Plastic producers have known for more than 30 years that recycling is not an economically or technically feasible plastic waste management solution. That has not stopped them from promoting it, according to a new report.
“The companies lied,” said Richard Wiles, president of fossil-fuel accountability advocacy group the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), which published the report. “It’s time to hold them accountable for the damage they’ve caused.”
I mean, in a lot of places outside the US, there are small pallets of bottles that, when emptied, get sent back to the bottler to be refilled.
I do remember a time before widespread recycling when you’d pay a small deposit on a drink and get it back when you returned the bottle to the store. Where I live, alcohol sales still follow that model to some extent.
That was the old school approach and I have no problem with it. But it largely disappeared as municipalities started up recycling programs. I guess it was reasoned that when you do it at a city-wide scale, you cast a broader net and divert more material from the landfill. But as this article mentions, recycling has proven to be a sketchy prospect. It loses money for most cities with exception to aluminum cans where the metal still has some resale value.
One way or another, it would be better if we can get back to more of a reuse approach as opposed to breaking everything down to recycle the raw materials. That just doesn’t seem to be working.
This used to be the case with glass bottles in England back in the 80s. Seemed to work well, certainly I and a lot of other kids used to return as many of those bottles as we could to supplement pocket money. These days all the bottles are plastic and there’s no returns policy.
I’m pretty sure coke and pepsi successfully lobbied to have the bottle/can deposit on pop/soda eliminated
Not everywhere. I have it on plastic coke bottles and also aluminium cans.
Right on! I’d guess you’re in Europe. I just meant to describe how the elimination of the deposit in Canada and the US happened. It was corporate motivated, not municipally motivated. Sorry, I should have been more specific
Indeed. I lived in Canada in the past, they were doing it for cans, but for bottles it was only glass bottles used in restaurants and bars.
Ugh. They need to be part of the solution and not the problem. But you’re probably right…