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

Re:Recycling was a lie to sell more plastic, recycling indus... by coliveira on Thursday October 08, 2020 @12:45AM (#24715910)

I think the point is that, by recycling, one has to use energy to transport used paper, process paper using machinery, store it, use chemicals which are pollutants themselves, etc. All this instead of just throwing out the paper.

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Re:Recycling was a lie to sell more plastic, recycling indus... by tomjakubowski on Thursday October 08, 2020 @12:55AM (#24715976)

Garbage isn't "just" thrown out, it also has to be transported and stored. We'd still want to sort efficiently recyclable aluminum out of the garbage before it's sent to landfill, so ideally there would be some processing as well.

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Re:Recycling was a lie to sell more plastic, recycling indus... by chimprich on Thursday October 08, 2020 @07:29AM (#24718095)

If you're replacing your paper with paper from trees, you have to do all that anyway (transport, processing, storage, chemicals), and on top of that you have all the energy of getting the raw materials in the first place.

I'm not too sure on the details of how that is done, but I imagine it involves driving huge trucks into forests, cutting trees with machines, stripping and cutting the trees, and transporting wood to industrial areas.

It has to be more CO2 efficient to recycle.

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