Facts won't sway the True Believers or the Virtue Signalers, but if there's this much resistance to plastic recycling, shouldn't we do away with it? Is the purpose of government to tell us all how to live?
Plastic recycling rates are declining even as production shoots up, according to a Greenpeace USA report out Monday that blasted industry claims of creating an efficient, circular economy as "fiction."
Titled "Circular Claims Fall Flat Again," the study found that of 51 million tons of plastic waste generated by U.S. households in 2021, only 2.4 million tons were recycled, or around five percent. After peaking in 2014 at 10 percent, the trend has been decreasing, especially since China stopped accepting the West's plastic waste in 2018...
According to the report, there were five main reasons why plastic recycling is a "failed concept"...
Fifth and finally, the process of recycling is prohibitively expensive.
"New plastic directly competes with recycled plastic, and it's far cheaper to produce and of higher quality," said the report.
The "failed concept" won't end if the people in charge are, or are influenced by, the True Believers or the Virtue Signalers.
3 comments:
Plastic recycling was always a greenwashing ruse by the petroleum industry to make consumers feel good about using plastic. So the garbage patches and gyres grow unabated while the oil industry and plastics manufacturers reap record profits. That was always the plan. And it worked.
The best way to recycle plastics, because they are multiple types, with lots of additives, etc. is trash to energy incineration. That way, with the proper scrubbers on the stacks all that is coming out is CO2 and water.
I've read that about 95% of the plastic in the "garbage patches" in the Pacific comes from 5 rivers in Asia. I'd be surprised if the US is contributing much if anything to them, given the currents and our garbage collection practices.
I've not read about any garbage patches in the Atlantic.
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