Recycling was a lie to sell more plastic, recycling industry veteran says

Re:Recycling was a lie to sell more plastic, recycling indus... by double0jimb0 on Wednesday October 07, 2020 @11:26PM (#24715390)

That 1.3 number is generally accurate, it varies a bit by type of plastic and end-item requirements.

BUT, that 30%, it’s not post-consumer recycled plastic.

It’s the manufacture grinding up the runners, sprues, and bad parts. In the industry it’s called “regrind”. [0]

So if they were trying to tell you it was post-consumer, that was probably misleading.

(Products that use post-consumer recycled plastic will almost always say so, as it is a marketing angle)

[0] https://knowledge.ulprospector.com/1468/pe-regrinding-plasti...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Recycling was a lie to sell more plastic, recycling indus... by PaulKeeble on Thursday October 08, 2020 @12:09AM (#24715685)

Correct it is about the process and a lot of post consumer plastic isn't in practice recycleable at all. Its the absolute best case number and in practice its more like 10% or 1.1 uses as a result as far as I can tell from the various articles on it this year.

[ Parent | on HN ]