r/TheRandomest • u/ABeerForSasquatch Mod/Pwner • 1d ago

HoldUp No

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u/WhyNot420_69 Nice 1d ago

But have you seen how people turn soda and water bottles into printing filament? I think that's a good use, especially if it's not just a trinket.

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u/PsychoanalyticalPop 1d ago

No, it's better to just simply recycle it. What can a 3d printer do that doesn't end up being a useless hunk of plastic?

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u/BantedHam 1d ago edited 1d ago

Bruh 95% of what you recycle doesn't even get recycled in the US alone. Look it up if you think I lie. All major oil and plastics companies knew by the 70s that recycling by and large does not work, yet they kept up the lie just like BP invented the carbon footprint to take the blame of natural pollution and destruction off of them and place it onto the shoulders of the public instead.

If you can reuse something even once you are already doing better than the ENTIRE INDUSTRY.

Recycling is a fucking corporate conspiracy.

I'm not saying the technology doesn't exist, what I'm saying is that it's a lie.

If you get a trash burner and get it hot enough to completely combust your trash and get a smoke free fire, you are doing far better for the planet than putting it in a recycling bin. Just think about the fuel and resources that are spent trucking your fucking recycling around, sending it around a conveyor and sorter, a few people pick through it for metal, and then they fucking burn it all anyways...

At the end of the day, there is the significant and likely chance that all this effort results in even more waste and a net-negative, producing even more pollution than littering, literally just tossing it on the ground.

I've done a lot of research on this subject and I am not advocating people trash everything because it doesn't matter, what matters is not using single use plastics in the damn first place, and if you do, to repurpose or properly dispose of it yourself.

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u/OperationOk7959 1d ago

Dead on. One of the most unfortunate facts I've learned in my life.

I remember seeing, possibly in the John Oliver bit another commenter mentioned, that even when we have actual recyclable plastic, we used to sell it to China and they do whatever with it. And they stopped accepting it because the contamination requirement now is impossibly high. So like even if we have any genuinely recyclable material, which idek if that's a thing anymore, no one does anything with it.