. Nobody hermetically seals their paper so it doesn't even decompose.

[-] emptiestplace@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 months ago

The bar is so low that that's almost not tautological.

[-] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world -1 points 6 months ago

Not to excuse the inefficiency, but it's still better than not recycling at all. I'm curious to know why recycling hasn't been effective. One of my guesses is that the general public probably don't care at all to segregate. I mean, how many times have we seen people throw compostable stuff into the recycling bin and vice versa? And not to mention we treat every recyclables as if they're all the same and put them into one bin. Plastics could not be recycled with paper or cardboard! That being said, countries have different system so there is mismatch with recycling programs across the world. Where I live, we treat every recyclables the same, but in Portugal they properly segregate paper, cans and plastics into separate bins. I think the different systems only makes recycling overall inefficient.

this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2024
1209 points (99.6% liked)

World News

38126 readers
2692 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS