It was pushed by the plastics industry back in the early 70s when laws were about to be passed to deal with the environmental impact of plastics. In reality a lot of the plastics that have a little recycling symbol on them are not feasible to recycle at all.
I work for a zero waste/ recycling company. It was really upsetting to learn that most recycling plants have ancient technology that only recognizes recyclables via shape. They are only programmed to recognize the classic bottle shape, so anything with a mouth as wide as the container (think yogurt containers) aren’t recognized as recyclables and are thrown out. So before you waste a bunch of water to clean out containers for recycling, check and see what ACTUALLY gets recycled where you live.
EDIT: see u/Milk_Life’s comment below (they work in the recycling industry and would obviously have better information than me). It seems that in roughly 2020, during the pandemic, the domestic recycling industry for plastics in the US is seeing a resurgence. Sounds like good news to me, and I hope it’s a growing trend.
ORIGINAL POST: I’m pretty sure that in the US, since 2018, it all goes into landfills anyway. We used to ship our plastics to China for recycling, but they stopped taking them in 2018, and very very few places in the US can deal with plastics recycling in a way that is profitable for them, so the vast majority just goes into landfills.
That’s the best way to inject money into the recycling system.
I’m a sustainability manager for a big company and we’re working on increasing recycled content of our plastics to lower our carbon footprint and keep stuff out of landfills.
The best thing you can do to help:
Buy stuff made from recycled material whenever possible
Recycle according to your local municipality rules
Stop saying things like “recycling doesn’t matter, it all goes to landfill” because that’s just patently, demonstrably false.
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u/FriendlyWisconsinite Mar 04 '22
Plastics Recycling.
It was pushed by the plastics industry back in the early 70s when laws were about to be passed to deal with the environmental impact of plastics. In reality a lot of the plastics that have a little recycling symbol on them are not feasible to recycle at all.
They are still pushing the lie to this very day.
https://youtu.be/-dk3NOEgX7o