It’s more than just plastic. In most places most things are not recycled. More accurate to say: in vanishingly few places is even a single kind of thing recycled. Then every scrap we save goes not to sustainability, but golf courses pleasure yachts and data centers to sloppify the world.
So saving is not conservation. You literally cannot make a positive impact environmentally unless you’re good at violence.
That’s needlessly pessimistic, but I’ll believe general consumer recycling programs are not very effective.
I know my composting program does something because I can give them food waste and get back compost
I know can recycling works because there is an entire industry supporting it, plus aluminum is energy intensive and I’ve repeatedly read it is the most recycled material
I know electronics recycling works because it’s expensive
I believe industrial recycling works because they have bulk quantities of pure material and there’s generally profit somewhere.
Most of all I believe my city’s consumer recycling is fairly effective because of the number of things they have specific steps/actions/destinations for. More importantly we don’t have a landfill and the one we use is very expensive, so there’s a profit motive for minimizing what we dispose of
It’s more than just plastic. In most places most things are not recycled. More accurate to say: in vanishingly few places is even a single kind of thing recycled. Then every scrap we save goes not to sustainability, but golf courses pleasure yachts and data centers to sloppify the world.
So saving is not conservation. You literally cannot make a positive impact environmentally unless you’re good at violence.
That’s needlessly pessimistic, but I’ll believe general consumer recycling programs are not very effective.
Most of all I believe my city’s consumer recycling is fairly effective because of the number of things they have specific steps/actions/destinations for. More importantly we don’t have a landfill and the one we use is very expensive, so there’s a profit motive for minimizing what we dispose of
I’m not saying it can’t work or we lack the technology.
I’m saying it doesnt because its cheaper to just toss it all in the dump.