Is recycling an impactless money-making sham to make people feel better about themselves?

This is a well known problem. You should still try to recycle the things that can be easily recycled, but do your best to educate yourself and always better to use something that can be reused or composted over recycling.

Big plastic uses recycling to pretend they aren't extremely harmful.

 

I agree with @AroundTheWorld that we should ban plastic.

 

Someone posted a good article a few years ago on the difficulty of recycling plastic. The basic issue is it has to be separated into different resin types

 

Hopefully it is a fruitless way for people to feel better about themselves.

I was worried that @AroundTheWorld was going to run out of groups of people to campaign against and attempt to portray as less than human.

 

Not yet. But I have faith.

 

no **** it makes a difference?
Plastic is not really recyclable unless it's not thermosetting. Glass and aluminum have different processes for recycling.

The more sorted out it is the more efficient and cost effective the recycling process is.

 

This like carbon credits was thrown to the public and billed as solutions when the numbers and logistics doomed it at the very beginning.

The plastic and oil industry ****ed everyone over and shifted the responsibility to the user who could genuinely do nothing about it

 

waste to energy might be the only real solution for soft plastics. globally, it was all sent to china before the pandemic. now it's too expensive to recycle soft plastics. all these businesses are either going under or stockpiling and collecting the money until they get found out.

 

Recycling glass and metal is still a great idea.

Paper is too ambiguous now since it's becoming common for consumer grade packaging to be sprayed with plastic like chemicals, and is probably cheaper burnt than sorting out useful stuff.

It's expensive to retrofit existing plants for incinerating all trash into safer or less damaging emissions. There's also been startups that tried refining the plastics into other chemicals and energy byproducts, but it's been several decades on that front and stuff dug from the ground is still cheapest means of energy (from cradle to grave) and will anchor profitability calculations of any alternative tech.

There's also several issues with repurposed recycled plastics that make viability a cursed dilemma. It's not as durable as virgin plastic, and the decay and outgassing from bricks made in third world countries for construction a bad idea.

But yeah, burning it all is probably the best answer as we learn more about microplastics and how it manages to seep into everywhere. Double down on making the tech to scrub or filter out bad emissions cheaper or more efficient.

It has it's own issues, but it's a start.

 

Just wanted to jump in here and give the state of recycling here in the state of NY.

Recycling is no joke.
If you put plastic into the regular trash here it will probably go unnoticed.
BUT, if you put a soiled pizza box in the recyclable container, first you will get a nasty letter from the entity you deal with. Although we pay exorbitant taxes here in NY my town does not have trash pickup. We have to pay a service for that. So, if you happen to have a container in the recyclable pile that might have a touch of sweet and sour sauce in it, you will get a nasty gram followed by a special charge in next month's bill.

Also, we have single stream recycling here. All paper, glass and plastic go into a giant bin at your house. They sort it later.

But don't throw your water or soda bottles in there because, NY gets you for 5 cents in deposits for each bottle or can. About to go up to 10 cents.
So regardless of what anyone thinks about recycling of plastic it just pays to turn in your bottles, cans and plastic water bottles.

 

Here is the problem. There are 2 outrages
1. People pissed with the very concept of recycling
2. People pissed that the recycling is not happening

I'm more in the second group

Rocket River

 

depends on the county. In Schuyler there is no mandatory recycling; curbside trash removal is fee-based with private companies; and cardboard needs to be broken down to go with trash. We burn cardboard as it is easier than breaking down and tying up with string. In adjacent Tompkins County there is both mandatory recycling as well as municipal trash collection; but for trash collection residents have to purchase a five dollar "bag tag" for every bag or can of trash left on the curb.

 

Progressives became disillusioned with plastic recycling years ago, so it's funny to see conservatives catching up. I still recycle my plastic (despite the mocking from my children) because it makes more space in my trash bin. But my household tries to reduce how much plastic we use because of the expectation that it'll go in the landfill. We still go through plenty because you have to be some kind of zealot to really avoid plastic in this society. Academically, the focus now seems to be on the 'circular economy' - designing products and markets with the premeditation of recapturing and recycling the material. It seems to me like we'd need a lot more development on the regulatory structure to incentivize the right behaviors because right now it seems like the economic levers are all flipped the other way.