Is recycling doing anything significant?

The US could go as clean and green as Europe. India and parts of Africa are the huge issues and they don’t give a fuck.

[quote] The US could go as clean and green as Europe. India and parts of Africa are the huge issues and they don’t give a fuck.

India, China, etc complain that, when America was growing industrially, it polluted immensely and it didn't care. The US has outsourced its industry to cheaper countries. Now that they want to develop, the world is saying they cannot do it the same way the US did it.

Not particularly about recycling but industrial pollution--China's industry makes 50% of its goods for export, mainly the US. So 50% of its industrial pollution is because the US doesn't have much industry any more.

I live in flyover and there are rumors that our recycling program is a big joke and most of it ends up in a landfill. Also, my city does not recycle glass and only No. 1,2,and 5 plastics.

OP = Rosemary Ackerman

Almost no plastic is recycled and ends up in landfills.

I've noticed at work that the cleaning crew takes the recycle container and dumps it with the other trash.

I just bought some shoes that are 20% recycled plastic bottles. These are also made in China. The world in general has too much crap and people buy useless crap all the time. I still buy a lot of crap, although I try to live more simply now that I am past middle age. Just looking at all my crap I can help but think that it used to be money.

For plastics, only 1 and 2 have any recycling potential. The plastics industry has lied to everyone that all other plastics can be recycled too. All that stupid "check the number in the triangle" stuff is utter BS.

In fact, there is a strong belief that it's actually better to throw away plastics than to send for recycling. When China bought up all our trash, it would just throw what it couldn't use into the ocean. It's better for us to use a landfill than pollute the oceans

There's no recycling and there was never much anyway, then you shitty people couldn't be bothered to rinse your yogurt cups out, recycling is not profitable, it was all performative stupid shit. Throw everything away, THEY LIED TO YOU, and you fell for it, China recycled almost nothing anyway.

I refused to recycle and separate anything, and they charged us for doing their work for them, I knew it was all a scam. Fuck them

No. It’s already been exposed as a crock of shit. Michael Moore exposed them a million years ago.

There is not one solution, OP, that will solve all problems,

But you are right, reducing the amount of waste by retaining and reusing things is an important part: buildings, infrastructure, furnishings and household goods, clothing, transportation, and reusing materials associated with food consumption are some obvious things.

I live in Europe where packaging is generally more considered and less excessive than in the U.S., but all the same the amount of stuff meant to package things and then be thrown away immediately or require recycling is daunting.

The idea of electronic products that will be replaced in a few years, or a car, or clothing that is good for one season is excessive. Buying a plastic forest of single use plastic bottles to contain one's special branded water is ridiculous to me.

And yes, recycling works but only for certain things and it doesn't eliminate mountains of old clothes that get shipped around the world many times to end up in the poorest country that will take the least amount of money to make a geographical feature of them.

Americans are addicted to buying cheap shit just because it's cheap. Putting it it any use is often secondary to the idea that it *could* be put to use. Special offers = thoughtless purchases = houses filled with useless, unused shit because at some step in the process buying some stupid thing made someone feel better about him/herself.

If federal law required manufacturers to use recycled plastic, perhaps 20%, rather than using all new plastic, recycling would be giving a boost. Otherwise, companies are going to watch the bottom line. I have shopping bags supposedly made from recycled bottles, so a few options already exist. For my own part, I use plastics a second time if I can think of a way, mostly in gardening.

I recycle. Always gave

Have

R14, want a prize?

At the corporate level, yes. But that rarely ever occurs in the US.

Until the situation is that it's cheaper for corporations to use recycled materials to make new goods, they won't. They'll always do the cheapest thing they can get away with that the law allows (if that).

What we never hear enough about is why doesn't the government do some real regulation on the 100 corporations that make 70% of the pollution?

I think recycling everything else except plastic is what’s significant.

No r19, only aluminum cans get recycled consistently, not glass or anything of daily use, it was a public relation performative scam, but all the suburban fucking mommies feel good about it.

Is paper recycling a scam?

OP, I am sure there are much more reliable places for this information than a bunch of randos on DL.

R21, I believe only certain types of paper can be properly recycled. The rest of what we throw away in recycling gets landfilled.

For example, you cannot recycle paper after it's been through a shredder. You cannot recycle anything that has touched food (like a pizza box). You cannot recycle any paper that's been plasticized.

R23 - food contamination and plasticization make obvious sense - what does shredding do to paper? Potentially contaminate it with other non paper shredded material?

People will try to come up with every excuse in the book to act like Beverly Ackerman.

Oops. Mrs. Ackerman.

My recycler didn't want shredded paper because it'll blow away on a windy day.

Paper is recycled. There are lots of brands of paper towels and toilet paper that are made out of recycled paper. My anti-environmentalist father (now deceased) saw recycled toilet paper in the store and actually thought that they toilet paper was made of recycled (used) toilet paper. (Gross!)

Glass is inert. If it gets tossed in a land fill or into the ocean, it is not going to be absorbed by living creatures. However, it takes up a lot of space, so recycling is good. It's just melted sand (essentially) so it can be remelted into fresh glass more or less infinitely.

Plastic, on the other hand......oy vey. Very tricky to recycle and come up with anything useful. Some plastics can be recycled by turning them into paving material for roads, and that might be one of the better uses. However, microplastic is a thing, and I would assume that thousands of cars riding on a road might release microplastics into the air unless they can find a very stable binding material with whatever aggregate they are using. I guess I'd still rather have that than plastics in the ocean, which have already begun disrupting the food chain, upon which we all rely.

The solution is really to consume less, if you don’t use it it doesn’t need to be recycled. Reduced consumption is what should be pushed, however this is at odds with capitalism. It’s like when people are building a second home and they add a green roof because they “care about the environment” when what they rly would do if they did care is not build the second home.

[Quote] food contamination and plasticization make obvious sense - what does shredding do to paper? Potentially contaminate it with other non paper shredded material?

Shredded paper clogs up recycling processing machines

I hope so because washing and rinsing my garbage is tedious.

It's a scam.

It's so ingrained into my behavior that if they announced tomorrow that there's no need to recycle anymore it would literally KILL ME to put an empty bottle into the regular trash!

[quote]It's so ingrained into my behavior that if they announced tomorrow that there's no need to recycle anymore it would literally KILL ME to put an empty bottle into the regular trash!

I don't mind recycling bottles, cans, seltzer bottles, jars, and such. I don't mind breaking down boxes and putting all that into paper recycling.

What I find tedious is the addition of mandatory composting where we have to decide whether the paper has "food stains" so belongs in compost or whether it belongs in recycled paper.

Also, washing plastic containers and food trays from fozen foods to put them in recycle is tedious.

I don't wash plastics--they go through a wash at the recycling plant and then get thrown into a dump because hardly any plastics get recycled anyway.

If you live in a state that still relies on coal, your washing plastics caused more greenhouse gases to go into the air

Its all just feel-good theater.

The planet is burning, and societal structures are deteriorating at lightening pace; its just a race to the bottom now on every front.

The best time to be alive was through the latter part of the 20th century and about 15 years in to the 21st century.

Its all going to hell now; we're finishing ourselves off at an alarming rate now.

[quote]I don't wash plastics--they go through a wash at the recycling plant and then get thrown into a dump because hardly any plastics get recycled anyway.

The problem is that it attracts vermin and bugs if you don't wash them which are both huge problems in NYC.

Short answer to OP's question: No.

brands of paper

That's another performative act, and you obviously fell for it, see how easy it is to confuse people, you see recycled and FEEL good about it don't be stupid, ALMOST NOTHING GETS RECYCLED, it's all fake.

It used to be that the grocery store was stocked almost exclusively with glass, metal, cardboard and paper containers. Now almost exclusively with plastic.

If you don't force the manufacturers tp change, then the situation is hopeless.

It's not all fake. Nor is it all pointless. There are measures to show that there is some significant recycling - which rates should not be overestimated as wild successes nor u devalued as pointless theatre. But indeed the perception of the "good" people do in rinsing out plastic food containers and putting used clothing in the special bin, and considering the level of food contamination on a cardboard box tells us that the process has far to go to be a model of success or any but a small part of a big picture.

It should not be a fucking mystery about where that rinsed out plastic food container, or paper bag filled with waste paper, or 3 liter bottle of waste cooking oil are likely to end up.

Link for R41

Comparison of recycling and associated rates by country shows how measuring success involved a matrix of percentages.

At the very least it might give us pause each and every time we see a blue waste bin or a plastic bottle or another wind turbine... that humans are gonna eventually destroy this amazing planet and maybe, just maybe, help give it a fighting chance.

"Paper products are one of the most commonly recycled items. Around 68% of the paper that was used in 2018 was appropriately recycled."

(That's for some of the naysayers above)

Link below. Paper is actually one of the easiest types of recycle. Cardboard too. If you're a home gardener, cardboard is also a great item to have on hand to create new garden beds. Simply lay the cardboard pieces down on your lawn, overlap with other pieces, then cover with bark or wood chips. No digging, no stripping off the sod. In about 6 months, the cardboard will have completely decomposed and the lawn underneath will be dead, full of worms, ready for planting shrugs, trees, or flowering plants. If I have a project like that, I scour craigslist for people giving away cardboard boxes after a move. Lately that's been more difficult because people are staying put with the high real estate prices and low inventory. If you're using cardboard for this kind of project, use plain cardboard, not cardboard with plasticized labels or brightly colored cardboard.

I'm from that generation of slogans such as "think globally, act locally". We can't save the planet as individuals, but every little choice we make, whether in the type of vehicle we drive, the amount of electricity we consume, how much water we use, avoiding mindless consumerism and materialism, lessens our footprint on the planet.

Eventually, we might not have any choice. I read that in the two or three years after the end of WWII, the average garbage generation of families in Japan was less than 2 pounds PER YEAR!!!!! Every single thing was reused or repurposed, because no one had any money and every kind of consumer item was in such short supply, including things like paper and string.

Why can’t we recycle the cardboard roll inside toilet paper and paper towels????

My sister lives near San Francisco. Her garbage bill is based on the weight of non recyclables that she throws away. That’s a real incentive to recycle

in the US, no I don't think so. it probably could, but it's not being done. I read a study (reputable high impact scientific journal) that traced trackers in recycling bins, the majority of them ended up in land fills. These companies charge to collect your recyclables and then put them in with the regular trash. Gotta love America.....cheat, steal, lie, anything but do what's right - that's what is valued now.

No op. I am reading recycling is another grift. The only solution is to ban single use plastic.

Crafters love paper-towel rolls, though not toilet paper rolls. My city has a recycling center for arts and crafts. I collect paper towel rolls among other things to donate about once a quarter.

You can recycle the toilet paper inner cardboard rolls and paper towel rolls. Who told you you couldn't?

R51,honestly, not sure where I even heard that, but for years, I’ve been throwing them away as a consequence.

I just googled it and you’re right; they can be recycled

Heard years ago that everything ends up in land fill and I just don’t care -put whatever can has space.

And here I thought I was doing a good thing.

It takes as much energy to make an aluminum can as it does to put it orbit

Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic

Plastics definitely end up in the landfill. The industry has lied to us for decades

They want an excuse to be lazy, R45.

Watch the documentary BUY NOW to see how little recycling is done in the US. The problem isn't the consumer; the problem is the producer!

Exactly, R59! People gotta eat and clean their dishes/clothes, etc. If the only choice is products in plastic, then that's what you have to buy.

There is a documentary on it on Netfix - more geared towards retail consumption but they call recycling a lie. And blame the marketing of it all. That you need a new iPhone or new laptop every 1-2 years and the e-waste is toxic. Clothing too. Apparently, there are parts of the east where we just dump loads and loads of clothes and shoes that float in rivers and lakes. I saw another one on coca-cola where there is somewhere in Indonesia where the beach is just a sea of plastic coke, desani and other coke products empty bottles. China buys most of our recyclables If Trump starts a tarrif war that will go away again.

[quote]Heard years ago that everything ends up in land fill and I just don’t care...

The problem with recycling programs is this sort of shit thinking. Years ago one guy heard sine other guy say that it all ends up in landfill anyway, si what's the point? Or do I heard.

Obviously programs in many countries and cities could be much more efficient without undo expense or burden. Obviously not all water is recyclable with equal ease or at minor cost. Obviously there has been some deception in touting the successes of recycling programs, with general and specific examples.

But FFS, two bozos talking years ago about some shit they knew nothing about isn't reason enough to abandon the whole idea.

Everyone has his own perspective, obviously. I think the burden should be on municipalities to achieve high levels of recycling by making it dead easy for consumers to contribute to the outcome. Others favor penalties and scolding. Others are quite preoccupied with going to the other end of the city to drop off their collected bits of twine for reuse, and a 100 other headaches and Herculean tasks (in my opinion) to achieve some self-awarded star for personal perfection.

But if you think all recycling programs everywhere are pointless and grounded in corruption and produce nothing more than consumer nuisance, you're a fucking idiot who delights in being an idiot.

They burn much of the "recylcing" in Switzerland now, along with the rest of the garbage, but are very quiet about it. The miscellanous bins are everywhere but it's window-dressing and greenwashing.

Rich countries should at least give conservation a college try and have the government ban SO MUCH plastic packaging in consumer goods. The issue is a lot of the plastics and packagining processes relying on plastics are very advanced now, so we get a lot of food quite well preserved and convenient. Everyone wants convenience and easiness.

Today I bought an organic cucumber (Switzerland) and it is packaged in that thin shrinkwrap plastic. The mind boggles. It was also quite inexpensive. Plastics are bringing down the price of food in my casual observation because they keep fresher longer as many are packaged quite ingeniously to prevent spoilage.

Discussion here of what one can and cannot recycle seems beside the point, since different locations have different rules. Here in Boston, for example, different neighborhoods have differing rules, depending, I assume, on which recycling company services a given location.

It was always a scam.

One day plastic will be classed with nicotine, lead paint and asbestos.

Hopefully soon, R66. It’s a powerful endocrine disruptor and who knows what else?

R61 That's the BUY NOW documentary mentioned previously.

Let’s dump it in space!