Comment by ZeroGravitas
3 hours ago
Corporations aren't recycling the stuff they say they are recycling.
World except America: I'm going to legally mandate what they do.
Americans: I'm going to get mad at the abstract concept of recycling.
3 hours ago
Corporations aren't recycling the stuff they say they are recycling.
World except America: I'm going to legally mandate what they do.
Americans: I'm going to get mad at the abstract concept of recycling.
Plastics recycling is fundamentally a technological issue. Europe doesn't have any magical technology that the US doesn't have. PET is the only plastic for which there is any industrial process that exists anywhere on the planet for closed-loop recycling.
Europe has great rates of recycling collection, but processing remains just as much of a problem there as it does anywhere in the global market for recycled plastic. Quite a bit of recycling that is collected does not actually end up being recycled.
Furthermore, Europe's recycling rate has declined over the past decade? Why? Probably the same difficulties that the entire globe faces -- China stopped allowing "recycling" imports because much of it ended up in the Yangtze. Now, a lot of the "recycling exports" are sent to countries in Africa with the same issues. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/06/90-of-plastic-pollut...
The reality is that the promises made by recycling companies in developing nations that accept the western world's recycling are not very rigorous to say the least. Much of your recycling sent to Africa is picked through for the most valuable stuff and the rest is burned or dumped.