DoneVille
Don't know about you, but in our house we do our best to recycle pretty much everything, including all that plastic that just about everything that is packaged comes in or is lined with.
So.
As long as we are recycling all that, it's not so bad that we use it, right?
Wrong.
Hmmm...
Don't know about you, but in our house we do our best to recycle pretty much everything, including all that plastic that just about everything that is packaged comes in or is lined with.
So.
As long as we are recycling all that, it's not so bad that we use it, right?
Wrong.
...(The American) EPA used data from the American Chemistry Council and the National Association for PET Container Resources to measure the recycling of plastic....(T)he amount of recycled plastics is relatively small—3.0 million tons for a 8.4 percent recycling rate in 2017...
Hmmm...
If less than 10% is being recycled, where is all that plastic going?
Well, it most often either burned or dumped in landfills, often overseas:
And what isn't dealt with in those two ways inevitably makes its way into the ocean.
So.
How did we get bamboozled into believing that plastic recycling matters?
A joint effort by NPR and PBS' Frontline has gotten to the bottom of it.
And it turns out that it is exactly for the reason that you might have already surmised...
...NPR and PBSFrontline spent months digging into internal industry documents and interviewing top former officials. We found that the industry sold the public on an idea it knew wouldn't work — that the majority of plastic could be, and would be, recycled — all while making billions of dollars selling the world new plastic...
{snip}
... (Plastic) industry companies spent tens of millions of dollars on (misleading) ads (that plastic recycling programs were working) and ran them for years, promoting the benefits of a product that, for the most part, was buried, was burned or, in some cases, wound up in the ocean.
Documents show industry officials knew this reality about recycling plastic as far back as the 1970s...
Imagine that!
...NPR and PBSFrontline spent months digging into internal industry documents and interviewing top former officials. We found that the industry sold the public on an idea it knew wouldn't work — that the majority of plastic could be, and would be, recycled — all while making billions of dollars selling the world new plastic...
{snip}
... (Plastic) industry companies spent tens of millions of dollars on (misleading) ads (that plastic recycling programs were working) and ran them for years, promoting the benefits of a product that, for the most part, was buried, was burned or, in some cases, wound up in the ocean.
Documents show industry officials knew this reality about recycling plastic as far back as the 1970s...
Imagine that!
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7 comments:
Sooooo what they are saying is that none of the plastic that we clean, and deliver to eg. North Shore Recycling and shipped off to China as fuel for their factories to make more plastic products for us ... is in fact, being dumped (by China) in the oceans which explains why we are seeing the world's seven seas being 'swamped' with plastic, killing sea life, which we feed upon
Sounds kind of like a vicious cycle, with a vicious end.
NVG--
As the NPR/Frontline piece explains....It's too expensive and the product degrades too much with each round of recycling...As a result, it's made 'fresh' each time because the product is 'superior' and way cheaper.
Thus, the industry had to make-up recycling as a panacea so that they could keep makin more of the superior/cheaper stuff.
In other words, it's a purpose-built cycle of viciousness.
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Our company is in the plastic business, so feel free to be skeptical of everything I say!
I hold out hope for PLA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polylactic_acid
This is a plant-based plastic that is bio-degradable. There is lots of greenwashing around various forms of PLA, but also tons of progress. We are working with a company that derives plastic from canola oil-using a biological process. There is also a similar product being developed at U of T that makes plastic from waste food/organic material. At the moment, this "backyard compostable" material is about 3X the price of traditional plastic. But as government's enact regulations limiting single-use plastic, I think these plant-based plastic will really take off.
Of course, there are food/ethical issues here as well but I think a positive step.
Glen--
Most interesting, but just reinforces, I think, why banning single use bags is not enough...Knowing you (a little), though, I reckon you and yours are going all in a truly recyclable product given that you think bags are just the first regulatory step.
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absolutely. Bags are the easy part. but it will all move sooner I think than later.
All the more reason why the public needs to be informed, very loudly and in a sustained manner, that the current faux plastic recycling mania is madness - and actually both environmentally and socially destructive.
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I was sitting down tonight to have bowl of puffed rice with Avalon Dairy Milk and STOPPED. The lid on the glass milk bottle is plastic. The lid is 'snapped on" by grabbing the outside rim of the bottle.
When I was a kid, down in Kitsilano (Broadway and Pine) our milk was delivered by a horse-drawn wagon (NEIGH-bour was a gardener, loved the droppings) ..... The lid was cardboard, rested on a rim on the INSIDE of the bottle. Plastic is out, cardboard is in, will that mean that the bottles will have to be melted down and remade for the cardboard to rest on? Asking for a friend.
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