Plastic Recycling is an Actual Scam | Climate Town
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- Опубліковано 6 чер 2024
- If you were worried that the plastic industry was getting a little too trustworthy, worry no longer!
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First and foremost, go watch the Frontline documentary, 'Plastic Wars' on this subject. They did it WAAAY more professionally than me, although I feel like they used more swear words? I can't remember. Seriously though, it's a fantastic watch and it's available for exactly zero dollars right here on y'tube: • Plastic Wars (full doc...
Or this if you're in the UK: • Plastic Wars (full film)
Also, the good people over at Wendover Productions have a video about why recycling doesn't work that's so insanely well-done that you should go back in time and watch that one first: • How China Broke the Wo...
Plastic Legislation to get involved with:
Depending on where you live, there's a lot you can do.
NCSL Overview: www.ncsl.org/research/environ...
Earth Day Plastic Action: www.earthday.org/act-on-plast...
Cleveland Preemptive Ban: www.cleveland.com/open/2019/0...
Nat Geo breakdown: www.nationalgeographic.com/en...
CIF: www.clf.org/blog/the-truth-ab...
WSJ: www.wsj.com/articles/plastic-...
NRDC: www.nrdc.org/stories/single-u...
Some reading to do:
The Merchants of Doubt: www.merchantsofdoubt.org/
All We Can Save: www.allwecansave.earth/
The Uninhabitable Earth: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...
This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate: thischangeseverything.org/book/
Also, get the Heated newsletter by Emily Atkin. She's great.
Also also, read stuff by Brian Kahn. He's great.
Oh, what's that? We’re also on the larger Internet?
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The bans on "single use plastic" here in New Zealand are targetted against the consumers - we can't have a "single use" plastic shopping bag (that invariably got used to carry other things or as a bin-liner in the kitchen) but no one is stopping Watties, McCain, and all the other frozen food manufacturers from sticking their snap-frozen veges, chicken nuggets, fries etc in single-use plastic bags. We go to the supermarket with our eco-friendly multi-use bags and fill them with single-use plastic bags containing bread and frozen foods.
That’s what happens when corporations control your government, it’s the same here in America.
@@logans3365 Lmao, it's the government controlling the corporations.
@@huguesdepayens807 what gives you that impression, the fact that politicians are literally on corporations pay rolls?
This is humanity now, get used to it. Look at the other comments for instance, their only focus is on who is to blame, like everyone in this blame generation. This is just the basic level of thinking of most people, to not even notice what your comment is about. The absolute illogic of how we do everything. Harvest seafood off the coast of Canada, sail it all the way over to the coast of east Asia to process and package, then sell it to Europe. Completely asinine in every way imaginable. This is how we do things. We spend millions of dollars per day dressing up smart people in suits for the network news, then listen to them talk as though they have no experience at anything ever. Added to the fact that more than half of all viewers don't actually trust or believe fully in what they are watching........the West is basically in an age of Absurdism, and most of the rest have always been crazy.
Brilliant point. I just wondered that the other day so much stuff still comes in plastic except we can’t use it for single use stuff and actually what is the environmental cost to make all paper stuff?
"Legislation has got to get us out"
Oh okay so we're fucked then.
Ok, Doomer
Not if we can shill enough public money into lobbying firms, or a ballot initiative.
Language captain!!!
@@brentanthuenis9875 if people think there's work being done to help them, then they're not going to be as concerned about being fucked.
@@brentanthuenis9875 because government regulations, new legislation, and over sight actually helped anything… it never has.
Most people in the UK used to get their milk in glass bottles, delivered to their doors, and the empties were taken away. They were washed, refilled, and sent out again. They were topped with aluminium foil seals that, being an element, are super mega easy to recycle.
Whenever people say that it's impractical to replace plastics and we can't do it, I point out that we already did it, it was practical, and we *absolutely* could go back to that.
America used to do that as well. But um…. Reasons I guess??
I mean it made jobs, was eco, and just kinda cool. I mean. Why tf get rid of a good thing???
Having it delivered properly is not practical. But returning them to the store and have them recycle sure is.
@@stephenramos2824 Having it delivered is not practical - except that it was delivered. To our doorsteps. For decades.
But that's hardly the point, this is not about conveyance, this is about removing plastic from the food chain.
Whether you pick up a bottle at the supermarket or you have it delivered, there is nothing stopping us from switching to glass containers that are reused repeatedly, eventually to be recycled.
@@antontaylor4530 so did my parents in Canada back in the 70s, reason is say its not practical is with current wages and other cost wouldn't make it practical.
Moving to reusable glass would be a great move.
Earth has many more humans on it then we did 40 years ago. Personal speculation tells me population would be the biggest issue with weekly deliveries to every single house in need of milk, even the mail runs late here.
That or the milkman stayed a little too long at a few to many homes
Hi, I'm German and just came home from a US trip a week ago. I keep telling my fellow German friends how I was having breakfast at hotels where everything (plate, fork, knife, cup) was single use paper and plastic. They are like: "Typical Americans". But then i tell them that the cups where individually wrapped in plastic and even so were the apples. And everyone is so speechless, I'm giving them secondary trauma.
I'm an environmentalist in Germany knowing we are far behind being a climate and environmental friendly country. But damn... it's like: "How bad and in how many ways can you harm the planet?" And the US is like "YES!"
Germany is the king in terms of plastic waster per person per day within developed countries (3 times the EU average!), but it's also the king recycling with almost a third of its plastic waste recycled! I think they never heard of the "reduce and reuse" part of the equation so they focused 100% of their efforts on the "recycle" part...
@@nic12344 that is true. But still in Germany I have more and better choices than in the US, if I want to avoid it. It's torturing if you want to reduce your plastic use.
And china :c
Have you tried going to hotels in Germany?
@@franimal86 we have metal forks in hotels mostly
Well, take it from an old woman, SOMEBODY got rid of our glass jars and I'm still PO'd over it! Why? Glass is the ultimate recyclable. If it breaks, it can be remelted and made over again. We used to reuse our glass jars and bottles constantly and I still do when I can buy something in one. I use them to save seeds, buttons, leftovers, to mix soap for my bug spray, to store craft supplies in...Back in the day, all of the Mayo Jars had rings that matched up to canning jar lids. And we used to can fruit and tomatoes in them. And also, back in the day, you could use paraffin to seal your jellies in any kind of glass jar, just about. Also, the instant coffee jars were great because they too matched up to canning jar lids.
But somebody got some bad intel and decided that glass jar manufacturing was polluting the air too much. They shut down the factory and moved it somewhere else. Canada? There went a TON of jobs up in WV. That's part of the reason they are starving...
Nobody talks about the fact that even recycling is horrible! Trash trucks now run 2 EXTRA times a week just to pick up the "recyclables". And they had to make HUGE trash cans to replace the tiny plastic bins that used to sit on the side of the road.
Oh, and guess what? Japan got the contracts to run those trash trucks with our new huge plastic garbage cans! And since I'm disabled, I can't even push one to the curb!
Plastic doesn't last long before it breaks or tears. I lose more money buying stuff that is either packaged in plastic or is made from plastic. Glass jars are airtight. Plastic bags are not.
You know, they used to make some beautiful colored glass too! Blue Jars and Green Jars. About 2 Decades ago, they started using them for yard ornaments stacked on top of each other and glued together. When the sun shines through it, it's a beautiful sight! They used to have contests over on GardenForums before Houzz bought them.
Some of the homes built with sandbags or stackwood have Glass art in the walls. That's hard to come by now too.
There's nothing beautiful about plastic! Not even plastic beads. Flower pots...can hold some beautiful plants, but the pots are ugly.
Walmart is selling sweatpants made with "recycled plastic" that's supposed to be turned into polyester. Just how long do you think those sweatpants are going to last?
If you compare the energy used to recycle all of that plastic VS glass, the answer is obvious. Glass wins hands down! Not only for the fact that it's better, but it's also cheaper and it lasts longer before having to be recycled.
This guy really loves his glass jars.
I agree with you tho, glass gives no taste to products and it has multi usage. My mom reused glass jars for making jam. There is a glass jar called "Norges glass" here, that had a glass top and an aluminium ring you tightened it with. These jars would last for generations, and all you had to do was replace the rubber seal ring every now and then. Im sure you had those aswell. Kept the stuff inside them fresher than regular pickle jars.
@@doctorstainy We had some baled jars with a clamp and rubber ring. Also, ceramic cheese jars with a metal clamp and rubber ring.
I don't think you can even find them nowadays.
@@doctorstainy we had the glass jars with the metal rings and the glass insert where you replaced the rubber every time you canned something new in them.
That’s fair but also microchips need silicon. Changing over to glass everything would create an even worse silicon shortage than there already is rn
Just read that only 40% of glass put in a single-stream recycling bin gets recycled, but 90% if put in its own container (multistream). There has to be a buyer of the cullet (crushed glass) locally who would produce new glass.
The most shellshocking point is made within the first one minute of this video. The absolutely evil resin id logo has fooled so many people, including me, into thinking we're doing something positive and recycling when really we're just giving our garbage to someone else
I had tried to recycle some things that I hoped were recyclable, but realized must not be due to being made out of heterogenous materials (paper plastic and metal together in one object). I recently had the "epiphany" that ok, it must be homogenous materials that you can recycle, and ok oh great, I see now there's a handy "this plastic is recyclable" icon on many of those kinds of object. oops. now I know better I guess, except, I don't know that that means I should NOT recycle them... if I put it in garbage, then there's zero chance. at least in the recycling, there's kind of a _pretend_ chance of it being recycled...
Same I'm so fed up with the constant lies and manipulation
Its worse than that really. Trying to recycle non-recyclable trash makes it less likely that the trash that can be recycled will be, because it forces the recycling companies to employ trash sorters, which just adds to the expense of an already unprofitable process. Its why governments that are serious about recycling require people to sort their own trash.
@@Sahuagin Attempting to recycle things that aren't recyclable actually adds to the problem and just makes the consumer feel better about their lifestyle. The recycling company has to pay people to sort that trash out of the recyclables and then ship it to landfills. Throwing it away in the first place is much more efficient. If it makes you feel bad then you can try to avoid single-use plastics and focus on the "Reduce, Reuse" part of the slogan.
What you are really doing is tripling your taxes
At the recycling shed in my town, they used to have separate bins for each type of plastic. Now you just toss everything in. Recently, glass recycling has gone the same way. It used to be clear, green, and brown glass bins but not anymore. Even paper is mixed where once it was separated into glossy, newsprint, and office paper. I wonder how much of these are really being recycled now.
I’m 66. I remember when pop bottles and other glass containers were returned to vendors to be cleaned, sanitized and reused. And because the consumer paid a “deposit “ on those bottles, a huge percentage of those bottles were returned and reused. Not simply tossed on the roadside as trash (unlike plastic bottles).
Single use plastics are cheaper for the company so they can make more profit, under capitalism, the more profitable option will ALWAYS be chosen, even if it cost human lives, or our one and only planet.
Amen! I am 63 and remember your thoughts well. Used to take some bottles down to the grocery store, make enough to get a can of corn and go fishing! I get nauseous every time I am forced to throw a glass product into the trash!
Unfortunately, consumers today have become accustomed to "empty it, use it and toss it"... I envision seeing broken glass bottles and containers everywhere eg.,streets, parking lots etc...also some places like Las Vegas strip do not allow glass containers on the boulevard...reason? For one it can be used as a weapon. We live in a very different time...am homesick not so much for a place where I grew up but for a time when life was simple, slower going and safer. 😞
"If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they're not going to be as concerned about the environment."
- Hank Hill
the exact second i started reading this comment the video said it.
when i heard it on the video, i understood...
@@AntilopeVS Mostly they're ridiculed for doubling down on ludicrous shit based on random connections, instead of actually focusing on tangible, evidential shit.
If the public thinks solar/wind power is working..
If the public thinks hydrogen tech is workin, that biofuels are not insanely stupid..
then they will let us kill nuclear power and make everything much worse
lol. JUST IN CASE someone doesn't get the joke but quotes this without vetting the video the actual person is Larry Thomas, President of the Society of The Plastics Industry. ua-cam.com/video/PJnJ8mK3Q3g/v-deo.html
Went to my local Starbucks today and saw the employee take the recycling bag and dump it into the trash bag before taking the trash bag to the dumpster. When I asked why they were not kept separate, her answer was that the customers don’t follow the instructions as to what is recyclable so there is no point to keep them separate. From this video I see that corporate America’s campaign to make you feel like you’re doing good by recycling is just a scam to keep us quiet and to keep us buying.
More about making people feel bad when they're 'not doing their part'🙄
As an an example the steelindustrie needs plastic waste for the blast furnace.
Also district heating plants.
Ironically, he did the best thing possible and I advise you do the same. The best thing is to stick in landfill, anything else is just kidding ourselves while wasting tremendous amounts of money and resources to move that sht around before finally sticking 90% of it in landfill anyway. And the 10% is mostly from big factories like cocacola who have massive stacks of already sorted plastics of exactly the same type, like bottle caps etc. And yeah, I work in the waste industry.
Yeah I have 3 signs up in my classroom on what should actually be recycled and the state it should be in when you recycle it. (rinsed, flattened, etc) It's a very small percentage of waste. Kids and adults alike will just treat the bins like a second trash can and then the whole thing is contaminated and might as well be thrown out. The custodians do keep everything separate at least until it's out of our building, but I'm sure it just gets tossed in the trash at some point along the chain because people put too much trash in it to be worth sorting out.
Recycling is a feel good virtue signaling action. For liberals, thats 90% of the battle…and not just recycling. Literally everything. This is, in part, why nothing is ever fixed. I do recycle some items, but I throw out plastics. I also try to reuse items over and over. At the end of the day, throwing shit out isn’t an environmental catastrophe. That’s just another scam… just like the plastics recycle scam.
Recycling has always been weird to me. I remember when they used to pay you to recycle, you brought in your cans, your paper or your plastic and made some decent money. Used to get something like 5 cents a can in my parents day. Then the prices dropped and you get like $2 for a garbage can full of recycling. Not even worth the gas to drive to the recycling center.
Now most cities and states make recycling mandatory, and it's a service you pay extra for. Usually twice as much as Garbage with tons of fines if anything non recyclable found in your trash too often. Never mind that it's been found out a lot of "recycling companies" are scams and just either dump it in a landfill or ship it to China to have them "sort it" there.
In Japan, they really do recycle a lot of plastic. People wash the plastic, return it, and it is made into trays. We need to find alternatives to plastic and restrict plastics to items that can easily be recycled.
At the grand old age of 65 years, I remember a different world.
All drinks used to come in glass bottles, milk, orange juice, sodas and beers. You were changed a little extra but reclaimed a deposit on its return.
All the meats, cheeses, butter and sweets came wrapped in paper or paper bagged.
........then came the '70s and everything was under or in plastic. We need to return how things used to be sold.
Less than 65 years to make this mess and it will take longer to fix
I really like things in glass containers, it's just one of those things that makes me smile a bit. If I see a lot of options for a product on a shelf I'll check to see which ones are in glass (if that's an option) and will consider buying it first. I'll heavily consider it if the bottle/jar is a cool/pretty looking one. Bit of a magpie, but it seems to be useful this time. Especially with honey, because I never eat it fast enough to not have to deal with it crystalizing so being able to heat it up is important.
I'm old like you. But I'm not going backwards. I like plastic. Plastic makes my life easier.
@@victorrodriguez2806 Why? Did you have difficulty in unwrapping paper or unscrewing a cap off a glass bottle? What was more difficult for you?
@@solidstateresistor2485
It's not the difficulty of use, it's the weight!.
I love coke out of a bottle, at a restaurant. But I don't want to carry 24 glass bottles full of coke to my car at the crocery store. Nor do I want to drive all those glass bottles back to the store to get my deposit back.
When I worked at an office cleaning company the first thing I learned was that the garbage and recycling get put in the same bin when collecting. Stuff like that is genuinely radicalizing.
I worked for a cleaning company where we actually did recycle, but not glass. My boss told me the recyclers throw away the whole shipment if it's contaminated by broken glass. Also glass it's more expensive to recycle than to produce new so a lot of recyclers just throw it away anyway.
@@chrisknoblock I would like to see your sources on that because Glass has been one of the most widely recycled products for years.
@@zugzug6773 most uk councils do both kerb sort, and hand sorting if they don’t have the machines, and anything that can’t be recycled generally gets sent to ‘waste to energy’, very little these days ends up in landfill.
@@almostanengineer source on which part? What my boss told me about glass Contaminating other recyclables? Or about glass being more expensive to recycle than make more new glass?
@@chrisknoblock I can understand that glass is a huge contaminant to other streams, but it’s still infinitely recyclable, and I feel like this is one of those things that are country specific, as we recycle around 69% off glass bottles and jars here in 🇬🇧.
When I was a kid in the 90s, "reduce, reuse, recycle" was changed to "recycle, reduce, reuse". This happened to be the same time that Coke switched from reusable glass deposit bottles to disposable plastic bottles. I only remember because Coke sent people to our high school to get market feedback on different plastic bottle designs.
Where do you live? I’m middle-aged and I’ve only ever heard reduce, reuse, recycle. I’ve never heard it any other way. Perhaps I’m out of touch. I’m Canadian.
I’ve been so skeptical of recycling for so long. My fiancé and her mom fight with me and I used to say it was a joke. Thank you so much for bringing the truth to light. I knew I wasn’t crazy!
Not all recycling is bad though! Plastic is fucked, but a lot of other things can actually be usefully recycled if I'm not mistaken, like glass and metal!
Not all but only small plastic can get recycled because you know lah...
I'm a design student and did a research assignment on single use plastics. The truth is horrifying. You've done an awesome job making the information accessible and funny. You're truly doing the Lord's work. Good on you.
Well, the so-called "Plastics Industry" has its counterpart today in the brainwashed "Environmental Movement" which has only ONE agenda...to destroy the fossil fuel industry along with all plastics. But ask yourself this...WHAT would replace plastic? Glass? Paper? Recycled cow dung? Carbon nano packaging made from CO2 extracted from the air using vast amounts of electrical energy??
Sorry but the "Environmental Movement" is a world-class scam all by itself.
@@MrPLC999 if you look into it, as I did, there are loads of interesting and innovative alternatives to plastic being developed. If we as consumers demand it, companies will need to transition to these alternatives. I don't think it helps to demonize people who care about the future of the planet we live on as some sort of evil "movement". Considering the way very little action has been taken on things like climate change, the clout of the environmental movement you speak of pales in comparison to the fossil fuels industry. Maybe reconsider who it is you fear.
Well said ryhmesandblues, well said.
@@MrPLC999 we got along fine for decades following the Industrial Revolution. At this rate, none of us will be around by 2040.
I haven't really looked for the definition of single use plastics, but where I live they put in some kind of ban on single use plastics. However, my bread still comes in a bag (that I use for cat litter disposal in lieu of shopping bags, so 2 uses), my milk comes in plastic bags, 3 of which come in yet another plastic bag, the garbage bags are plastic and single use on and on. So the government and environmental groups pat themselves on the back for the shopping bag ban, but barely scratched the surface. The celebration is way out of scale with the achievement. Don't get me wrong, I am pro environment and do my part in ways that I can afford (stainless steel reusable water bottles, tap water instead of bottled, refillables where I can, limiting vehicle use, keeping an older vehicle versus scrap and the energy and resources for a new one and more.)
At my university, I'm usually working late and so I've seen the janitors as they empty the trash, and I've noticed that they always empty the recycle cans and trash cans into the same bin. Once my girlfriend went to an environmental sustainability club and she mentioned this and the whole room went dead silent, they were heart broken. They had extensively encouraged the use of the recycling cans and didn't realize that it was all a sham.
I guess I see why now, given that recycling doesn't happen 90% of the time, and I'm sure that the recycling cans at the university are so contaminated that they would never be accepted by a recycling plant anyways. The whole thing just gives one of those "living in the matrix" kind of feelings I guess.
And even if the janitor sorts it right, the garbage collection company will bring it all do one landfill / incinerator. 🙈
Same thing here at my work. We have signs encouraging recycling and all those blue bins. When the cleaning staff come by, i see them empty the blue bins into the garbage. Even if it wasn't done in our faces, I'm sure somewhere in the chain down the line it would have happened anyways.
I’m a janitor at an auto manufacturing plant. Can confirm recycling and trash are thrown away together.
We have separate bins for paper, plastic, and trash. Even if we didn’t throw them away together, it would be impossible to sort because nobody pays attention to labels. People throw trash into the recycling bin and recyclables in the trash. It’s not our job to sort so we treat it all the same.
my university had to contract with a recycler that would actually recycle the things we sent instead of throwing everything away. it costs more but we really pushed for it
Where I live in Mexico, people actually go around picking plastic out of the trash and sell it to recycling centers. So, there's obviously a market for it.
My dad worked at a recycling firm and PET, PVC, and HDPE can be partially recycled with subsidies. The other plastics have no value past the one time use and are usually incinerated or sold to small countries illegally where they are burned in pits.
During my career in engineering I worked for companies that made plastic containers. They don't ever want to see that plastic coming back to them. It is much more expensive to process post consumer scrap than to use virgin material. Not defending them, just stating the depth of the problem.
1-2 you can recycle, but 3-4-5 it gets costly, 6-7-8 cant be recycled
@@gregoryeverson741 #3 (PVC) is rarely used for consumer product containers anymore mostly replaced with #1 (PET(E)) but PVC has a lot of other uses, mostly long term products like pipe and architectural products. #4 (LDPE), #5 (PP) and #6 (PS) could be recycled if they can be separated from #2 (HDPE) and each other - expensive as you noted. #2, #3, #4, #5 and #6 foams would be impractical. #7 (other) is usually a mix of different plastics and recycling these would be impractical. Some other plastics like ABS and many polyurethanes (PU) are thermosets so they cannot be recycled, Again these mostly have long term uses. It's the single use consumer items that cause most of the plastic pollution.
You mentioned #8 which is lead. Lead is currently one of the most recycled metals in the world.
So we need to dump konwy into R&A to make recycling cheaper. If we can make it profitable for big companies to recycle then we would all benifits. But yeah I get that it is cheaper to use virgin plastic. We made rain barrels at my old job. The recycled barrels were always failing because they were not strong enough
@@grimdavis58 Or we can tax the hell out of new single use plastics and make it cheaper to use recycled materials (like a 75/25 blend of new v recycled to address the stability issue) or glass.
Incineration is the solution to the plastic problem, the only items that go into residential trash bins that should be recycled is metal and glass. Paper products and plastic are renewable energy sources that we will never run out of.
"Legislation got us into this problem, legislation's gotta get us out." Probably the best way to sum up climate activism
So what are we gonna do?
@@danielarcure1290 Legislate.
But smash capitalism first.
@@jayayerson8819 typical leftist. Go live in China
Companies paying lobbist is okay but damn if any one suggest change legislation as a solution.
Except... when has legislation actually fixed ANYTHING? The first thing that happens when new legislation is passed.... is legions of lawyers start working to figure out ways to circumvent it, or at the very least, make their particular client exempt for (reasons).
Does anyone else remember the days of sorting the different recyclables in the small vegetable type bins?
I grew up in the PNW and remember when I was a kid recycling was the big environmental thing. That and saving the salmon spawning runs lol. Anyway in our suburban neighborhood growing up they actually had separate city-issued small boxes for sorting recyclables. 1 for plastics, 1 for paper/cardboard and 1 for glass/cans. And the recycle trucks had separate chutes for each category and on pickup day the guy would dump each little bin down each sorted chute. I remember because my parents made a game out of sorting the recyclables (IE just getting me to do the work lol).
Anyway, I knew something was up in my teens when the city abandoned all that in exchange for one big recycle bin to dump and mix everything together. It is 3 times bigger than a typical trash can. I think it coincided with the increase in plastic we're producing. But it also makes me wonder if there was a point to the sorting on the consumer side before then? Or did everything always just get mixed together anyway?
Bellingham, WA still has the separate small bins!
And to think, they even make us clean the food products out of the plastic!
You've convinced me to start tossing EVERY type of plastic in the recycling bin, now...guilt free. Thanks!
The first lesson I learned in polymer science and material science at uni.
1: polymers suck at recycling.
2: Things that say they're 100% recycled plastic, almost always twist that statement or outright lie about it.
3: plastic is brilliant fuel for powerplants as long as you have the correct types of particle filtering. In which case its better for the climate than coal.
Would love some reading material on point 3 above, if you can provide an article. Interesting, but I can't find good information with a quick search.
@@Murph999 second that. And can filtering actually provide decent results?
i will follow this for the sauce
yeah, 3rd point sounds quite interesting, it'd be cool if you provided some more info about it
>Plastic is brilliant fuel for powerplants... [it's] better for the climate than coal
Legit? That's amazing, like damn I thought oil was good enough already.
Thanks for pointing out that legislation is what got us into this mess. People are always talking about how it's up to individuals to fix everything, and about how people shouldn't be forcing the government to force companies to do things, but they never seem to notice when companies do the same thing in reverse.
Individual action and legislative action can happen simultaneously.
Not me. I'm a foaming armed organizing Leftist. The market should be beaten into submission, otherwise it will be beating the crap out of US via pollution, bad health, poverty, misery, and environmental disasters.
Who's more important- the people, or filthy worthless special interest CEOs and mostly rich shareholders???
@Electroencefalografista how on earth did you come to the ass backwards conclusion that a conjunction forms any form of equivocation. No that's not how the word and works.
Forcing the government to force companies is just a roundabout way to force individuals to have no choice and force them to comply.
That's very communist of you. Regulate and legislate until companies are either forced to fail, or comply, giving consumers no choice but to comply as well. As we've seen, increased regulation like this increases cost, makes the smaller businesses fail, and gives the larger ones an easy government backed monopoly.
The next step is for the companies to leave America to maintain profit margin after more legislation and tax comes.
And I'm not even doing a slippery slope, this is literally happening right now. It's been happening for the last 30+ years.
So legislating a solution is the wrong solution. It will only hurt us more.
It's called, "gaslighting" ! We have been gaslighted into thinking that it's OUR fault that plastic pollution is a problem that WE... the consumers... created when, in fact, it's the big businesses that are the ones that are truly to blame because THEY are the manufacturers of the stuff ! NOT the little people who are forced to live off of plastic-made products because there is no other choice !
The worst part is being powerless about this… so thanks for giving at least a way to try to make a difference at the end of the video!!!🙏🏻
a ban on single use plastics bans.. I mean how on the nose can you get. Our politicians are evil.
I'm actually fuming right now. I've always been shocked at how certain plastic containers were recyclable, but still chose to trust the symbol and toss it in the recycle bin for years now. To know how blatantly the rich have manipulated the public has seriously angered me to my core.
Oh my sweet summer child,these people lied to people about cigarettes for 50 years,they have given interviews where they have non chalantly told that killing 1.5 million Iraqi children was quote - "Worth it".....plastic is nothing to them.
Lol
Not trying to make you madder but… well, if you think about it… WHY ARE WE STILL PAYING 5 CENTS PER PLASTIC WATER BOTTLE .. if they not being recycled? Not to mention.. why are we paying monthly fees for the blue recycle dumpster ?
It can be recycled tho just don't give them to the recycle company melt them and mold them into something else at home
Dude...like, lots of love my guy, but you need to look behind the curtain. If a capitalist says the sky is blue, double check.
Let me defend the Crying Indian commercial from the early 70’s. Before the commercial, it was common for people to throw plastic, paper, glass or anthing else on the ground, wherever they happened to be. Trash was piling up on roadsides, vacant lots or anywhere people happend to be, it was discusting. Younger people may be reluctant to believe this, but generally the country is much cleaner than it was, in all ways, water, air and ground. The Crying Indian ads played everywhere, day and night for years and it was successful, people are less likely to engage in the piggish behavior of the recent past. Yes I do know we’re not perfect, but we are much better. Thank you Crying Indian, even if you really were an Italian American playing a role, you did good.
Did people's behaviour change because of the ad? Or did people change their behaviour because trash was piling up on roadsides, vacant lots or anywhere people happend to be and it was discussing. Outside the US (I happen to be British) there were the same problems and they resulted in solutions but we didn't have the crying Indian ad or anything similar that I can remember.
@@DerekHarkness I'm sure it would have helped the unaware to realise.
Growing up in Southern California in the 90s through to the 2000s, people still threw their trash everywhere. I moved to Arizona in 2008 and was astounded by how much cleaner everything was. Now with so many people coming from other states (especially California), things are starting to get dirty again with litter bugs just tossing their trash everywhere again...
They need to bring him back IMO because I see a lot of people littering.
@@DerekHarkness Road signs threatening fines porbably had more impact. Plus we did anti-lttering campaigns in elementary school
This doesn’t even consider what plastic was being used for before it was recycled. In my town, plastic was sent to the incinerator to be burned with paper and other combustibles. This was used to turn the trash into ash and power the town.
When recycling was introduced, they still needed to get rid of a lot of these combustibles, but they couldn’t burn hot enough without the polymer rich plastic. Now they spray the trash with oil to be burned (extremely inefficiently) with the trash. Hundreds of barrels are burned a day at this plant, and it’s energy efficiency compared to a normal oil plant is much lower, meaning more oil is burned per unit of energy consumed.
At the end of the day, we end up burning more fossil fuels to both burn the trash, and run the recycling plant, when we could have just decided to focus on plastic alternatives.
There are dozens of viable alternatives for plastic when it’s designed for single use. Even if they are more expensive, like naturally grown plastic alternatives, they can be safely left in a compost heap or landfill to quickly rot away without any complicated recycling project.
Plastic should be used when it’s a good material for long lasting products, not as a single use material with recycling put on top as our feel-good solution.
Having been in plastic producing industry for a long time, I was always puzzled by the secrets of recycling. I understand filtering metals out from a heap of mostly plastic is somewhat easy, but I could not wrap my mind around how they sort all the incompatible plastics, and filter out dirt from small to large particles, filter out paper, glass, etc. - and that the end product could be used for more than filler material. So eventually it turned out they don't, then (technically) all made sense, it's just a political front.
What bothers me is that people generally believe that if they buy a PET bottle of water, then dispense of it in a proper container, that it will eventually become a new bottle.
What bothers me probably even more is that plastic bottles are just marginally cheaper than actually recyclable glass bottles. Which, by the way, do not leech any of the endocrine disruptors into the liquid. It also bothers me that some products use heaps of Styrofoam (a huge nuisance, really) as packaging, where paper could be used - here I absolutely applaud IKEA, who never use Styrofoam.
It's really sad how consumers are kept in the dark, tricked and fed misinformation. When government and corporations get together to develop policies, the average citizen almost always ends up the loser.
Cept in the case of climate everyone loses cept the people who will be dead by the time it affects them. The only winners are sociopaths devioid of consideration for future peoples.
@@justanotherhero398 Screw the future peoples!
Are you just waking up to the fact it has been this way and getting worse since feudal times? In essence Big Business and Government are two sides of the same coin and have been as far back at least as the industrial revolution. The rich are powerful because they have much more significant access to government as a result of their financial influence.
@@justanotherhero398 What's wrong with the climate? It's 75 and sunny. Beautiful day today
it's sad that a majority of the human populace are referred to as "consumers", for as long as we accept that is what we are, we will be treated as such.
In Poland before communism collapse there were barely any plastic. Water, beer and milk in glass bottles. You had refundable caution on each bottle and milk bottle were refilled with raw milk, or you were taking empty bottle to store, leave it in the crate, and take full one. Meat, veggies and fruits were wrapped in paper or sold in wooden punnets (like strawberries, cherries etc.).
Sounds a whole lot less disgusting than the way things are now.
Butcher still wrap in (plastic coated) paper and glass bottles are a good idea but they have to be collected and washed before refilling so that was replaced with single use plastic because it is cheaper. Maybe when the price of crude oil gets high enough we will go back to glass. Paper straws SUCK (no pun intended) as do paper coffee cups which burn your hand. Nothing is better for hot drinks than styrofoam cups; no burn and keeps the drink hot longer! Same thing with take home boxes; paper/cardboard ones don't keep food hot or cold and get soggy while styrofoam does just the opposite !
@@Hogger280 Butcher paper was never plastic coated. It may have been waxed but no plastic. As for styrofoam boxes and cups it's either health or convenience.
@@nieczerwony Quality butcher paper is often Poly coated and that my friend is a kind of plastic. I used to work for a Railroad that delivered hopper cars, to a paper mill, of poly/plastic beads used to coat paper for magazines and water proof butcher paper.
Yeah, same thing in the Soviet Union, and let me tell you - it was hell. Nothing beats plastic for packaging.
I found this out reading a recycling pros vs cons list distributed by recycling companies. The only meaningful pro was "raises awareness," though recycling never raised awareness of the fact that no one knew it was of virtually no benefit.
As a guy with 13 years in plastics, i kind of hate that you're at least 90% right. Certain thermoplastics can be recycled pretty readily. Polyethylene, polypropylene, and TPO, just to name a couple, can be near infinitely recycled and reprocessed. Without getting into too much shop talk, though, it does bring additional difficulties with processing it into something useable.
big lightbulb moment when I learned Reduce, Reuse, & Recycle are listed from most to least important
Not sure where I learned it from but I learned it when I was a kid in the 90s and have been trying to tell people this for years. I think that was the few years right before plastics got everyone to think recycling was the important thing and not the last resort as it was supposed to be.
And then you realize our entire global economy and industrial civilization is currently built on top of ignoring the first two...
@@1ucasvb the global economy that allows the top 500 richest people to hold more wealth than the bottom 3.5 billion people and is destroying the ecosystem and causing violent fundamentalism to ferment across the planet? Our industrial base is also not at all cheap disposable goods, that is South Asia's industrial base but most of the rest of the world has different industry.
Hi Riley! Thanks for watching.
@@ChristinaA78950 what does it mean?
Yeah, I gave up on recycling about 10 years ago when I saw our local plastics/ cardboard recycling trailer being hauled into the local landfill and dumped in with the rest of the garbage. Then I realized “Ohhh!!! Recycling is just supposed to make me feel better about myself” Screw that!
Portugal here! I did the same, just put everything in the garbage, and that is that...
I don't buy water bottles though, got a bottle (0.5 liter) fill it with tap water.
Luckily there's a lot of companies that help spread the message by making trashcans with two holes that lead to the same bag. You don't have to go to the landfill to notice.
Just think of all the hot water and time wasted to clean that garbage and you have a total lose/lose situation.
Other recycling companies do pay by the pound to take the plastic recycling... They have to be making money off the process since they pay for the plastic they collect... "10% of all plastic has been recycled" is huge and definitely worth all the effort, even if it was 1%, it would be a tremendous help... Talking down recycling seems just as evil as a ban on plastic bans...
Remember what he said, “keep recycling 1 & 2 plastic b/c 10% of it (all plastic) gets recycled and that’s way better than 0!” Paper does get recycled. I wonder if it just gets cut out when there is more plastic than paper. The effort vs efficiency of prize.
When I started working at an oil company, I learned that some plastics were derived from oil and that there was a bigger picture for their profits than just heating oil. I needed a job so I took it, and only stayed in the industry for about a year when I found a different job
Your laptop is made out of plastic
People who do this bagging of recycling are at risk of stopping people recycling. Regardless of the situation, it is still better to separate plastics from general waste, for a number of reasons. I have done lots of research in recycling and visited countries like South America where i witnessed several kilometers of rubbish from over 20,000,000 people in one city bulldozing rubbish off cliffs into the ocean. If Plastic had been recycled or separated in these countries it would now be burned or in condensed burial sites instead of polluting the ocean. Here in Australia one new recycling project is plastic bottle caps are being used in production of prosthetic limbs. This one recycling effort is worth every effort to save those bottle caps. I work in the pet industry & we see a huge amount of recycled plastics creating pet product packaging. We also now recycle soft plastics which are made into blankets for homeless people. We also use recycled plastics for the manufacture of wall insulation. Another bit of recycling genius is work has started on polycarbonate building blocks to create cheap sustainable housing to help people in poor countries where building materials are too expensive. Over all we are still new to recycling across the world, but its is better to recycle to work towards recycling advancements as they are created, then it is to keep dumping everything & clinically say its not worth even trying because of idiots making UA-cam money from conspiracy theories & likely have done very little in depth research.
When I moved from Germany to Austria I first thought how far behind Austria must be in sustainable living. At least in Vienna, everyday waste is separated into plastic bottles and milk cartons, glass, aluminum, paper (all for recycling), sometimes compost and everything else is general waste. In Germany, we would tediously separate general waste from packaging - thinking we were recycling. Well, turns out that the Viennese system is just more honest. Bonus points for the fact that general waste is turned into district heating.
Europe is not the USA, we recycle here
@@loukka Sure, you say you do
@@loukka Haven't you watch the video or at least read the title ... Plastic Recycling is an Actual Scam ^.^
@@loukka Sure buddy, thanks to our EU funded wizards, our non-recyclable plastic wastes gets transformed in rainbow riding unicorns that bring peace to our continent.
@@loukka You either didn't watch the video, or didn't understand it.
I whole heartedly believe plastic should be banned from being sold as packaging in stores and fast food, except for medicine and sanitary products etc
And they should be reusable
I think there is no need for so much excess packaging, much less all plastic.
I think they should incorporate biological breakdown methods into the recycling process to turn the plastics back into liquid or gas components that can be separated and either burned for fuel or reused as chemical feedstocks. There are lots of new types of plastic-eating bacteria being found on a regular basis. Wouldn't be all that expensive to modify landfills into bioreactors for that purpose. Just need another rubber sheet over the top to catch the gas and a sump pump to catch the liquid.
@@grugnotice7746 we need to stop making plastic entirely. Bioreactors with plastic eating bacteria would probably be a great way to process existing waste, but I fear it will be used as an excuse to continue making new waste just like recycling...
Plastic as a material is very useful and valuable. But as a society we do not value it, and just throw it away. It's wasteful to use it for packaging. But I don't think it should be entirely banned.
We just need to be more wise in how we use it.
My recycling is used for my art hobby. Plastic jugs hold supplies. Junk mail shredded as stuffing for my cans and empty baking sodas boxes. Glass jars I stuff with paper and put aside for a future project. Plastic dishwashing liquid are washed out and saved as a base. Plastic TV dinner plates they make good bases for centerpieces. Paper tubes from aluminum foil I cut up for smaller bases for animal stickers. Bill envelopes I either shred or paper punch and scraps go into my stuffing bags. I have a big collection of metal empty air freshener cans which will become art. Packaging I use. Endless supply of cardboard and thinner cardboard. Empty acrylic paint bottles are washed out and used as a base. Empty TP rolls turn into art. Empty plastic glue bottles become a base. Their tops become an embellishment. There’s very little I need to recycle. Empty ribbon spools am figuring out how to use those in my art. I have recycling built up for years to come for dozens of new art projects. Endless supply. Even my scraps are encorporated. Get creative!
The worst part is nearly every plastic that has a code IS recyclable, but no one does it because it's too expensive.
This is one of those instances where I wish I wasn't a huge introvert, and that I had more friends and a bigger platform to share it with everyone. The world needs to know about this.
No problem , You can share it, Talk to me and we'll see what worries you (P.s. I am Plastic Engineer and Working in Recycling Industry so,, I wont talk BS )
Fellow introvert here. Can identify.
Share it with whoever you can, especially your outspoken friends. You can still make a difference by showing one loud extrovert this video.
You got some money? Buy a full page add in the Wall Street Journal.
id post a link to the wikipedia of the groups, but ytty cenSoRs
So just searh these;
"Friends of the Earth"
and
"Sierra Club"
It is incredibly scary how much waste, has been, IS, and WILL be generated… we cannot even imagine properly
Just think of how much archaeologists have learned about ancient civilizations by excavating their trash dumps!
@@ksman9087And our trash dumps are non-perishable
Other simple solutions to help out our 🌎 is to avoid or significantly reduce using plastics.
In NZ I'm a 1980s borm baby, and recall the rapid disappearances of glass bottles and jars, an easily reused and recycled system, for example milk man came with new bottles of mill on glass bottles, that were exchanged for old, empty bottles, for few coins or tokens bought from supermarket, soft drinks in glass bottles and when tupplewear was actually decent, brown paper, newspaper or paper bags at checkouts ,Plastic has taken over it all, and milk man doesn't come to you!! You go to supermarket. Gradually we are now back to paper bags at checkouts, milk and coke in glass again... change and recycling is a joke, especially as plastic is still used everywhere except individual use!! It's as stupid as a rat in a wheel. We were already recycling, i recall also collecting empty glass bottles or aluminium cans for recycling and you would exchange them for coins or free soft drink
I worked for a company making machinery for the recycling industry. They also have a recycling business to have a place to try out the machinery we made. The first day I went to the company for a job as a machinist I almost left ,the place was just full of large boxes of shredded plastic, I did find the boss and had my interview. After my first year of working there they finally moved all the boxes of shredded plastic out to the parking lot which was still there when I left. The plastic could not be sold because it was full of dirt and other debris. The best recycling would be to burn it to generate electricity. Recycling is mostly an expensive scam that cost more money than they can get for the recycled product. It also adds a great deal of pollution through the collection process large trucks collecting machines being made and used for recycling. it's mostly a scam the rich make money from government subsidies.
It's not about "getting money" out of it but about protecting the planet. Subsidies for saving the human race is a very good way of investing money, if you ask me. You have to get out of the mental cage of neoliberalism to be able to solve this problem.
Subsidies create these problems not solve them you peanut, look at all the companies currently receiving billions in subsidies to destroy society and the planet paid for by you and everyone down to you great great grandchildren that is getting scammed for taxes
Actually, we should re-refine plastic, not burn it. It is technically possible (though difficult) to break it down to small molecules the way we do with crude oil and build it back up.
Burn or process at high heat? Plasma arc recycling seems perfect solution for it.
My friend in the UK bought a very expensive fleece jacket made from recycled bottle. It seems bottles from the UK were sent to France to be chipped. The chips sent to Eire to be made into yarn. The yarn sent to Canada to be made into jackets The jackets sent to Europe to be sold as Eco Friendly Jackets.Funny ole World init.
I wonder how much fuel was used to send them around the planet like that.
@@JustSomeRandomIdiot a lot
And on top of that, plastic clothing is an environmental disaster of an idea. Each time plastic clothes get washed, they dump loads of microplastic into the drains.
Wow, that’s insane 😳
Straight up! Less than 5% of all of the recyclables that we put in our blue little can, for it to get picked up and get recycled, ends up in the garbage. I stopped recycling. I just threw it right in the garbage because that’s where it ends up. A long time ago and company started producing single use plastic items, they put the burden of recycling 100% on the consumer. I think at least 50 to 75% of all single use items, the burden of recycling them should fall on the companies that are producing it. It’s cheaper for them to create new plastic bottles versus recycle old ones and create something with that. The companies producing mass amounts of single use plastic, they are off Scott free. Because the burden was transferred and still remains on the consumer. Just wrong.
So here in Australia we just outlawed plastic straws, spoons etc from fast food places and cafes. They've been replaced by single use paper straws and wooden spoons and forks. Pretty cool that oil companies are losing out, pretty sad that more trees are getting chopped down instead.
The weird thing is that the coke i get from McDonalds is still in a paper cup but with a new paper straw, yet the lid is still plastic. I bet most of the ingredients that made my Big Mac and Fries came out of some kind of plastic packaging.
As hard as I try to limit the amount of plastic i "consume", it is a very difficult thing to do. Thanks for pointing out the logo's the plastic industry created to fool us into thinking that we are buying recycleable plastics. I think that making people aware of this problem is a good step, and people should be more aware of their own contribution to this issue as small as it may seem. As I have recently been made aware of the amount of microplastics found everywhere is in a large part due to our clothing being made of synthetic fibers, so that is another thing I need to take into account when I buy new clothing. One of the biggest issues in our societies is the throw away culture... we always seem to need new stuff... Keep up the good work.
Just as the increase in vegetarians has not brought per-capita meat consumption down to a level of 1960, individual recycling and consumer choices haven't brought down single-use plastics. Anarchists, Libertarians and Corporatists don't want to hear it, but government action is needed to either ban it or tax it (excluding some medical products).
Well, it hasnt come down to that level bc the world has EXPLODED with humans in that time. And with that many ppl, more resources are required to sustain them. More ppl using more plastic and eating more meat and using more electricity.
An everyone contonues to spit out kids bc everyone in the universe needs to have a mini-them so that they can continue the cycle of resource depletion
@@Pomagranite167 We do not have limited resources, we just have people who don't think humans deserve access to those resources unless they can pay. Plenty of water, land, and food for every human being on earth, but daddy capitalism says they have to pay before getting * checks notes * a thing they need to survive.
"Ending is better than mending!"
The so-called recycling symbol is actually not just for recycling. It represents the 3 R's. Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Reduce and reuse so we don't have to resort to recycling as much.
In the latest video 'Fast Fashion Is Hot Garbage | Climate Town' the 3 R's are Rent, PReowned, and Repair.
True..valid point... Consume less.. so one has to recycle less.. He has missed the point by trying to be cynical
It's so sad people are more likely to choose whatever option is the most capitalist/profitable, you can't shop your way out of global warming. I think reducing and reusing would also make us happier, if we had more of a personal connection to our belongings, things handed down, borrowed and gifted, rather than disposable and meaningless.
7:24 - 7:30
@@groszak1 rent, resell, repair
I'll never forget how in the 90s we were told 'Save the trees, USE PLASTIC!' and us morons all believed that we were saving the rain forests (which were burned down anyway so we can have Brazilian BBQ). No one I knew seemed to realize that trees grow back, literally the definition of a renewable resource.
I quit recycling when I got sick & tired of having sorted garbage in the house all the time.
Plus I'm not going to pay extra for a recycling bin from the trash service to have them turn around and sell that plastic!!
It ALL goes in the trash now!!
ps. It more than doubled the volume of my trash!! Ooopsie!!
stellar as always, and that jumpsuit was really icing on the cake.
The icing icing?
Oh look who is here!
Thank you very much! I'm thinking of becoming a jumpsuit guy now.
The jumpsuit looks really good on him
Actually
I can't believe humans are actually ok with dumping trash into the ocean. I actually think these people need to be put into hospitals for mental illness.
I have a lot of highly-educated friends who think that "bio-degradeable" plastics, advertised to be completely dissolved in nature in 3 years to be "sustainable" and "environmentally friendly".
I mean, where did the microplastics go? Ah that's right... they can't see them. But yeah, gonna enjoy them with our sashimi and sushi then!
If you eat fish, you have your own big fn blindspot
There are plastic bags that decompose into little pieces in time. The problem with them is that it when picking up trash on the street, there are then hundreds of little pieces to pick up, and when trying to responsibly reuse them, the thing you're storing in them is left in a pile of little plastic pieces in the attic. The thing is to prevent people from using too much packaging it in the first place, not to create self destructing objects.
I have one of those biodegradable plastic spoons and have been using it for five years now wash it in dish washer and all no sign it’s degrading in the slightest.
but what's the problem with that? aren't microplastics so little to be negligible?
Industry compostable I believe is the new term.
Y'know, it's really hard to reduce plastic use when shopping. Supermarkets say "Our customers want to buy products in plastic", but then do not offer equivalent products without plastic, I really have to wonder how they're getting that information. I use refill shops for a lot of dry-store items now, but I get those from places other than supermarkets. How does the supermarket know I'm no longer buying items at their store packaged in plastic which are available elsewhere as re-fill?
Stuff like those ads saying "just throw it away" and the society president basically admitting to tricking the public actually infuriates me
Everyone should be filled with pure rage at the thought of what capitalism has done to us.
There's something about this guy's whole schtick that I really trust.
But... but... wait a minute...
If you thought plastic was bad, you should see wall to wall synthetic carpet. Which is also plastic, but comfy.
Dont you have the us open to prep for Rollie lol.
It's the overalls
Hey, it's the slightly above average pool player! Hi Rollie!
I was familiar with the plastics numbering system and new that some plastics were not recyclable yet I never asked myself why the plastic number was "housed" in a recycle symbol even when not recyclable. Clearly, I've been hypnotized. In my case, their ploy totally worked. I sub-consciously assumed that "they" were working on the recyclability. Another realization: juice companies are actually packaging companies: the liquid they sell is often cheaper than the packaging. What's your take on aluminum use in food packaging?
Knew not new.
The painful thing about this is that we already have so many alternative solutions to single-use plastics. Paper bags, cardboard, even glass. All these materials can do the same job as plastics do but are actually recyclable
9 Month, ah
Paper bags are a good alternative for the single-use plastic bags but what is with the Packaging of food and personal care products. Our clothing has synthetic fibers like polyester in it.
And for glass, we are short of sand…
Yeh I have no hope for humanity
anyone who has ever tried to recycle 3d print fillament is aware of degradation. every time you recycle, the plastic is basically 30% worse than it previously was. after two or three cycles, it's basically unusable. and holy shit is it hard to do.
@Tommy Barlow for better or worse there is such a lot of kinds of plastics so there is probably a plastic that can be used as building material. There is a reason why it was called a wonder material.
It’s basically in the name “plastic” which is used in the materials world as a polymer that can not be reformed once cooled.
@Tommy Barlow And putting plastic to anything that is in sunlight ie top of the ground and in extreme abrasion environment like asphalt is fucking terrible idea, witch creates micro plastics to surrounding environment every time car driver or people walk there... on cold climates with winter tires and need to blow the roads.. ou boy that will be even worse. But guess out of sight out of mind is a thing here.
As solution we might want to look into putting plastics under the roads as we already do as in filter fabric to let moisture trough but support the structure. In this case as interlocking shapes that create support and base for the road, while allowing moisture that causes problems during frost season to seep trough with out issue. Its underground so no sun light and there should be minimal if any abrasion.
@@Hellsong89 So, you are okay with it underground. Then what's wrong with burying it all in land fills? Recycling is a waste of energy, so just bury it all. Most of the alternatives to plastic are bad. The grocery store that I go to quit using plastic bags and are now using paper bags. They tend to tear and allow your food to drop to the ground. Not exactly a good replacement. Cloth bags need to be washed or can become contaminated. Plastic helps preserve food. Getting rid of it will lead to more wasted food.
@@Hellsong89 Your arguments will be attacked mostly because you are willing to analyze potential drawbacks for things that the anointed know it alls have decided is settled science. I do agree with some of your arguments, may have a few different ideas, but am willing to listen and research. There are many "forbidden topics" in conservationist circles, just try to open a discussion on the pros and cons of forest management, or 10 years ago about the potential benefits of nuclear, or about the pros and CONS of wind and solar.... or simply point that negative consequences of not having an integrated approach to protecting the environment... like highlighting the bad consequences of mainly concentrating on carbon emissions while ignoring waste, water misuse, availability and disposal of rare earth elements, etc.
If only 10% is getting recycled, it doesn't justify all the pollution caused by the recycling effort, itself. Picking up the recycling, separately from other garbage is extremely costly.
We need to refocus our efforts on reduce, reuse, and safe storage. We should also be using plastics as fuel, as cleanly as possible.
Keep in mind that steel, aluminum, glass and to some extent cardboard CAN be recycled effectively. It's only the plastic that is useless.
Twenty years ago I was a huge fan of recycling, But now not so much, after driving past recycling centres and seeing huge bales of cardboard rotting away in the sun and rain, and providing homes for rats if had doubts , we initially were ask to recycle glass products, however after a couple of year we were told not to recycle glass, then I hear on a news cast a few years ago, The City of Calgary had 200 tons of plastic clamshell containers they could not get rid of, no one wanted them and they were going to take the lot to the landfill. The last straw came, when I was told by my city that I had to have a blue recycling bin and would be charged almost $10/ month for the privilege. I previously had a container in my garage where I placed my recycling items and once a week or so I took it to recycle collection centre 3 minutes away and sorted it into the appropriate bins. NO COST.
I now convinced the recycling industry has become a profit making scam, and for the most part is doing very little other than taking money from unsuspecting consumers. I still recycle, but not with the same zeal I once had.
ive worked on construction sites and sports stadiums waste management
every job ive ever had-- all the trash bags and ''recycling'' bags, always ended up in the same smelly pits together.
This channel is amazing and needs infinitely more subs. I'm sharing it everywhere.
+1 here. Well produced, smart and engaging. Keep it coming!
Clicked through from Reddit to do just that. Solid video, will subscribe and watch more.
where did you share it
@@bkbj8282 FB, Reddit, forums that I'm a member of
Just came here from reddit. This channel should explode within the next couple weeks. :)
I am old enough to remember that commercial. At the time it was needed. Back then people would just toss their trash out the window of their cars. Since then, the amount of litter along roads etc has dramatically decreased. Although I completely agree with the video, just wanted to point out that the commercial did have a positive effect to some extent.
If anything it seems like it had a negative impact. Not being able to see the extent of the issue has led society to discount the negative externalities of single use plastics.
If there was plastic everywhere maybe we would start to see some change in manufacturing and environmental protection legislation.
It always comes down to the money folks. There is little money to be made in recycling and it is very time consuming. Years ago here in Saskatchewan and in Manitoba we had roadside containers to put your trash in and the dept. of highways disposed of it. It was discontinued as I suppose someone in government was looking for ways to save money and deemed this would save us tax dollars. They probably felt so good about this decision that they gave themselves nice raises and topped up their pension plans. In all fairness though the recycling programs might have made this practice problamatic. Personally I cant believe no one mentions the emissions and money we are spending on hauling all this garbage all over the country, but there seems to be few people especially in government that want to look at the long term approach or the big picture : they just want to take our tax dollars and run.
I'm old enough to remember it too but my parents taught me not to toss my garbage on the side of the road even before it aired. I guess it's not unlike Smokey the Bear needing to tell you not to burn down the place. By the way, I knew from a young age not to do that too.
@@roberttucker4196 In my city in Ontario the public garbage cans became scarce not long after we were given a weekly garbage limit. People used them instead. The solution was to remove them instead of admitting that forcing people to be decent doesn't work. Now we get to regularly call the city to look through the bags left behind our house to see if they can figure out who dumped it there. If we don't they come after us for having garbage on our property. Well, their property, but our responsibility. They make the rules and the responsible people pay the price.
There is still a lot of roadside litter. The state Departments of Transportation have just talked local non-profits, service clubs and civic organizations into picking it up on a regular basis. This makes it look like less than it actually is. You can see the signs all over: "The next 2 miles of roadside kept clean by _______" or words to that effect.
Well, the bulk of the stuff in my recycling bin is cardboard/paper, aluminum cans, and glass bottles. Yes, I do through plastic in indiscriminately when I have it but frankly that’s mostly to save space in my refuse bin. So, the question is beyond doing a better job with not purchasing non-recyclable plastic should I stop arbitrarily chucking all types of plastic in the recycling bin? That is, does this behavior contaminate the stream, increase the cost, etc.
I solved my recycling. Junk mail is shredded and put in as filler in my art pieces. I use cleaned out sardine cans, soup cans, empty baking soda boxes. Plastic dishwashing liquid bottles I put in a box for a future base in my art, or refill with new dish liquid so ai always have a supply. Plastic food trays I collect for any future centerpieces. Pizza box, frozen food box paper I use as toppers and bottomers. I paper punch the rest. Any scraps go into my garbage bag of shredded paper for my filler. Plastic jugs I have I put art supplies in. Jars, beer and soda cans stuffed with shredded paper and ready to be turned into animal art or storage for art supplies. Envelopes I use the paper. Empty glue plastic bottles are new bases. I find a way to turn their caps into embellishments. My recycle bin is mostly empty. The plastic for my stickers used up I reuse for bits of scrap to be used later. My art hobby recycles. And oh by the way. No one forces anyone to buy things. Reuse them for other things!
You have the absolute textbook perfect face for a horseshoe moustache. You're leaving value on the table for not having one. I love your channel already 💜
Handlebar?
I'll try it out.
@@snap-off5383 apparently "Handlebar" is the twirly kind, im talking about that classic 80s leatherman-from-village-people upside-down U shape scruff
@@HollywoodScotty yeah we always called those "handlebar" and the twisty straight sideways was the "texas longhorn".
@@snap-off5383 see I always called it the handlebar too, but I keep getting corrected that the handle bar is the twirly. If you image search handlebar is almost all twirly moustaches. 🤷♂️
I try so hard to avoid plastic. Makes me cry when I am when I see all the plastic I was forced to buy. I look around my house, and I wonder how did we manage to live without it. It's destroying our oceans, and it's destroying our world, yet I have no idea how to live without it.
Plastic makes thing extremely cheap. Maybe it would teach people to be less materialistic if we got rid of plastic though.
You say plastic is destroying our oceans but the problem is the people that think it is okay to put it there.
It's ok, sooner or later we will learn to live under trash. Then maybe we will not be so attached to our plastic.
Hello, when it comes to plastic non disposables second hand is the way to go, try to find solutions or routes around to our never ending plastic problem lol
It’s super difficult. I agree, I don’t know how to live without it. It seems like products packaged in glass are so much more expensive.
For the most part I agree! My company works with medical grade plastics including HDPE, PP, and GPPS, and we've created the worlds first circular economy for lab plastic consumables (48% of emissions coming from biotech/biopharma come from procured goods and services)
I learned this truth several years ago when I met the Waste Management truck during pick-up. I asked the garbage person (woman) why are they using some trucks for recycle pick-up but others are garbage only. She told me it doesn't matter because "it all ends up in the same place".
I just found this out and it’s beyond insane who really runs this world.
As a student industrial product design i can confirm all the crap about recycling, even if we could recycle everything it would still be worse than just reusing packaging. Id love to see a future where products are sold in some sort of Tupperware that you can return to the store. We already have this for beer bottles and PET bottles in my country and it saves a lot of trash and energy.
I think it might become something like that in the future. Companies are already starting to realize that if you can reuse packaging, then you actually save a lot of money on the long run. In my town, many companies are now starting to use standardized size wooden skids which are made in a much more though manner. Instead of throwing them away after a few weeks, they can last during several years. By adopting some simple methods, the amount of trash generated can be reduced immensely
However, we also all have our part to play. For example, a lot of single-use plastics are required to manufacture and transport all the highly modified food and drinks that people consume on a daily basis. If everyone restarted to cook by themselves using fresh ingredients instead of purchasing industrial food, a large portion of single-use plastic would be eliminated
First, this amount of plastic should not be ever produced. But DuPont or Ig Farben owns politics in US and Europe and they’ll never stop.
I basically save every plastic container and reuse them until they break/warp to the point that they’re unusable.
I also try to recycle what I can, but (A) most plastics aren’t recyclable, and (B) many recycling services are a sham and just dump whatever’s in the recycling bin into the same dumpster with the non-recyclable trash.
Oh, and you have to prep your recyclables properly before “disposing” them or they won’t be viable for recycling-this includes cleaning/washing them. It’s too expensive and time consuming for recyclers to do it, so if you don’t, they’ll get dumped with the rest of the trash.
This is being done in my area already. Products being sold in specific tupperware containers with a barcode sticker and you can return it to several nearby locations where it will get provided to a new food seller to use again.
@@MiraBooReusing plastic containers until they break/warp is a very effective way to poison your body with microplastics. Do some research on the effects of microplastics in the body and consider whether you actually want to be doing that.
I had a strong hunch my whole life that plastics couldn't be recycled because of their complex composure. They are fairly soft and malleable but are toxic. You can't heat up toxic material without creating toxic vapors. Also, it will destroy the molecular structure of the softer materials. So I was confused as to how this process would succeed to create the same material again after destroying its infrastructure.
But only today have I found the conclusion to be in line with what I already had a suspicion of because of *THIS VIDEO* . Thank you 👍
Wonderfully said...
Main problem nowadays is the inter-plastic contamination which limits the potential of plastic to be recycled. Climate Town guy explained that nicely. Heating the plastic too high would decompose the molecular structure of course, but keeping it at a malleable temperature the plastic can be reshaped. PET is known to be recycled although it is often contaminated with other plastics rendering it 'infeasible' to recycle.
Sigh, in the end using less plastics and reusing plastics is a good way to reduce the chance of you adding up more plastic to the already very depressing plastic soup.
One of the biggest problems with plastics is just from a material standpoint. It's not like paper where it's all basically the same dyed wood pulp, there's dozens of different types of plastics and the only way they can effectively be recycled is by grouping them together. A lot of plastic items don't even have the fake recycling classification number. You can recycle them, the plants that make the objects in the first place start out with a bunch of pellets they melt down and normally injection mold. any extra material is sent to a shredder and then added back to the pile.
I'm not even an environmentalist, just worked with plastics. It doesn't really work from a practical standpoint. Then again, the US at this point is pretty much the only country that doesn't recycle anything other than metal so recycling in general is a scam. We used to export our literal garbage to China and other countries for recycling, but they've all started doing their own and stopped buying it, so now there's "recycling centers" that are just buying warehouses to store thousands of tons of paper and other garbage to be recycled.
this video is true but you literally just described the concept of confirmation bias
be careful out there
@@JZStudiosonline this problem applies to many countries
BTW, only some plastics are toxic
When i moved into this neighborhood with my mom, we missed the recycling day, and she asked me to take the recycling out to a center, i looked around for one on google maps, drove there, and when i pulled up there was a large garbage bin with the counties name on it that said recycling, and as soon as I started dumping it, I got yelled at by some NPC, saying I cant throw my garbage out here, I yelled back, im not throwing away garbage, its recycling, she was arguing back at me for a few minutes before I gave up, I even held up the recycling bin given to us by the city showing them that its not trash, i held it up like a gladiator in the arena after he decapitates an opponent, I eventually just said fuck it and gave up because its too much trouble dealing with these NPC workers that don’t even care that I’m trying to do the right thing. And the most annoying part is the bin that i was throwing things in that was marked as recycling, had the most random trash junk in it, so they weren’t even using their bins properly. So pointless
A very well laid out and described topic that explains what we probably all knew was going on, but put our plastic made blinders on.
My city banned single use plastic bags a few years ago so now all of the grocery stores have “reusable” plastic bags that everyone just treats like disposable bags only they use like 4 times as much plastic as the old ones:/
Same in NZ, yet half the items to be bought are covered in single use plastic, a joke
I think it would be wonderful to give people some alternatives: use glass instead, traditional shopping bags instead of the plastic ones...I'd love to watch a video suggesting some alternatives even if it's just a matter of shifting your mind- my brother used to think that carrying a glass bottle of water is heavy but then when he reframed it into: Im strong and this extra weight gives me the exercise I need to get healthier then the whole thing changed!
I've done my shopping for years based on how I recall my Mother shopping in the 1950s when it was more pre supermarket era. I even when I lived in the city of London (UK) tried to buy items in glass which I could use for storage afterwards or recycle; I save the bags in cereal packets which have a good consistency for refrigeration ( after a rinse I can put various meats from a local butcher /delicatessan/ and cheeses as well ) The cheeses and hams last very well wrapped in greaseproof paper thus not going sweaty in the refrigerator...and after all they were often stored in an aerated side box or safe on the side of the hose in the old days where it stayed cool .)Shopping nowadays is done less frequently and is so monotonous in a supermarket culture so that people just want to drive there and get it over with ! I now live on one of the Scottish Isles in a small village where there is a local baker and butcher as well as general grocery shop.(But I duplicated this same sort of action when I was living in London by looking around creatively-finding local family run businesses and shops to use near to where I lived so I know it can be done if there is a will!)! At present on the Island of Arran I can get milk refills from a local farmer from a machine at the shop thus reducing waste bottles. I reuse paper bags over and over for carrying and storage and the plastic cereal ones again freezing .Having said that I do recall when I was younger that cereals were usually in WAXED PAPER BAGS -NOT PLASTIC so that should be revised!! At another village there is an Eco Store where you can buy loose Nuts and dried fruit and all sorts of things as well as refill household cleaning and dishwashing and laundry fluids etc. (If this was organised once more and became mandatory everywhere -it could go some way towards solving this problem... but there would still need to be STIFF PENALTIES for LITTERING and WASTE as happened once during WW2 because there is too slack an attitude with so many people now.
Glass shopping bags don't sound very durable. And heavy
@@truth.speaker Hahaha I agree! :)
While not using plastic bottles all together would be the best solution, you can still use them and be smart about it. For example, if you have to buy a bottle of liquid while out, then make sure to get whatever is in a stronger bottle so you can reuse it more. Avoid the flimsy ones that are made to "reduce" plastic waste since they can't be reused as much.
Get a proper reusable bottle of any material for daily use as well. Glass would likely be the worst option only because it is more likely to break sooner and I'm not sure if places accept broken glass for recycling (even though they break it as part of the recycling process)
If you do get plastic shopping bags reuse them! They make great small trash-bags for picking up around the house or in a car. Plus weighing them down with other trash means they won't float out of a dump. If you live in a city area you can also use them as dog or other animal poop bags. (if you live in a more rural area it is better to leave the poop on the ground). They can also be used for packaging fragile items when moving if you collect a good amount of bags.
For plastic containers that aren't good enough to reuse for food storage, try and find a use for them that would replace a plastic item you would be buying new. Personally, I use the plastic mac and cheese cups for paint water or mixing small amounts of epoxy. No need to buy and ruin a plastic container when I can just use those until they are too dirty and need to be tossed out.
The best thing to do is find uses for the plastic you are forced to buy for certain products since it isn't realistic to not buy anything with plastic packaging currently.
I'm not an expert and I'm not an old man, but I know some things, including some history and back in the early 1900s, before capitalism took over because of the big money interests, there was a pretty strong ethic for minimalism, simplification, standardization, repair and reuse. You'd get your milk delivered in glass bottles, picked up, refilled and returned. No plastic needed. You'd get many other food items in aluminum cans. Those could be washed, refilled, reused as well. There was also many developments in more Earth-friendly biomaterials like hemp that were extremely versatile and, of course, those developments were largely squashed by big business, particularly the Big Oil and Gas industry. Lovely folk, they are. Of course, they are just playing along to the rules of the game of capitalism. So, who could expect any different?
Truth is, we need system change, not just legislative change. We can't continue in an economic system that is based on growth on a planet with finite resources. In fact, a resource-based economy using the advanced tools of science and technology is the most logical direction to go.
A resource-based economy would use scientific protocols to ensure any product made would already be made to the most efficient standard possible and it's 'end of life' process would be well established before ever starting to create such a thing. If it isn't made to be reused many times, then it must be made to break down easily in the environment, and fertilize or feed the planet from which is came.
Born in 1980, one trend that is easy to notice is recycling bins grew proportionally and at the same time as products sold in plastic containers got widespread adoption everywhere.
When I was growing up, I remember a lot of things were stored in glass jar on the grocery shelves. Almost everything was in glass and tin.
As we saw the shift to plastic occur, the recycling bin came around.
Good point. I knew something was up when our neighborhood growing up used to have small separate bins for plastic, paper and glass/metal. Then it switched when I was in my early teens to one massive recycle bin which was 3 times bigger than our trash can.
Up until recently most plastic recyclables were shipped overseas for burning in generators and a few purposes. But, the contamination of the materials became an ever increasing problem. People were throwing anything and everything into recycling, instead of clean paper, clean bottles, clean cand, and clean plastic containers
I'm from a small town in Mexico where people are always short on money this has caused people to reuse their glass bottles and charge more for people to take them, if my small town can do it billion dollar companies can
I study Industrial Design, and the only person I've ever heard talking about that scam was ONE of my teachers. A big THANK YOU for exposing this! It's so important!
A Nigerian person told me recycling is a scam, but my grandson told me not to trust anything Nigerians say, so I wasn't sure. This video really helped. My thanks to UA-cam for posting this.
Since the late 90s, I have climbed up on my soapbox and screamed about plastics in the ocean. Only a few years ago did anyone else go, huh maybe this is a problem. Today I went to the grocery store and everything I wanted to buy was in plastic including the potatoes. We are quite thoroughly screwed
Wow I didn’t know about the dual recycle/“recycle” symbol ♻️ !!
FOR THE ALGORITHM!!!
Your channel is like a 5 gallon container of sour patch kids- extremely enjoyable to consume, devastating on my mood for the rest of the day
Ironically, you just used a terrible example for true environmentalist. Environmentalist understand the harm of consuming commercial candy ( plastic pollution, deforestation, soil degradation, etc).
@@msshelbyful oy vey shelby just stop
@@yoyoiven I see the redditors are here
Ah, but good news... Those candy bags are popular with sewists, they are actually made into zippered bags! You can find em here on UA-cam!
@@msshelbyful damn Shelby, it’s called a joke. 💀
i find it amazing when I ran out of money visiting mexico i rounded up all the empty bottles from our hotel room, ran over to the local liquor store, and they handed me cash. Enough to cover the entry fee to some club. Ever since then I've wondered why don't we have such a system in the US. You sell the product, you take back the container.
I saw this first hand working in the garbage industry. Most recycling went straight to the dump. My location would take tens of thousands of kilograms of recycled material a week to the dump and my city only has about 350,000 people. I worked for one of 3 big companies with lots of smaller companies.
I remember in 2010 a college graduate asked me, "How can we force people to recycle" I shuddered and laughed and asked, How much will China buy? Where do all your kids toys come from? I think that is the disconnect of reality people live in.
It depends what type of recyclign he was refering to. Metals and paper/cardboard can actually be recycled at 100% and it even requires less energy to recycle those than to create new one from raw natural resources. Unfortunately, there still are tons of people throwing away their stuff either directly in nature or in the garbage...
@@PG-3462 though that was not referred to, I belive it was about plastic. Are you simple or just slow? Yes, cardboard and paper can be recycled. If you wanted to be super smart youd ask, why is plastic oil based and not organic? Henry Ford pushed that a 100 years ago. Why Not? Hmm, look up he richest man who ever lived in the U.S.
I've been trying to inform people about this for years. Plastic costs more energy to recycle than to make new. Sometimes things just need to go the landfill as long as it's done properly.
CooM
Plastic releases a lot of energy when burned, the solution to our solid waste problem is waste to energy conversion.
@@opossumlvr1023 Dude, burning plastics is not the solution. Burning things got us into a climate mess, it's not going to get us out. We need alternative sources. Unless we can figure out how to convert mass to energy some other way, which has eluded us so far. Nuclear fission doesn't really count, it has the exact same heat problem as normal burning.
@@opossumlvr1023 It releases an incredible amount of pollution when burned though. Stolen from Joe Yager:
1- Incinerating plastics is just as dirty as burning coal. There are many toxins released into the atmosphere by burning plastics.
2- Collecting residential (consumer) waste plastics and processing it and delivering it to power plants would be very expensive and unreliable.
3- Power plant boilers would need to be redesigned to handle using plastic waste for fuel.
4- Pyrolysis could be used to break down waste plastics to solid, liquid or gaseous fuels, but the process requires heating plastics in the absence of oxygen to about 1000F. This process alone is very energy intensive.
5- Most proposals for incinerating plastics are from incinerator manufacturers and the plastic and petroleum industries. They actually have no intention of supporting this, this is just a way to pass the problem off to someone else.
6- Most plastics are made from petroleum and natural gas and these sources are not considered renewables.
7- The best solution is to reduce the amount of single use plastics from becoming part of the refuse waste stream, but this won't be easy, since there are multiple industries that are in business to produce these.
I used to work for a company that made plastic parts. I remember they did have a couple stations with recycled. But... yeah. They stated nobody wants to use it. It doesn't have the same quality. And they had to mix it with a high percentage of new just to make it viable. Those stations where rarely used.
Plastic is an extreme case of both sides of a coin. On one hand we have an extremely versatile product, that does very well in every part of society, on the other hand it pollutes everything and everywhere and turns the place it pollutes into a garbagetruck. We have to cut it out at least in those parts, where alternatives do the job almost as well. Food industry worked before plastic, it can work without it. But as long as it's more expensive, they won't turn around.
Great points, it's 100% the packaging industry's responsibility to end single-use plastic packaging and use hemp or bamboo and end this madness of single-use plastics.
It's also about us to consume less highly modified crap. The overproduction of anything highly modified and imported on thousands of kilometers will always require tons of single-use materials. Even if you replace all plastic by hemp or bamboo, it will simply generate massive monocultures of those plants, which will destroy the environment and require tons of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
I'm not asking you to go back to the Dark Ages, but simply to consume in a better way. Select higher quality alternatives and only purchase what you truly need. Single-use plastics are also highly required for industrial food. Simply by learning to cook by yourself using fresh ingredients and by drinking less industrial stuff (soft drinks, alcohol, juice, etc.), you can cut off a huge % of the single-use plastic required in your life.
Actually, companies aren't using single-use plastic just for fun. They do it because the products that we want to overconsume on a daily basis need to be overpackaged in order to even exist.
Aluminum containers would go a long way in reducing the amount of single use plastic. Beverages, shampoo almost anything sold in a plastic container could be sold in an aluminum container.
@@PG-3462 customers can't fix those problems.. most of us are actually poor or otherwise unable to make those live changes. Just imagine yourself buying stuff that would be better for the environment but 4x as expensive.. you couldn't keep up and that's also why nothing will change for a long time. We literally have no cheap alternatives and no incentives to make those changes
@@cobalius The vast majority of people are overconsuming tons of things they don't even need. The amount of food, fuel, clothes, water, plastic and all kind of things that are wasted every year is INSANE.
To reduce pollution, we must consume less and more intelligently. If you consume less, then you will end up with much more money to buy things that are a bit more expensive, but that will last much longer. If you take care of what you own, it will also last longer and on the long run you will end up with more money in your pockets.
The argument of "most people are poor" is simply wrong, as the vast majority of people in developped nations are participating to all this overconsumption.
Just look at 4x4 SUV and pickup truck sales, or the fact that nearly all major cities in the world are currently increasing the size of their airports because people keep travelling more often by airplane... Or the fact that Americans in dry states like Arizona, Utah and Nevada consume more water in average than most Western Europeans... People are simply wasting things without even realizing, nor caring
Hi! Thank you for your eye opening info! I was part of the Keep Omaha Beautiful team as a teenager, and am now in my 60s, so a clean environment has been important to me for a long time. I wish we would get back to the paper packaging and paper sacks of my youth.
Another aspect that you didn't address is the polyester and acrylic and nylon clothing out there. At least my cotton blouse that is worn out can be safely burned in our barrel, as we are rural. Natural fabrics and yarns are more durable, breathable, washable, and remade into new fabrics. I never buy "plastic clothing" or yarns.
The plastic industry is a greedy monster, and hopefully we can make legislation forcing them to be responsible. To start with, they should have to pay to clean up the ocean.
Anyway, thanks for the heads up that recycling is a sham. I buy as little new plastic as possible. Thrift stores are great places to buy and reuse some of the helpful plastic out there.
Worn out cotton clothing makes good rags. You don't need to burn it.
I refer to it as garbage sorting.
Banning straws is the ultimate feel good virtue signal.
I personally wouldnt mind a seperate recycling bin just for plastics. Would be even better if it was a multi-slot bin to pre sort some of the resin ids.
Love your videos! I'm from Europe and after engineering school I went to work for the recycling industry because I wanted to do something ecological.... and I quit after three years and different positions. One of the main issues is that revenues are based on the amount of waste. More waste coming in the recycling plant = more money. Therefore the industry has ZERO interest in shifting to reduce and reuse. Feel free to ask any details, and I agree with your call to recycle : a tiny amount of recycling is better that none. Thanks again!
In europe we use less plastics than the US ! We do not drink in disposable cups in restaurant, café, parties or at home ! Same thing for the food, in a restaurant you do not eat in disposable containers. Even in McDonald's now, we have a new legislation where if you eat at the table disposable containers have to be avoied.
ua-cam.com/video/jA8VZsILuSc/v-deo.html
but the new recipients are still made of reusable plastics with endocrinal disruptors.
The biggest problem is, I think, that the biggest polluting countries of the area think that they are the most eco frendly, beacuse they are recycling more than the others. California in North America, and Germany in Europe. That is quite the opposite !