Re:Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won’t ...
by beowulfey on Sunday December 22, 2019 @06:55AM
(#21856677)
That’s where the reduce/reuse part of the old term comes into play. Recycling was never meant to be the end-all solution. We need to reduce use of waste that is NOT easily recycled (plastics) and focus on using materials that are (metals, glass)
Re:Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won’t ...
by NeedMoreTea on Sunday December 22, 2019 @09:32AM
(#21857285)
Quite. Recycling was supposed to catch the little we couldn't reuse. When recycling points first started cropping up it was still common to return glass bottles for refill, and get a deposit back.
As recycling has grown, reuse has almost completely died out, and one time plastic has replaced most of those former deposit-return items.
So they can sort things well. It means they can put them in a dump neatly. Most things that get put into recycling don’t make economic sense to recycle -except aluminum and some other metals.
Most plastics under cheap (but still uneconomic) recycling suffer from heat history and becomes less useful.