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Most US voters say plastics industry should be held responsible for recycling claims – report
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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I would sooner hold out local municipalities who run the recycling centers and our investigative news agencies for not clearly informing the public that recycling plastic has not been the ecological solution we've been promised.
I mean, sure, the plastic producers lied but the recyclers have known about it this entire time too. How this has been such a secret for decades may suggest some deeper conspiracy.
And, if it's the case that our governments were genuinely unable to know this was an issue, we should be more critical of them for not knowing what other outside agencies are fooling them into using tax-payer dollars against our best interests.
Seattle doesn't even accept plastics for recycling, only certain things for cleaning and reuse. They could do a better job in informing the public about it, though, since all of the products still stamp on the recycling symbols, most of which have never been actually recycled.
Also, decades of telling people to separate plastics for recycling into separate plastic types, like lids separate from bottles, undermines reuse because the bottles then get crushed without the lid to keep air inside. And crushing usually damages them too much to be cleaned and reused.
Spokane burns its ordinary trash. It also accepts plastics and other "recyclables" at an every-other-week curbside pick-up, using a separate bin, just as you'd expect. Then they burn it. Yes, just like the trash. But wait, they do the burning at a facility they call the "Waste To Energy" plant, so that makes it all OK.
It's all a big expensive greenwashing game, but everyone seems perfectly fine with it. La di da di da.
Well, I mean the recycling bins in most cities just gets put in landfills. It used to get shipped to China and put in landfills there, but China stopped taking it now that they don't have room for it and finally admitted plastic companies were lying about recycling it after lots of investigative reports.
Reuse is best but they really need to educate people and start actually fining people for putting the wrong stuff in the wrong bins if they do it repeatedly. Also, composting should be more widespread in larger areas to reduce waste.
But the biggest problem with burning the garbage is that they don't properly collect the fumes. It's expensive to do and would basically negate the income on the electricity produced. Some countries do it right and if done properly and if they are able to do it a lot, then it can be good. But Spokane is like the worst place to do it if you're not collecting the fumes properly considering the climate and wildfire smoke that is already choking everyone all across the state and beyond. And plastic fumes are especially deadly for people with asthma, not to mention cancer causing. But a lot of cities still allow people to burn their own garbage and so many people burn plastics when they do. It's horrible.
Ah yes, the fumes. That "Waste To Energy" incinerator is west of town in the area known as "West Plains", near I90, near the airport, and not far from Fairchild AFB which these days is a locus of refueling operations and other support functions. Huge, 4-engined planes coming and going all day long. Long ago the AF firefighting ops polluted the groundwater there with PFAS chemicals and much of it is no longer fit to drink. Between that, the air pollution from military and civil air operations, and whatever comes out of the stacks at the W2E plant, I have to imagine the denizens of the area have evolved some powerful pollution-resistant genetics. Or maybe they just die young from cancer and respiratory and neurological diseases. Fortunately it's a pretty low-income zone (think 'typical military town' - old skool Bremerton-ish) so all that disease can just be blamed on personal poor decision-making (like the decision to live there). A shame really, West Plains now has a ginormous Amazon warehouse that the residents could slave at (in addition to the super-Wally's and the casinos) if they'd Just Say No to cancer and all those other tempting diseases.