And they knew all along - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/15/recycling-plastics-producers-report
I would be really interested in seeing this broken down by nation. Are any countries doing this better than others. Can others learn from them?
Or… are we simply a complete failure as a species… destined to become [choose your post apocalyptic story]
I’d like to see this broken down by sector. This is consumer-shaming enough, when a good portion of it is probably industrial non-consumer use.
I reduce, I reuse. But completely avoiding plastics is near impossible and I just wish I could know if there’s something I personally could actually do to actually make a difference. My government might be failing at ensuring recycling amounts to something, but perhaps there are other governments doing a better job? I can’t tell you how much anxiety experience because of plastic use…
You’re right, though, because this almost entirely resides on the various sectors producing the plastics in the first place.
This is also very frustrating. We are literally killing ourselves.
Recycling is a distraction. Always has been. It’s a marketing and regulatory capture ploy by the plastics industry to avoid any responsibility for their colossal waste.
Sure, recycling before a tiny bit, in the margin, maybe, but imagine where we’d be if all the money and effort that went into recycling instead went into materials engineering to create biodegradable alternatives to one-tube-user plastics?
In fact, getting rid of recycling globally might actually help since it would highlight to people how much they’re putting into the landfill. That might actually spark some political will to regulate plastics better, instead of just high-optics items like plastic bags and straws.
It’s partially because of cost, new plastic is cheaper than trying to recover old. But very few plastics can be truly recycled chemically, much being reformed for other purposes. Glass and metals were always a better environmental choice (with their own limitations too), but plastic is so cheap and versatile it’s hard to compete. Not just plastics - just a look around the household imagining the lack of petroleum products, it’s amazing how it’s everywhere. Yet another dead end we’ve gotten ourselves into.
Glass is usually broken and melted again. Lots of energy required. Is it really better carbon-footprint-wise?
Crushed recycled glass (aka cullet) actually decreases the amount of energy required to create new glass products, as well as demonstrably lowering their CO2 impact. While it’s easy to assume that there’s a lot of waste because there’s a lot of heat involved, keep in mind that virgin material requires far more processing and even more heat and energy to result in a final product.
Unlike plastics, the problems with achieving a profitable (remember, capitalism) glass recycling stream are much more cultural and intrinsic to the subject nation. Here’s some further info on why the US, where I live, is dragging so far behind in this area: https://cen.acs.org/materials/inorganic-chemistry/glass-recycling-US-broken/97/i6
There have been several detailed analyses comparing the carbon footprints and overall environmental impacts of glass and plastic (specifically PET) bottles. For instance, a study published in Sustainability used Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to assess the environmental sustainability of two packaging alternatives for extra virgin olive oil: glass bottles and PET bottles made from 100% recycled PET granulate. The study found that the recycled PET system was more environmentally sustainable than the glass system across all impact categories considered, particularly in terms of global warming potential, particulate formation, terrestrial acidification, and fossil fuel scarcity. The impacts of the R-PET were lower than 40% compared to those of the glass system, with the glass system responsible for significantly higher CO2 equivalents due to the high weight of the glass bottle affecting both production and distribution phases. https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/4/3665
Another study presented in Recycling conducted a comparative LCA of two alternative packaging systems for drinking water: reusable glass bottles and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles. The results indicated that PET bottles were the most sustainable option for natural water across many impact categories. For sparkling water, the environmental impacts of the two packaging systems were similar, and the most environmentally sound solution varied depending on the specific impact category considered. This study highlighted the importance of considering the number of reuses of a single glass bottle and the distribution distance, as these factors could significantly influence which packaging option is more sustainable.
https://www.mdpi.com/2313-4321/6/3/50Furthermore, research compiled in ResearchGate also compared the LCA of PET and glass bottles, underscoring that plastics generally have a lower carbon footprint and lesser environmental impact compared to glass packaging material, when considering the entire lifecycle from raw material transportation to disposal.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314100348_Comparison_of_Life_Cycle_Assessment_of_PET_Bottle_and_Glass_BottleI have to credit ChatGPT4 for this answer.
I think so. Plastic needs tons of processing to go from raw material to plastic. You’re basically (in terms of glass) cutting out all the energy spent mining for sand and (in terms of plastic) cutting out all the energy spent searching for crude/natural gas/coal, extracting crude, taking it to be refined, taking it somewhere else to be turned into a polymer, having the plastic pellets moved to where they’re melted into the product, and then having them melted from plastic pellets to whatever needs made.
In the cases where plastic is a byproduct of gasoline production (which I think exists?)… Maybe it’s not worse in a sense (?) but we really shouldn’t be producing gasoline at the rates we are now.
At the very least, glass is a much more renewable resource (at least pending advancements in polymer manufacturing). It also doesn’t leech into things like plastic does WRT food contamination.
Not to mention pollution wise glass is far better (there’s no great pacific garbage patch made of glass).
Coke wants you to remember that it’s your responsibility to make sure their bottles get recycled. So remember to put them in the recycle bin not the trash!
I still feel like plastics highlight the absolute peak of human hubris and greed. They’re among the most versatile, durable and malleable materials ever created and the most we use them for are cheap, garbage one time use things. It’s just mad.
Guessing that 1% is mostly those milk jug benches and trash cans
I turned at least 10 of those old style soda bottles with the removable bottoms into
terrariumsterraria, so I’m doing my partwell… at least 31% are still in use…
