Lots of people have completely bought into the recycling message. To them I say: Why aren’t Pepsi and Coke’s own bottles made from recycled material?
I’m now 50 and I lived through a huge part of the push for recycling, I saw how our city implemented recycling programs, what they did with the waste, and so forth. I’ve seen all of this evolve for decades now.
At first there was a moderate amount of profit to be made by our city, harvesting and selling plastic to China. Well after a while China stopped paying for the plastic and our city no longer had a market.
Then our city bought into the propaganda from the soda peddlers that the way to go was not to insist on industry change, but to enjoy the benefits of adding hidden recycling surcharges to consumer goods. Why, think of the revenue! Think of how shiny you can make your recycling facilities that collect waste nobody will buy!
It’s been a long way since 1995 when our city started the recycling program. As the plastics game faded, weirdly enough the recycling operations were privatized with little public oversight. Weird hey.
Its a huge charade… now the taxpayers have built a massive recycling infrastructure for a private company to collect our meticulously cleaned trash. They separate the concrete, metal, and electronics scrap, the rest gets burned or sent to be burned. We waste an insane amount of water cleaning our trash before they incinerate it. We pay a fucking shitload as taxpayers for this farce and the waste management company are rolling in money. Stinks worse than any dump.
Worked in an European Recycling Center and this is exactly it. In my case, Austria, we’re collecting the trash sending it 2 or times around in the country before burning it. And then we call it recycling. Wondering why our beloved mountains shrink every year.
At least burning it generates energy and if you do it right it releases minimal byproducts besides CO2 the real problem is just dumping it in the ocean/landfills that slowly wear down and end up inside our bodies
Cans > bottles
Yes, I am aware that cans have a plastic liner. This may have health implications wrt microplastics, but from an environmental perspective it is an absolutely tiny amount compared to bottles and gets burned off during aluminum recycling.
I just learned cans have epoxy linings. Woah
… about recycling.
Amazing how two words just completes the headline.
They could even remove the word allegedly, since they put misleading in quotes. There’s no need for both.
Sigh… Modern web “journalism”.
I didn’t think you ever needed to say allegedly when you are talking about a law suit. The plaintiff is suing for misleading consumers, not for allegedly misleading them.
But what do I know.
They might as well say the plaintiff is allegedly suing the alleged defendant for allegedly misleading the alleged consumers and cover all the asses.
alleged “journalism”.
Hey OP, Lemmy let’s you edit your titles!
It also lets you edit your comments.
And Reddit let’s spez edit your comments
The plaintiffs in Los Angeles said the soda companies were claiming that the bottles were continuously recyclable, when in reality, plastic bottles can be recycled only once, if at all.
How’s that work? Like how can someone tell a bottle has been made with recycled plastic?
Very easily.
There is no recycling in plastic. They are re-usable (you can chemically turn them into something else) but you cannot just melt them and re-do some other bottles like glass or paper fibers.
I think I’m getting conflicting anwsers. Another person says you can melt certain types of plastic.
https://programming.dev/post/30203771
Copy of my comment from there:
TLDR
Recycling plastic produces a substance which is more easily burned as fuel than made into new products.
So companies can buy some of this substance from a plant that produces it from old plastic, set it on fire, and then claim that their products are some percentage recycled.
Nah, if I understood the article correctly they need to mix a bit of the pyrolysis material with a lot of new material and make a product to claim it’s made recycled. They can’t just burn the material and claim they’re making products from recycled plastic.
Soda bottles are horrible candidates for recycled plastic. They need to hold up to a decent amount of pressure and then need to last under those conditions for like 6 months.
You can make a have decent textile out of it. You can make a subpar 3D printing filament out of it.
I think the best use I’ve seen is to use it as an additive to plastic decking. It’s one of the uses where the color and texture changing won’t be noticed.
A lot of other plastics are a hell of a lot easier to reuse in other situations, But for pressure you can’t beat PET and a PETE for cost.
Follow up: why are soda bottles hard to recycle? You suggest it has something to do with their ability to hold pressure. Why does that make them hard to recycle?
They recycle plastic be either hitting it with a shitload of heat/pressure and turning it in an oil (that doesn’t make a good plastic) or by chopping it up, heating it up with a bunch of dye and forming/forcing it into lawn furniture.
HDPE, ABS, PLA are soft and melt nice, they kinda fall apart easily at temp. They discolor, but they stay structurally consistent. PET/E doesn’t turn into chewing gum when it gets hot, you can stretch it into fibers and they kinda stick together when you need them. Even using it as 3d filliment is hit or miss consistency+wise.
Just another reason to abandon trash soda and embrace the ultimate drink.
Water.
Which conveniently comes from trusted brands like Pepsi and Coca-Cola!
…no, wait…
Now, now… Nestle too! :)
Sorry I disagree. It’s tea.
Wish my tap was as good as Finnish water …
Yeah they should have changed the name when they removed the cocaine. Fake advertising. It’s only cola
Its not though, they still use coca leaves to produce the flavoring extract and are the only company that uses it as far as I am aware.
We knew this since the 80s
