Plastic producers have known for more than 30 years that recycling is not an economically or technically feasible plastic waste management solution. That has not stopped them from promoting it, according to a new report.
“The companies lied,” said Richard Wiles, president of fossil-fuel accountability advocacy group the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), which published the report. “It’s time to hold them accountable for the damage they’ve caused.”
And nothing happened…
And nothing happened…
Have you called your house representative to speak with them about this?
Lol
Have more of a chance of affecting change than just bitching and moaning about it on Lemmy. /shrug
The thing is, chemists knew it. Nobody wanted to hear it. There are only three things worth recycling: Aluminum, glass, and electronics.
That’s extremely reductionist and inaccurate. Most metals can be recycled easily, not only aluminium.
Aluminium is typically used as is though, while many other metals are used as alloys. I suspect that it makes things much easier when you don’t have to worry about composition.
Note that I don’t really know anything much about metals or recycling, so I might be completely wrong.
Aluminium is typically used as is though
That would result in some shitty products. Aluminium is also mostly used as alloy, pure aluminium is pretty soft.
Waste metal is basically always going to be purer and easier to deal with than metal ore, so it’s worth recycling nearly anything that it’s worth mining the ore for. Aluminium’s particularly recyclable because it’s expensive to make it from ore, and much less expensive to melt existing aluminium.
Can’t we just force heavy taxation for the amount of plastics in products? That would force producers to look at alternatives to plastic for packaging.
I am always in shock when I buy some product and it has layers and layers of thick plastic to give the impression of some premium product. And sometimes I don’t even have an alternative product to buy to avoid it since I only have 2 supermarkets in my area.
The difficult thing with this type of tax is that products will become more expensive. In most cases, manufacturers choose plastic because it is the cheapest option. If plastic becomes more expensive they may choose an alternative, but this will still result in a price increase.
This type of policy also tends to be regressive, i.e. it hurts people with lower income much more than wealthier people. This makes it unpopular.
This is going straight to my MP (UK) today, with an angry letter! Please do the same, wherever you are, that’s the only power we have but it’s quite potent if enough of us raise the point.
There’s still thousands if not millions of products out there marketed as microwave safe plastic. There’s no such thing. Get this toxic shit out of contact with your food. Feel free to mark my words for later when the science finally catches up and shows that it’s a major carcinogen.
Do you have more information about this because I’d like to know more, I microwave a lot of stuff in plastic containers.
Here’s one for starters: https://www.wired.com/story/for-the-love-of-god-stop-microwaving-plastic/
