Plastic recycling is literally a scam. It doesn't exist, but companies will sell it anyways.
If you're not depositing PET bottles at the supermarket, the best case scenario for single-use plastic is that it gets burned for electricity like the rest of the 11 million tons of oil we burn every year.
Yeah, plasma gasification ftw. It apparently takes care of all municiple solid waste:
Pretty interesting tech. Here in Sweden I believe the majority of (sorted) plastic waste goes into incinerators which generate heat for district heating for homes and businesses.
We do have bottle deposits in Sweden too though which means that 85% of clear drink bottles sold are generally able to be shredded into >96% pure PET and resold to bottle factories. (though green PET bottles, HDPE bottle caps, and polyester labels are not yet recyclable). Unfortunately bottle return rates are on a downward trend, I suspect this is due to the fact that deposits haven't increased with inflation and are still sitting at around 0.1-0.2€. These deposits will probably have to be increased to 0.2-0.4€ per bottle to prevent Sweden's plastic waste from increasing more, but considering that the current conservative government in Sweden just eliminated taxes on plastic bags, I don't see it happening any time soon. Conservative voters are too quick to complain when they have to share the cost of their plastic waste.
Here in the US the trash just piles up in landfills or gets shipped elsewhere. Some does get recycled, but not nearly enough.
In other sectors, we've got things like factories polluting poor minorities, and an airforce that can't stop letting their forever chemicals leak into the environment...
Sounds like things are generally more progressive in Sweden, although the recent trends you mentioned are worrisome. It's unfortunate some people are willing to sabotage our future for a slighly more comfortable present :/
This is gonna be like the tire fire in the Simpsons.
CBS News - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for CBS News:
MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: High - United States of America
Wikipedia about this source
Media Bias Fact Check | bot supportSearch topics on Ground.News
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/houston-plastic-waste-recycling-piles-up/
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.