Comment by gryson
13 hours ago
You're greatly misunderstanding that second link: that's the breakdown of what happens to collected municipal waste within each country (notice they all add up to 100% for each country). That says nothing about total amounts of plastic waste collected or recycled.
See Table 1 here and its sources:
https://circulareconomy.earth/publications/how-japan-is-usin...
Japan recycles about 24% of its used consumer plastics into new products, while the US recycles about 8%. That's NOT factoring in thermal recycling, which Japan is far better at than the US.
Thermal recycling is a classic Japanese euphemism for burning plastics. Yes, for energy, but it's still misleading
https://www.mitsui.com/solution/en/contents/solutions/circul...
>it produces CO2 and toxic substances when it is burned.
Yes, the bin for general waste is even labeled “burnables,” and in my experience that is where non-rigid plastic films go.
(Films are very difficult to sort automatically; we landfill them here in SF.)