Companies knew for decades recycling was not viable but promoted it regar
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Industry insiders over the past several decades have variously referred to plastic recycling as “uneconomical”, said it “cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution”, and said it “cannot go on indefinitely”, the revelations show.
The authors say the evidence demonstrates that oil and petrochemical companies, as well as their trade associations, may have broken laws designed to protect the public from misleading marketing and pollution.
An internal 1986 report from the trade association the Vinyl Institute noted that “recycling cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution [to plastics], as it merely prolongs the time until an item is disposed of”.
Two years ago, California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, publicly launched an investigation into fossil fuel and petrochemical producers “for their role in causing and exacerbating the global plastics pollution crisis”.
A toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, last February also catalyzed a movement demanding a ban on vinyl chloride, a carcinogen used to make plastic.
In 2023, New York state also filed a lawsuit against PepsiCo, saying its single-use plastics violate public nuisance laws, and that the company misled consumers about the effectiveness of recycling.
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Yes we know
John Oliver did a fantastic NSFW bit on this:
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So, back to Glass then?
nah just hit snooze
Add it to the “reasons to stab execs in their face” list.
Innovation under capitalism:
generally I find if it has anything to do with money or power ‘they lied’
why don’t we just burn it?
Lol have you tried throwing plastic in a fire?
It becomes a homemade sparkler that melts and shoots projectiles everywhere and creates a massive amount of stinging smoke.
what you seem to be saying is that it burns.
wonder how the pollution created by burning plastic compares to coal and natural gas: could be a clean alternative.
Quite the opposite, it barely burns in an open fire.
Most of it melts and gets everywhere hence the projectiles. The flame created from it is not very strong nor clean burning, which means lots of smoke but not really a lot of heat.
Not to mention burning plastic releases a crap ton of toxic chemicals into the air which can easily damage your lungs.
Besides thin one use plastics like bags which generate microplastics, most of it is actually better off buried in a land fill, believe it or not.
Plastic would be easier to recycle if specific types were enforced and easy to sort, but there’s so many different types and proprietary materials available that it’s not currently feasible.
China even did it for a while with cheap labor but they only did it because they had a high demand for all raw materials so anything to produce plastic was approved.
Like I said, you can try throwing a plastic bottle into a campfire and see what happens. It’s not a pretty sight.
