When you put your plastics in a bin to "recycle," you're having some trucks carry your plastic to the coast, where it's put on these ships and sent back to China, where it's promptly dumped into the ocean, which we pay them for. Isn't going green great?!
The transportation is the cheap bit. The actual recycling is the expensive bit, and I highly doubt that they'd be selling the materials for a high enough price to justify a buyer.
Bandai has runs of Gunpla (Gundam model kits) that are called "Ecopla", which is essentially recycling their own plastic from defective runners to create new runners for kits, and that's truly the best way -- in house recycling to minimize waste.
But once it hits the consumer, that plastic is their plastic and isn't going to be recycled, just tossed into the garbage
When I was a kid, soda came in glass bottles instead of plastic. Grocery stores would collect and pay back deposits, then Coke & Pepsi would wash & refill the bottles. Guess who first lobbied municipal governments to start recycling programs? Soda companies. They didn't want the hassle and cost of collecting and reusing bottles; this way, the taxpayer would fund the recycling programs instead.
Still don’t understand why we can’t mass produce biodegradable plastic made from hemp etc
Not to mention all the other products that can be made from hemp
Even more fun is exporting to China.
When you put your plastics in a bin to "recycle," you're having some trucks carry your plastic to the coast, where it's put on these ships and sent back to China, where it's promptly dumped into the ocean, which we pay them for. Isn't going green great?!
China stopped taking that years ago, in 2018.
It's mostly sent to places like Bangladesh now.
Ok? Replace "China" with "a shithole east Asian country exactly the same distance away as China." Much more green.
My case wasn't that it's more green.
My case is that even China doesn't want this shit anymore.
It was never green, it was just kicking the can down the road.
Fair enough, sorry for the tone of the reponse.
That "recycling" crap always seemed fishy to me. What about the environmental cost of the transportation?
The transportation is the cheap bit. The actual recycling is the expensive bit, and I highly doubt that they'd be selling the materials for a high enough price to justify a buyer.
Bandai has runs of Gunpla (Gundam model kits) that are called "Ecopla", which is essentially recycling their own plastic from defective runners to create new runners for kits, and that's truly the best way -- in house recycling to minimize waste.
But once it hits the consumer, that plastic is their plastic and isn't going to be recycled, just tossed into the garbage
When I was a kid, soda came in glass bottles instead of plastic. Grocery stores would collect and pay back deposits, then Coke & Pepsi would wash & refill the bottles. Guess who first lobbied municipal governments to start recycling programs? Soda companies. They didn't want the hassle and cost of collecting and reusing bottles; this way, the taxpayer would fund the recycling programs instead.
In my area, the plastic goes to the same landfill as the paper and other garbage. It isn't cost effective to sort and sell.
Still don’t understand why we can’t mass produce biodegradable plastic made from hemp etc Not to mention all the other products that can be made from hemp
Biodegradable plastic is and has always been a scam.