It varies very widely indeed. In some countries it isn't a scam because it gets burned like Denmark but other than that majority of recycling just means shipping it to a landfill in a poor country that they promise to recycle.

In Hungary it gets sorted out locally. We also recently implemented a bottle return system that (although it's annoying) produces clean stacks of PET, aluminium and glass, all of which are recyclable.

Even with PET, arguably the most recyclable plastic, most of it doesn't go bottle-to-bottle but rather bottle-to-textile. Because most PET "recycling" doesn't close the loop, so it's dubious to even call it recycling. That said, some bottle-to-bottle recycling of PET is done, and this has been getting better.

Well, it depends a lot on material.

Metals, especially aluminum, get widely recycled because it actually makes financial sense.

Plastics, well, you are probably better off burning them for electricity.

> because it gets burned

I wouldn’t really call that recycling.

As long as the heat is used for something (electricity, building heating etc.) there is at least some reuse of parts of it. And if exhaust ist filtered pollution is also limited. Better than just putting it on a garbage dump and forgetting about it.

But yes, not proper recycling.

I’m relatively sure that electronics are not recycled properly anywhere. At best some of the metals are extracted (hopefully not by mixing the ashes with mercury).

What would be properly recycling electronics, if not extracting the metals? should the worthless based board to be melted and used for bottles?

Isn't that the point of recycling? To reuse the reusable materials like plastic?

If salvaging 100% of the materials that make up something is the only way to "properly" recycle, we are not recycling anything properly. Some components are not recyclable.

I won't speculate about whether the plastic on the board is recyclable, or ecological to recycle. I don't know. This is what I'm asking.

Not burning all the ICs and all the other components that still work perfectly fine would be a good start imo.

That would fall under Reuse rather than Recycle. Reduce, Reuse and Recycle are in the order of best to worst. Recycling is the last ditch effort to not completely waste something. It's always going to feel like a half measure, because it is.

I would say reusing a "disposable" vape would be refilling it and recharging or exchanging the battery, not salvaging it for parts.

To do WHAT with? Catalog and categorize the millions of random penny-priced ICs that MIGHT be usable for something else?

That there is no way to recycle electronics economically is the reason that they are not recycled. I don't claim otherwise.

what about best buy and staples? that's where I take mine

I can't tell if this is a tongue-in-cheek comment or not, but all of that is shipped off to 3rd party "recyclers" who pinky promise that they will dispose of it properly. Very often those 3rd parties rely on other 3rd parties until the it ends up in a waste pile in a developing country, but with a long enough chain of differed responsibility that nobody can be held accountable.

The fundamental problem with "recycling" is precisely the fact that we just hand it off and don't ask questions about where it ends up, all while feeling great about ourselves afterwards. Bestbuy and Staples are offering accountability laundering so that you don't have to feel bad and in exchange are more likely to become a customer. The 3rd parties working for them do the same thing, but they usually want cash for it.

sounds like cynicism without any factual basis. I just checked and ERI says otherwise: https://eridirect.com/blog/2025/01/rare-earth-metal-recovery...

> "it's a scam, just chuck it all in the garbage"

This sentiment is the case because very often that's where recycling ultimately ends, we just pay someone to move it far away from us so we don't have to see it when it happens.

Until 2018, when they finally stopped accepting it, one of the US largest exports to China was cardboard boxes sent over for "recycling". We burned tons of bunker fuel shipping back the boxes Chinese goods arrived in. The net environmental impact would likely have been less had we just kept the boxes at home.

It's strange to me how often people prefer a widely acknowledged lie than to simply admit the truth.

I always recycle though because the recycle bin in my city is larger than my trash bin, and I don't have enough room in my trash bin sometimes.