I found myself wondering this as I got annoyed at the plastics industry and their stupid propaganda, as I do everytime I go to recycle something. But anyway, I had been thinking I’d heard something about people going to ‘mine’ landfills for metal because people weren’t recycling and it’s ‘bad for the environment’ and 'filling up ‘landfills’
Bitch Please. I can see the dollar symbols on your pupils from here.
So it made me think, paper and the such breaks down quickly. Food too. The huge drives for community composting efforts and cardboard drives for schools etc - It’s really all a matter of the fact we can re-use it all easily. Metal is worth money, used again and again, as it was straight from the earth. Just that plastic. Which is all but unrecyclable, save some clear/semi-clear containers.
But without the cardboard, my bin is pretty empty. It’s like recycling exists just to pretend plastic can be.
Edit - I should add in my area if the recycling the plant receives is tainted in anyway they just toss it. The whole load. So unrecyclable plastic? Dirty? Wrong material? Gone.
Cardboard is the most recyclable material we have. Plastic is complicated.
Better than recycling is to not consume in the first place.
reduce, reuse, recycle… what’s lost is that this is not alternatives, but an order
first try to reduce usage then try to reuse what you do use then try to recycle when possible
Well at that extreme it’s even better to simply not exist.
No, there are several levels of nuance between your extreme and OPs suggestion. Reducing consumption would be the most obvious one.
Oh for sure, anti-consumption is always important to remind. The packaging is out of control…and what paper does in terms of pollution - well I’ve simply had to come to terms I can’t control these garbage bags at the top, I can only control myself and do my best.
One thing I have found that I love is land-fill biodegradable bags for my customers. Paper, as meantioned, makes me wary, so when I found these I was pretty happy. They seem legit and they’re inexpensive
Just be careful with those. Some are really biodegradable and will be gone after a while. Others only degrade until they become entirely microplastics and stop there.
By what metric? Fibers breakdown during recycling in ways glass or steel do not.