
Americans' plastic recycling is dumped in landfills, investigation shows - HillaryBriss
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/21/us-plastic-recycling-landfills
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kilo_bravo_3
I've started, to the greatest extent possible and practical, eliminating
single-use plastics from my life.

If something comes in either a metal can and and a plastic pouch, even if it
is more expensive I'll buy the metal can version.

A glass jar can be recycled or will break down into sand, a metal can can be
recycled or turn into rust, a paper or cardboard container may be recyclable
and will break down into mush.

A plastic bag or jar is unlikely to be recycled and the polymer chains that it
is made up of will remain on earth for a human-scale definition of "forever"
slowly breaking down into microscopic pieces that get into the water and are
carried by slight breezes.

Hopefully, one day, soon, single-use plastics will be seen as a colossal
mistake on par with lead in gasoline, radium clocks, asbestos tiles, and
dumping industrial waste into waterways.

Small changes add up. I have a container of yogurt nearly every day. That's
~350 plastic cups into the fake "recycling" stream every year. Last year I
started weaning myself off plastics and now make my own yogurt in an Instant
Pot. It takes minutes of effort spread over 9 hours. The milk I get comes in a
glass jar from a local CSA that reuses the jars when I return them for more
milk and then I put the yogurt in mason jars.

20 years from now those mason jars will still be usable and 7,000 plastic cups
will have not been consumed, "recycled", shipped to Asia, and burned in open
pits.

Please just spend a couple of minutes and think of how you can lower your
plastic use.

~~~
mrnobody_67
Wish I could upvote this more than once.

Been trying to do this for quite a while, especially since my city has pretty
limited garbage service (one can every two weeks).

Online ordering and the plastic air-bubbles (and occasional foam peanuts) are
absolutely brutal. Recently saw BetterPackaging.com which is interesting -
hopefully more of that in the future.

[https://loopstore.com](https://loopstore.com) also seems to hold some promise

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ZeroGravitas
Plastic recycling is like a horseshoe theory of politics thing. Most of this
article could have come from an article actually advocating for landfilling
plastic funded by plastics manufacturers who fear recycled plastic as
conpetition, but I guess the actual target audience is people who get so angry
about the unrecycled or unrecyclable plastics that they go off in the opposite
direction and want plastics banned by governments entirely.

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teslabox
Some months ago I defended the herbal beverages made with various medicinal
plant extracts: Kola Nut, Coca Leaf, root extracts, etc [1]. In that post I
spoke of having a 2-Liter bottle of the classic herbal beverage for when it
seemed like my blood sugar was getting a little low.

In recent months I've decided that even though the 2L bottles are probably
cheaper on a per-ounce basis, my waste 2L bottles were contributing to the
plastic problem. I've switched to buying 12 ounce cans, which I open and pour
into a glass.

My last purchase of Kola was as boxed 12-packs (no plastic in the packaging,
other than possibly in the can liner [2]). I save my cans, and will be taking
them to a local salvage yard to be properly recycled.

My trash company supposedly has "single stream" recycling, but I doubt they
find all the aluminum cans the waste stream.

In drafting this comment I found a Wired story about the engineering that goes
into can production [2]. My cans probably have BPA liners -- "hmm". Maybe I'll
buy some Kola nuts and make my own herbal beverage.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17979670](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17979670)
[2] [https://www.wired.com/2015/03/secret-life-aluminum-can-
true-...](https://www.wired.com/2015/03/secret-life-aluminum-can-true-modern-
marvel/)

