1211
‘They lied’: plastics producers deceived public about recycling, report reveals
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2024
1211 points (99.6% liked)
World News
39102 readers
2250 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! 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.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
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 [email protected]
Politics [email protected]
World Politics [email protected]
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Well that's exactly the lie they sold. Reduce? Reuse? Absolutely. No question.
Recycle? If it makes sense. Should you recycle magazines? Sure, I'm sure it's possible... But that glossy coating means you'd have to put it through a bunch of rounds of chemical baths or something to separate that plastic crap off. Same with cardboard - if it's glossy, it's probably not going to turn back into wood pulp, and if it's oily it'd also ruin the batch (after a certain amount) so no pizza boxes either.
It's like that for just about anything you want to recycle - you have to look at the cost. And I mean full cost - the energy cost, fossil fuel used to produce required chemicals, the river those chemicals end up eventually, the environmental opportunity cost of bothering with it vs creating it fresh, and finally the man hour and infrastructure costs
Even if we publicly funded it, it's still an externality to the producer.
And that's the lie. It's like bailing out a cruise ship with a drinking cup... Theoretically it seems like "hey, if we can just move faster and we all do it, it could work!" But the numbers won't work. You can't scoop water up infinitely fast, and the geometry is going to limit how many people can increase the speed of bailing out water.
The only way this works is by plugging the holes or building enormous systems to offset the water coming in.
Reduce, reuse, recycle is a lie because it was never possible. Not for plastics - paper works pretty well, glass can work (but it's a lot of energy if you don't reuse it), metals work if the price is right.
But plastic barely works to create an inferior product (where only a portion of the material is recycled - you always have to add new plastic, sometimes only a few percent, sometimes more than half). You also have to sort it, ship it, wash the crap out of it, and deal with all the micro plastic-infused solvents. Because plastic sheds from heat, cold, UV light, mechanical pressure, and looking at it funny - every step of the process, you're dusting the surroundings in micro plastics. Even rainwater is full of micro plastics. And generally, it all ends up washed into the nearest body of water and the soil
And what's worse, is everything is coated in plastic if not made of it originally.
The only answer is to make companies stop wrapping everything in plastic... Yeah, it's super convenient and cheap, but we could figure out better options.
People are so worried about the AI alignment problem, but the corporate alignment problem is a much bigger threat - we have to make them want it, because the campaign to "reduce, reuse, recycle" bought them 40 years of complacency
🤯