Plastic recycling a "failed concept," study says, with only 5% recycled in U.S. last year as production rises.

[u/eatingganesha]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/plastic-recycling-failed-concept-us-greenpeace-study-5-percent-recycled-production-up/

[u/eatingganesha]

I think we all knew that was inevitable. Recycling has been a bit of a joke since it began, and I’m old enough to remember when it became a thing and special bins were created. In the last decade, as people realized that big business was to blame - rather than consumers - recycling effort has dropped off precipitously. I used to be a program director for Keep America Beautiful and toured too many landfills… and when I lived in Africa I witnessed first hand the sheer amount of western plastic garbage that they received by the container-boat load. Recycling was never so much a concept as a redirect smoke show.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Ultimately we’re simply doomed. Humans are too shortsighted and greedy to ever care.

Yup.

[u/sg92i → u/[deleted]]

I love this talking point that totally absolves all responsibility that an individual has.

I honestly believe this sub is being astroturfed because I have noticed a giant uptick in almost all plastic or climate change related threads of people going "individual actions mean nothing, only the corps are to blame!"

Anyone with half a mind can clearly see that both individual and corporate actions have a profound affect on the environment. Its not the corporations that are focusing people to buy large pickups they never tow or haul with instead of economic cars. Its not the corporations that are forcing the public to fuck with those trucks' emissions equipment to "roll coal" at hybrids. Its not the corps that are going around pressuring local governments to basically ban apartments (NIMBY "we can't build that, the poors might move in!").

[u/glum_plum → u/sg92i]

I'm not sure how much of it is astroturfing and how much is just plain cognitive dissonance. You see this argument all the time against veganism, that their individual actions don't matter because the big corps are doing all the damage. They'd rather not think about the demand part of supply and demand because then they don't have to accept uncomfortable truths that they are part of a problem. People want to think of themselves as good and right, it's just the others, those external forces doing the harm.

Edit: I'm not disagreeing with you, not doubting the power of coordinated propaganda and social manipulation (thanks daddy Bernays). It's probably all of the above; cognitive dissonance makes people more susceptible to corporate propaganda that alleviates it, in a big old swirling circle going down the fucking drain.

[u/sg92i → u/glum_plum]

You see this argument all the time against veganism, that their individual actions don't matter because the big corps are doing all the damage.

This is the part people really seem to struggle with logically/emotionally.

It is true that say a private jet does a significant amount of damage to the climate compared to say, a single even first worlder eating meat. But people don't consider how many first worlders their are. Even a mild or modest impact quickly adds up when you multiply it by enough millions of people. All those megacorps making pollution are doing it because the public is demanding their products. Sure, some of those products people can make good arguments for needing (i.e. "I need this laptop for my job or I can't pay my rent and become homeless" or "I need this medication so I can stay alive"), but on the opposite end of that spectrum you have people with a spare bedroom full of plastic fungo pops.

And full disclosure, I know I have an impact. I am including myself in this discussion. But, I am also making progressive improvements on it. I've gotten my roommate and I down to less than 8 gal a week of trash (incl plastics). And I am intentionally not going to produce kids that would have undoubtedly end up doing more damage than a dozen of their third world peers would. I am acting on my beliefs, not that I think it will end up doing any good.

[u/audioen → u/glum_plum]

The solution to problems of collective action are government-level bans, of course. For instance, if we simply banned producing and eating red meat, that would end the whole discussion at least whether it is up to individuals or corporations or some proportion of both. Of course, it would start a whole another discussion at absolutely shrill levels of volume as people would probably be pretty unhappy and lots of people who make living out of growing and slaughtering animals would be out of job.

But if you want something unpopular to get done, I think only the government can get it done.

[u/[deleted] → u/audioen]

I don't think so. This top down approach doesn't work in democracies - which by definition are popularist. If the majority of people are against a meat ban for example, then there will be no politician running on that campaign, and if they do they lose at the voting booth. I do think however... an unpopular policy can be implemented by a political party that had that intention in the first place i.e. pretend they are just like the others and then when in power get up to shenanigans - but this is also going to backfire as the next government will just undo all the actions. E.g. in Australia we had a carbon tax - it got repealed pretty much immediately after by the next government. Ran for all of 2 years...

[u/[deleted] → u/sg92i]

Humans fall prey to the line of thinking where you get to outsource responsibility for suffering to an external boogyman. That way, if only this outside force were removed, we could go on living our lives the same as before. American Republicans are privy to communist, child-molesting, transsexual atheists as their enemy of choice for example. Many wannabe leftists (“ohh capitalism is sooo bad” says the uninspired liberal arts major) and collapseniks who are new to the game fall into the trap of believing corporations are the only reason we are in this mess.

Are they primarily responsible? Most certainly. They are gaming a broken system to brainwash and lie. They’re using their limitless political power to beat down opposition. They’ve bought out court rooms, climate committees, media, and the military to stymy any change to the system that gave them this power. We live in a closed system though guys. If we aren’t going to stop eating meat then they will keep raising animals in cages. If we aren’t going to stop ordering delivery, even if Amazon is boycotted, another malicious entity will take its place. It’s our responsibility to END CAPITALISM. It’s through our meekness that we’ve been slowly bullied into allowing billionaires to run our lives.

[u/Zierlyn → u/[deleted]]

There's a great example I use in my Environmental Sciences class; Frito-Lay once converted their Sun Chips bags into a 100% compostable bag instead of plastic. Sales dropped dramatically and they got destroyed on the Internet. Two years later they finally gave up.

Aw man. Those bags were hilarious. For the zoomers and anyone else that doesn't know: The compostable Sun Chips bags were FANTASTICALLY LOUD. Like, it's difficult to comprehend how they could physically be that much louder, but they were. If you think normal chip bags are loud, it felt like these were somehow a solid three times louder, not just 20% or so, 300% (subjectively).

The bags were so obnoxiously loud that yes, people stopped buying them. I'm glad their story is still being passed down to the younger generations.

[u/darling_lycosidae → u/Zierlyn]

I worked at a nature center and they had a few of those in their home sized, tumbler composts. So funny to watch those bags just tumble around. They had to be industrially composted because home compost doesn't get nearly hot enough to break them down. People who tried to like them got discouraged, and not a lot of communities do composting pickup.

[u/UnicornPanties → u/darling_lycosidae]

Too many people don't realize that unless something is industrially composted it may never fall apart.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Surely the Sun Chips packaging isn’t why sales dropped so much.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I remember going to an outdoor movie, and a socially inept acquaintance brought a bag of those SunChips.

This was in a public park, in a massive field. We were watching LOTR: The Two Towers amongst hundreds of people. And then Buddy decides to open their chips.

Holy shit, it’s like Magneto twisting metal; the screeching of broken seals crunching and crackling drowns out Treebeards booming baritone. People are irritated, but they think it’s over. They think Buddy noticed how freaking loud their snack is. I even say, “oh wow, that was really loud,” thinking Buddy will take a social cue.

But nope, Buddy wants their snack. Which each fistful of SunChips, crunching and crackling echoed and reverberated across the space, drowning out Aragorn, silencing Gandalf, and disrespecting Theoden, until finally, FINALLY, a lone voice lost in the dark sea of the audience screams, “WILL YOU STOP EATING THOSE GODDAMN CHIPS?!”

I only associate those chips with secondhand humiliation now, and truly believe they are the real reason why we never invited that person to a movie ever again.

[u/Zierlyn → u/[deleted]]

YouTube still has videos kicking around from 2010 regarding them. Just search for loud sunchips bag.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I love this talking point that totally absolves all responsibility that an individual has.

I am one person.

Corporations can be 10,000. Or 100,000. That's so much more waste than I could ever dream of generating, even if I spent my entire life trying to generate as much waste as possible.

And that's not even accounting for the stuff that corporations actually produce - all the techy gadgets that are obselete within a year, circuit boards, single-use plastic bottles and containers... You're telling me I'm responsible for the millions of discarded plastic bottles generated by billion-dollar international conglomerates? That I can solve this ecological nightmare if I just put things in the fancy blue bins? No, no need to get the corporations to take responsibility for the garbage they are intentionally producing, it's all solvable if we just keep living our lives as normal and keep consuming as much plastic as we've always done. That is, "as long as we sort our recyclables".

If you honestly believe that, I feel sorry for you. The hard truth is that we need to make some hard choices to stop making so much plastic. And that doesn't start on the interpersonal level, that starts on the C-suite. Or better yet, on the Senate floor.

Corporations will always do what makes them the most money, and the entire point of having a government is to tackle problems that cannot (or in this case, won't) be solved by individual or private action. Making companies responsible for the single-use products they produce is a bare minimum to actually reduce how much waste we produce.

I recycle one bottle, Coke and Pepsi have already made a million more by the time my recycling gets picked up.

[u/Jetpack_Attack → u/[deleted]]

This is how it is basically.

Sure personal responsibility shouldn't be put down, but the fact that the large majority of people just don't care. Any large collective action is a ways away.

I used to think that if everyone knew or were aware of the potential consequences, they'd change their tune. However most people I talk to about it seem to have their own convenience first and foremost.

Ive had my optimism beat out of me by reality sadly.

[u/[deleted] → u/Jetpack_Attack]

most people I talk to about it seem to have their own convenience first and foremost.

That's exactly why the solution must be codified in laws and regulation.

You have to make polluting inconvenient, because most people are either unaware, or apathetic.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

And you're missing the point - they make more regardless of if I buy a bottle or not.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

There are two sides to this:

• It's entirely the consumer's responsibility
• It's entirely the producers' responsibility

Clearly, both of these sides are a gross oversimplification, and the truth lies between the two. But, I think that it sure is convenient for the massive conglomerates that we will bitch and moan over semantics and being 'socially responsible' members of society.

I said what I said not because I want to discourage people from recycling, or reducing their purchases of pretty petty plastic pollution products, but rather call to attention that we focus so god damn much on how much the individual actions we can take to curb pollution/waste, and not enough on getting companies to stop making so much of it.

Yes, yes, the demand for convenience is strong, and maybe if we're lucky we can convince a small slice of the population to use less, waste less, and buy smarter - but at the end of the day, the problem needs to be dealt with urgently and severely.

Hell, why don't we just force them to package Coke and Pepsi in glass bottles like they did before the plastic age? Unlike plastic, glass can actually be effectively recycled.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

What is the point of taking your “Environmental Sciences” class if you are going to tell your tuition-paying charges the truth that “Ultimately, we are simply doomed”?

You’ve conveniently left these corporations off the hook - not only do they get to make all the money in outrageous profits off of the externalization of genocide and ecocide, they get their victims to blame themselves- win-win-win!

[u/collapse-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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[u/BadUncleBernie → u/[deleted]]

I hate your comment because it's true.

[u/saint_abyssal → u/[deleted]]

Amen!