The bans on "single use plastic" here in New Zealand are targetted against the consumers - we can't have a "single use" plastic shopping bag (that invariably got used to carry other things or as a bin-liner in the kitchen) but no one is stopping Watties, McCain, and all the other frozen food manufacturers from sticking their snap-frozen veges, chicken nuggets, fries etc in single-use plastic bags. We go to the supermarket with our eco-friendly multi-use bags and fill them with single-use plastic bags containing bread and frozen foods.
This is humanity now, get used to it. Look at the other comments for instance, their only focus is on who is to blame, like everyone in this blame generation. This is just the basic level of thinking of most people, to not even notice what your comment is about. The absolute illogic of how we do everything. Harvest seafood off the coast of Canada, sail it all the way over to the coast of east Asia to process and package, then sell it to Europe. Completely asinine in every way imaginable. This is how we do things. We spend millions of dollars per day dressing up smart people in suits for the network news, then listen to them talk as though they have no experience at anything ever. Added to the fact that more than half of all viewers don't actually trust or believe fully in what they are watching........the West is basically in an age of Absurdism, and most of the rest have always been crazy.
Brilliant point. I just wondered that the other day so much stuff still comes in plastic except we can’t use it for single use stuff and actually what is the environmental cost to make all paper stuff?
Most people in the UK used to get their milk in glass bottles, delivered to their doors, and the empties were taken away. They were washed, refilled, and sent out again. They were topped with aluminium foil seals that, being an element, are super mega easy to recycle. Whenever people say that it's impractical to replace plastics and we can't do it, I point out that we already did it, it was practical, and we *absolutely* could go back to that.
America used to do that as well. But um…. Reasons I guess?? I mean it made jobs, was eco, and just kinda cool. I mean. Why tf get rid of a good thing???
@@stephenramos2824 Having it delivered is not practical - except that it was delivered. To our doorsteps. For decades. But that's hardly the point, this is not about conveyance, this is about removing plastic from the food chain. Whether you pick up a bottle at the supermarket or you have it delivered, there is nothing stopping us from switching to glass containers that are reused repeatedly, eventually to be recycled.
@@antontaylor4530 so did my parents in Canada back in the 70s, reason is say its not practical is with current wages and other cost wouldn't make it practical. Moving to reusable glass would be a great move.
Earth has many more humans on it then we did 40 years ago. Personal speculation tells me population would be the biggest issue with weekly deliveries to every single house in need of milk, even the mail runs late here. That or the milkman stayed a little too long at a few to many homes
Well, take it from an old woman, SOMEBODY got rid of our glass jars and I'm still PO'd over it! Why? Glass is the ultimate recyclable. If it breaks, it can be remelted and made over again. We used to reuse our glass jars and bottles constantly and I still do when I can buy something in one. I use them to save seeds, buttons, leftovers, to mix soap for my bug spray, to store craft supplies in...Back in the day, all of the Mayo Jars had rings that matched up to canning jar lids. And we used to can fruit and tomatoes in them. And also, back in the day, you could use paraffin to seal your jellies in any kind of glass jar, just about. Also, the instant coffee jars were great because they too matched up to canning jar lids. But somebody got some bad intel and decided that glass jar manufacturing was polluting the air too much. They shut down the factory and moved it somewhere else. Canada? There went a TON of jobs up in WV. That's part of the reason they are starving... Nobody talks about the fact that even recycling is horrible! Trash trucks now run 2 EXTRA times a week just to pick up the "recyclables". And they had to make HUGE trash cans to replace the tiny plastic bins that used to sit on the side of the road. Oh, and guess what? Japan got the contracts to run those trash trucks with our new huge plastic garbage cans! And since I'm disabled, I can't even push one to the curb! Plastic doesn't last long before it breaks or tears. I lose more money buying stuff that is either packaged in plastic or is made from plastic. Glass jars are airtight. Plastic bags are not. You know, they used to make some beautiful colored glass too! Blue Jars and Green Jars. About 2 Decades ago, they started using them for yard ornaments stacked on top of each other and glued together. When the sun shines through it, it's a beautiful sight! They used to have contests over on GardenForums before Houzz bought them. Some of the homes built with sandbags or stackwood have Glass art in the walls. That's hard to come by now too. There's nothing beautiful about plastic! Not even plastic beads. Flower pots...can hold some beautiful plants, but the pots are ugly. Walmart is selling sweatpants made with "recycled plastic" that's supposed to be turned into polyester. Just how long do you think those sweatpants are going to last? If you compare the energy used to recycle all of that plastic VS glass, the answer is obvious. Glass wins hands down! Not only for the fact that it's better, but it's also cheaper and it lasts longer before having to be recycled.
This guy really loves his glass jars. I agree with you tho, glass gives no taste to products and it has multi usage. My mom reused glass jars for making jam. There is a glass jar called "Norges glass" here, that had a glass top and an aluminium ring you tightened it with. These jars would last for generations, and all you had to do was replace the rubber seal ring every now and then. Im sure you had those aswell. Kept the stuff inside them fresher than regular pickle jars.
@@doctorstainy We had some baled jars with a clamp and rubber ring. Also, ceramic cheese jars with a metal clamp and rubber ring. I don't think you can even find them nowadays.
@@doctorstainy we had the glass jars with the metal rings and the glass insert where you replaced the rubber every time you canned something new in them.
Just read that only 40% of glass put in a single-stream recycling bin gets recycled, but 90% if put in its own container (multistream). There has to be a buyer of the cullet (crushed glass) locally who would produce new glass.
Hi, I'm German and just came home from a US trip a week ago. I keep telling my fellow German friends how I was having breakfast at hotels where everything (plate, fork, knife, cup) was single use paper and plastic. They are like: "Typical Americans". But then i tell them that the cups where individually wrapped in plastic and even so were the apples. And everyone is so speechless, I'm giving them secondary trauma. I'm an environmentalist in Germany knowing we are far behind being a climate and environmental friendly country. But damn... it's like: "How bad and in how many ways can you harm the planet?" And the US is like "YES!"
Germany is the king in terms of plastic waster per person per day within developed countries (3 times the EU average!), but it's also the king recycling with almost a third of its plastic waste recycled! I think they never heard of the "reduce and reuse" part of the equation so they focused 100% of their efforts on the "recycle" part...
@@nic12344 that is true. But still in Germany I have more and better choices than in the US, if I want to avoid it. It's torturing if you want to reduce your plastic use.
The most shellshocking point is made within the first one minute of this video. The absolutely evil resin id logo has fooled so many people, including me, into thinking we're doing something positive and recycling when really we're just giving our garbage to someone else
I had tried to recycle some things that I hoped were recyclable, but realized must not be due to being made out of heterogenous materials (paper plastic and metal together in one object). I recently had the "epiphany" that ok, it must be homogenous materials that you can recycle, and ok oh great, I see now there's a handy "this plastic is recyclable" icon on many of those kinds of object. oops. now I know better I guess, except, I don't know that that means I should NOT recycle them... if I put it in garbage, then there's zero chance. at least in the recycling, there's kind of a _pretend_ chance of it being recycled...
Its worse than that really. Trying to recycle non-recyclable trash makes it less likely that the trash that can be recycled will be, because it forces the recycling companies to employ trash sorters, which just adds to the expense of an already unprofitable process. Its why governments that are serious about recycling require people to sort their own trash.
@@Ashalmawia Attempting to recycle things that aren't recyclable actually adds to the problem and just makes the consumer feel better about their lifestyle. The recycling company has to pay people to sort that trash out of the recyclables and then ship it to landfills. Throwing it away in the first place is much more efficient. If it makes you feel bad then you can try to avoid single-use plastics and focus on the "Reduce, Reuse" part of the slogan.
Went to my local Starbucks today and saw the employee take the recycling bag and dump it into the trash bag before taking the trash bag to the dumpster. When I asked why they were not kept separate, her answer was that the customers don’t follow the instructions as to what is recyclable so there is no point to keep them separate. From this video I see that corporate America’s campaign to make you feel like you’re doing good by recycling is just a scam to keep us quiet and to keep us buying.
Ironically, he did the best thing possible and I advise you do the same. The best thing is to stick in landfill, anything else is just kidding ourselves while wasting tremendous amounts of money and resources to move that sht around before finally sticking 90% of it in landfill anyway. And the 10% is mostly from big factories like cocacola who have massive stacks of already sorted plastics of exactly the same type, like bottle caps etc. And yeah, I work in the waste industry.
Yeah I have 3 signs up in my classroom on what should actually be recycled and the state it should be in when you recycle it. (rinsed, flattened, etc) It's a very small percentage of waste. Kids and adults alike will just treat the bins like a second trash can and then the whole thing is contaminated and might as well be thrown out. The custodians do keep everything separate at least until it's out of our building, but I'm sure it just gets tossed in the trash at some point along the chain because people put too much trash in it to be worth sorting out.
Recycling is a feel good virtue signaling action. For liberals, thats 90% of the battle…and not just recycling. Literally everything. This is, in part, why nothing is ever fixed. I do recycle some items, but I throw out plastics. I also try to reuse items over and over. At the end of the day, throwing shit out isn’t an environmental catastrophe. That’s just another scam… just like the plastics recycle scam.
I’m 66. I remember when pop bottles and other glass containers were returned to vendors to be cleaned, sanitized and reused. And because the consumer paid a “deposit “ on those bottles, a huge percentage of those bottles were returned and reused. Not simply tossed on the roadside as trash (unlike plastic bottles).
Single use plastics are cheaper for the company so they can make more profit, under capitalism, the more profitable option will ALWAYS be chosen, even if it cost human lives, or our one and only planet.
Amen! I am 63 and remember your thoughts well. Used to take some bottles down to the grocery store, make enough to get a can of corn and go fishing! I get nauseous every time I am forced to throw a glass product into the trash!
Unfortunately, consumers today have become accustomed to "empty it, use it and toss it"... I envision seeing broken glass bottles and containers everywhere eg.,streets, parking lots etc...also some places like Las Vegas strip do not allow glass containers on the boulevard...reason? For one it can be used as a weapon. We live in a very different time...am homesick not so much for a place where I grew up but for a time when life was simple, slower going and safer. 😞
At the grand old age of 65 years, I remember a different world. All drinks used to come in glass bottles, milk, orange juice, sodas and beers. You were changed a little extra but reclaimed a deposit on its return. All the meats, cheeses, butter and sweets came wrapped in paper or paper bagged. ........then came the '70s and everything was under or in plastic. We need to return how things used to be sold.
I really like things in glass containers, it's just one of those things that makes me smile a bit. If I see a lot of options for a product on a shelf I'll check to see which ones are in glass (if that's an option) and will consider buying it first. I'll heavily consider it if the bottle/jar is a cool/pretty looking one. Bit of a magpie, but it seems to be useful this time. Especially with honey, because I never eat it fast enough to not have to deal with it crystalizing so being able to heat it up is important.
@@solidstateresistor2485 It's not the difficulty of use, it's the weight!. I love coke out of a bottle, at a restaurant. But I don't want to carry 24 glass bottles full of coke to my car at the crocery store. Nor do I want to drive all those glass bottles back to the store to get my deposit back.
@@AntilopeVS Mostly they're ridiculed for doubling down on ludicrous shit based on random connections, instead of actually focusing on tangible, evidential shit.
If the public thinks solar/wind power is working.. If the public thinks hydrogen tech is workin, that biofuels are not insanely stupid.. then they will let us kill nuclear power and make everything much worse
lol. JUST IN CASE someone doesn't get the joke but quotes this without vetting the video the actual person is Larry Thomas, President of the Society of The Plastics Industry. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-PJnJ8mK3Q3g.html
I'm a design student and did a research assignment on single use plastics. The truth is horrifying. You've done an awesome job making the information accessible and funny. You're truly doing the Lord's work. Good on you.
Well, the so-called "Plastics Industry" has its counterpart today in the brainwashed "Environmental Movement" which has only ONE agenda...to destroy the fossil fuel industry along with all plastics. But ask yourself this...WHAT would replace plastic? Glass? Paper? Recycled cow dung? Carbon nano packaging made from CO2 extracted from the air using vast amounts of electrical energy?? Sorry but the "Environmental Movement" is a world-class scam all by itself.
@@MrPLC999 if you look into it, as I did, there are loads of interesting and innovative alternatives to plastic being developed. If we as consumers demand it, companies will need to transition to these alternatives. I don't think it helps to demonize people who care about the future of the planet we live on as some sort of evil "movement". Considering the way very little action has been taken on things like climate change, the clout of the environmental movement you speak of pales in comparison to the fossil fuels industry. Maybe reconsider who it is you fear.
I haven't really looked for the definition of single use plastics, but where I live they put in some kind of ban on single use plastics. However, my bread still comes in a bag (that I use for cat litter disposal in lieu of shopping bags, so 2 uses), my milk comes in plastic bags, 3 of which come in yet another plastic bag, the garbage bags are plastic and single use on and on. So the government and environmental groups pat themselves on the back for the shopping bag ban, but barely scratched the surface. The celebration is way out of scale with the achievement. Don't get me wrong, I am pro environment and do my part in ways that I can afford (stainless steel reusable water bottles, tap water instead of bottled, refillables where I can, limiting vehicle use, keeping an older vehicle versus scrap and the energy and resources for a new one and more.)
Recycling has always been weird to me. I remember when they used to pay you to recycle, you brought in your cans, your paper or your plastic and made some decent money. Used to get something like 5 cents a can in my parents day. Then the prices dropped and you get like $2 for a garbage can full of recycling. Not even worth the gas to drive to the recycling center. Now most cities and states make recycling mandatory, and it's a service you pay extra for. Usually twice as much as Garbage with tons of fines if anything non recyclable found in your trash too often. Never mind that it's been found out a lot of "recycling companies" are scams and just either dump it in a landfill or ship it to China to have them "sort it" there.
At my university, I'm usually working late and so I've seen the janitors as they empty the trash, and I've noticed that they always empty the recycle cans and trash cans into the same bin. Once my girlfriend went to an environmental sustainability club and she mentioned this and the whole room went dead silent, they were heart broken. They had extensively encouraged the use of the recycling cans and didn't realize that it was all a sham. I guess I see why now, given that recycling doesn't happen 90% of the time, and I'm sure that the recycling cans at the university are so contaminated that they would never be accepted by a recycling plant anyways. The whole thing just gives one of those "living in the matrix" kind of feelings I guess.
Same thing here at my work. We have signs encouraging recycling and all those blue bins. When the cleaning staff come by, i see them empty the blue bins into the garbage. Even if it wasn't done in our faces, I'm sure somewhere in the chain down the line it would have happened anyways.
I’m a janitor at an auto manufacturing plant. Can confirm recycling and trash are thrown away together. We have separate bins for paper, plastic, and trash. Even if we didn’t throw them away together, it would be impossible to sort because nobody pays attention to labels. People throw trash into the recycling bin and recyclables in the trash. It’s not our job to sort so we treat it all the same.
my university had to contract with a recycler that would actually recycle the things we sent instead of throwing everything away. it costs more but we really pushed for it
When I worked at an office cleaning company the first thing I learned was that the garbage and recycling get put in the same bin when collecting. Stuff like that is genuinely radicalizing.
I worked for a cleaning company where we actually did recycle, but not glass. My boss told me the recyclers throw away the whole shipment if it's contaminated by broken glass. Also glass it's more expensive to recycle than to produce new so a lot of recyclers just throw it away anyway.
@@zugzug6773 most uk councils do both kerb sort, and hand sorting if they don’t have the machines, and anything that can’t be recycled generally gets sent to ‘waste to energy’, very little these days ends up in landfill.
@@almostanengineer source on which part? What my boss told me about glass Contaminating other recyclables? Or about glass being more expensive to recycle than make more new glass?
@@chrisknoblock I can understand that glass is a huge contaminant to other streams, but it’s still infinitely recyclable, and I feel like this is one of those things that are country specific, as we recycle around 69% off glass bottles and jars here in 🇬🇧.
During my career in engineering I worked for companies that made plastic containers. They don't ever want to see that plastic coming back to them. It is much more expensive to process post consumer scrap than to use virgin material. Not defending them, just stating the depth of the problem.
@@gregoryeverson741 #3 (PVC) is rarely used for consumer product containers anymore mostly replaced with #1 (PET(E)) but PVC has a lot of other uses, mostly long term products like pipe and architectural products. #4 (LDPE), #5 (PP) and #6 (PS) could be recycled if they can be separated from #2 (HDPE) and each other - expensive as you noted. #2, #3, #4, #5 and #6 foams would be impractical. #7 (other) is usually a mix of different plastics and recycling these would be impractical. Some other plastics like ABS and many polyurethanes (PU) are thermosets so they cannot be recycled, Again these mostly have long term uses. It's the single use consumer items that cause most of the plastic pollution. You mentioned #8 which is lead. Lead is currently one of the most recycled metals in the world.
So we need to dump konwy into R&A to make recycling cheaper. If we can make it profitable for big companies to recycle then we would all benifits. But yeah I get that it is cheaper to use virgin plastic. We made rain barrels at my old job. The recycled barrels were always failing because they were not strong enough
@@grimdavis58 Or we can tax the hell out of new single use plastics and make it cheaper to use recycled materials (like a 75/25 blend of new v recycled to address the stability issue) or glass.
Incineration is the solution to the plastic problem, the only items that go into residential trash bins that should be recycled is metal and glass. Paper products and plastic are renewable energy sources that we will never run out of.
At the recycling shed in my town, they used to have separate bins for each type of plastic. Now you just toss everything in. Recently, glass recycling has gone the same way. It used to be clear, green, and brown glass bins but not anymore. Even paper is mixed where once it was separated into glossy, newsprint, and office paper. I wonder how much of these are really being recycled now.
Except... when has legislation actually fixed ANYTHING? The first thing that happens when new legislation is passed.... is legions of lawyers start working to figure out ways to circumvent it, or at the very least, make their particular client exempt for (reasons).
The first lesson I learned in polymer science and material science at uni. 1: polymers suck at recycling. 2: Things that say they're 100% recycled plastic, almost always twist that statement or outright lie about it. 3: plastic is brilliant fuel for powerplants as long as you have the correct types of particle filtering. In which case its better for the climate than coal.
>Plastic is brilliant fuel for powerplants... [it's] better for the climate than coal Legit? That's amazing, like damn I thought oil was good enough already.
Thanks for pointing out that legislation is what got us into this mess. People are always talking about how it's up to individuals to fix everything, and about how people shouldn't be forcing the government to force companies to do things, but they never seem to notice when companies do the same thing in reverse.
Not me. I'm a foaming armed organizing Leftist. The market should be beaten into submission, otherwise it will be beating the crap out of US via pollution, bad health, poverty, misery, and environmental disasters. Who's more important- the people, or filthy worthless special interest CEOs and mostly rich shareholders???
@Electroencefalografista how on earth did you come to the ass backwards conclusion that a conjunction forms any form of equivocation. No that's not how the word and works.
Forcing the government to force companies is just a roundabout way to force individuals to have no choice and force them to comply. That's very communist of you. Regulate and legislate until companies are either forced to fail, or comply, giving consumers no choice but to comply as well. As we've seen, increased regulation like this increases cost, makes the smaller businesses fail, and gives the larger ones an easy government backed monopoly. The next step is for the companies to leave America to maintain profit margin after more legislation and tax comes. And I'm not even doing a slippery slope, this is literally happening right now. It's been happening for the last 30+ years. So legislating a solution is the wrong solution. It will only hurt us more.
It's called, "gaslighting" ! We have been gaslighted into thinking that it's OUR fault that plastic pollution is a problem that WE... the consumers... created when, in fact, it's the big businesses that are the ones that are truly to blame because THEY are the manufacturers of the stuff ! NOT the little people who are forced to live off of plastic-made products because there is no other choice !
When I was a kid in the 90s, "reduce, reuse, recycle" was changed to "recycle, reduce, reuse". This happened to be the same time that Coke switched from reusable glass deposit bottles to disposable plastic bottles. I only remember because Coke sent people to our high school to get market feedback on different plastic bottle designs.
Where do you live? I’m middle-aged and I’ve only ever heard reduce, reuse, recycle. I’ve never heard it any other way. Perhaps I’m out of touch. I’m Canadian.
Let me defend the Crying Indian commercial from the early 70’s. Before the commercial, it was common for people to throw plastic, paper, glass or anthing else on the ground, wherever they happened to be. Trash was piling up on roadsides, vacant lots or anywhere people happend to be, it was discusting. Younger people may be reluctant to believe this, but generally the country is much cleaner than it was, in all ways, water, air and ground. The Crying Indian ads played everywhere, day and night for years and it was successful, people are less likely to engage in the piggish behavior of the recent past. Yes I do know we’re not perfect, but we are much better. Thank you Crying Indian, even if you really were an Italian American playing a role, you did good.
Did people's behaviour change because of the ad? Or did people change their behaviour because trash was piling up on roadsides, vacant lots or anywhere people happend to be and it was discussing. Outside the US (I happen to be British) there were the same problems and they resulted in solutions but we didn't have the crying Indian ad or anything similar that I can remember.
Growing up in Southern California in the 90s through to the 2000s, people still threw their trash everywhere. I moved to Arizona in 2008 and was astounded by how much cleaner everything was. Now with so many people coming from other states (especially California), things are starting to get dirty again with litter bugs just tossing their trash everywhere again...
It's really sad how consumers are kept in the dark, tricked and fed misinformation. When government and corporations get together to develop policies, the average citizen almost always ends up the loser.
Cept in the case of climate everyone loses cept the people who will be dead by the time it affects them. The only winners are sociopaths devioid of consideration for future peoples.
Are you just waking up to the fact it has been this way and getting worse since feudal times? In essence Big Business and Government are two sides of the same coin and have been as far back at least as the industrial revolution. The rich are powerful because they have much more significant access to government as a result of their financial influence.
it's sad that a majority of the human populace are referred to as "consumers", for as long as we accept that is what we are, we will be treated as such.
I'm actually fuming right now. I've always been shocked at how certain plastic containers were recyclable, but still chose to trust the symbol and toss it in the recycle bin for years now. To know how blatantly the rich have manipulated the public has seriously angered me to my core.
Oh my sweet summer child,these people lied to people about cigarettes for 50 years,they have given interviews where they have non chalantly told that killing 1.5 million Iraqi children was quote - "Worth it".....plastic is nothing to them.
Not trying to make you madder but… well, if you think about it… WHY ARE WE STILL PAYING 5 CENTS PER PLASTIC WATER BOTTLE .. if they not being recycled? Not to mention.. why are we paying monthly fees for the blue recycle dumpster ?
In Japan, they really do recycle a lot of plastic. People wash the plastic, return it, and it is made into trays. We need to find alternatives to plastic and restrict plastics to items that can easily be recycled.
When I moved from Germany to Austria I first thought how far behind Austria must be in sustainable living. At least in Vienna, everyday waste is separated into plastic bottles and milk cartons, glass, aluminum, paper (all for recycling), sometimes compost and everything else is general waste. In Germany, we would tediously separate general waste from packaging - thinking we were recycling. Well, turns out that the Viennese system is just more honest. Bonus points for the fact that general waste is turned into district heating.
@@loukka Sure buddy, thanks to our EU funded wizards, our non-recyclable plastic wastes gets transformed in rainbow riding unicorns that bring peace to our continent.
In Poland before communism collapse there were barely any plastic. Water, beer and milk in glass bottles. You had refundable caution on each bottle and milk bottle were refilled with raw milk, or you were taking empty bottle to store, leave it in the crate, and take full one. Meat, veggies and fruits were wrapped in paper or sold in wooden punnets (like strawberries, cherries etc.).
Butcher still wrap in (plastic coated) paper and glass bottles are a good idea but they have to be collected and washed before refilling so that was replaced with single use plastic because it is cheaper. Maybe when the price of crude oil gets high enough we will go back to glass. Paper straws SUCK (no pun intended) as do paper coffee cups which burn your hand. Nothing is better for hot drinks than styrofoam cups; no burn and keeps the drink hot longer! Same thing with take home boxes; paper/cardboard ones don't keep food hot or cold and get soggy while styrofoam does just the opposite !
@@Hogger280 Butcher paper was never plastic coated. It may have been waxed but no plastic. As for styrofoam boxes and cups it's either health or convenience.
@@nieczerwony Quality butcher paper is often Poly coated and that my friend is a kind of plastic. I used to work for a Railroad that delivered hopper cars, to a paper mill, of poly/plastic beads used to coat paper for magazines and water proof butcher paper.
Not sure where I learned it from but I learned it when I was a kid in the 90s and have been trying to tell people this for years. I think that was the few years right before plastics got everyone to think recycling was the important thing and not the last resort as it was supposed to be.
@@1ucasvb the global economy that allows the top 500 richest people to hold more wealth than the bottom 3.5 billion people and is destroying the ecosystem and causing violent fundamentalism to ferment across the planet? Our industrial base is also not at all cheap disposable goods, that is South Asia's industrial base but most of the rest of the world has different industry.
I’ve been so skeptical of recycling for so long. My fiancé and her mom fight with me and I used to say it was a joke. Thank you so much for bringing the truth to light. I knew I wasn’t crazy!
Not all recycling is bad though! Plastic is fucked, but a lot of other things can actually be usefully recycled if I'm not mistaken, like glass and metal!
Yeah, I gave up on recycling about 10 years ago when I saw our local plastics/ cardboard recycling trailer being hauled into the local landfill and dumped in with the rest of the garbage. Then I realized “Ohhh!!! Recycling is just supposed to make me feel better about myself” Screw that!
Portugal here! I did the same, just put everything in the garbage, and that is that... I don't buy water bottles though, got a bottle (0.5 liter) fill it with tap water.
Luckily there's a lot of companies that help spread the message by making trashcans with two holes that lead to the same bag. You don't have to go to the landfill to notice.
Other recycling companies do pay by the pound to take the plastic recycling... They have to be making money off the process since they pay for the plastic they collect... "10% of all plastic has been recycled" is huge and definitely worth all the effort, even if it was 1%, it would be a tremendous help... Talking down recycling seems just as evil as a ban on plastic bans...
Remember what he said, “keep recycling 1 & 2 plastic b/c 10% of it (all plastic) gets recycled and that’s way better than 0!” Paper does get recycled. I wonder if it just gets cut out when there is more plastic than paper. The effort vs efficiency of prize.
The so-called recycling symbol is actually not just for recycling. It represents the 3 R's. Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Reduce and reuse so we don't have to resort to recycling as much.
It's so sad people are more likely to choose whatever option is the most capitalist/profitable, you can't shop your way out of global warming. I think reducing and reusing would also make us happier, if we had more of a personal connection to our belongings, things handed down, borrowed and gifted, rather than disposable and meaningless.
I think they should incorporate biological breakdown methods into the recycling process to turn the plastics back into liquid or gas components that can be separated and either burned for fuel or reused as chemical feedstocks. There are lots of new types of plastic-eating bacteria being found on a regular basis. Wouldn't be all that expensive to modify landfills into bioreactors for that purpose. Just need another rubber sheet over the top to catch the gas and a sump pump to catch the liquid.
@@grugnotice7746 we need to stop making plastic entirely. Bioreactors with plastic eating bacteria would probably be a great way to process existing waste, but I fear it will be used as an excuse to continue making new waste just like recycling...
Plastic as a material is very useful and valuable. But as a society we do not value it, and just throw it away. It's wasteful to use it for packaging. But I don't think it should be entirely banned. We just need to be more wise in how we use it.
I worked for a company making machinery for the recycling industry. They also have a recycling business to have a place to try out the machinery we made. The first day I went to the company for a job as a machinist I almost left ,the place was just full of large boxes of shredded plastic, I did find the boss and had my interview. After my first year of working there they finally moved all the boxes of shredded plastic out to the parking lot which was still there when I left. The plastic could not be sold because it was full of dirt and other debris. The best recycling would be to burn it to generate electricity. Recycling is mostly an expensive scam that cost more money than they can get for the recycled product. It also adds a great deal of pollution through the collection process large trucks collecting machines being made and used for recycling. it's mostly a scam the rich make money from government subsidies.
It's not about "getting money" out of it but about protecting the planet. Subsidies for saving the human race is a very good way of investing money, if you ask me. You have to get out of the mental cage of neoliberalism to be able to solve this problem.
Subsidies create these problems not solve them you peanut, look at all the companies currently receiving billions in subsidies to destroy society and the planet paid for by you and everyone down to you great great grandchildren that is getting scammed for taxes
Actually, we should re-refine plastic, not burn it. It is technically possible (though difficult) to break it down to small molecules the way we do with crude oil and build it back up.
This is one of those instances where I wish I wasn't a huge introvert, and that I had more friends and a bigger platform to share it with everyone. The world needs to know about this.
No problem , You can share it, Talk to me and we'll see what worries you (P.s. I am Plastic Engineer and Working in Recycling Industry so,, I wont talk BS )
As a guy with 13 years in plastics, i kind of hate that you're at least 90% right. Certain thermoplastics can be recycled pretty readily. Polyethylene, polypropylene, and TPO, just to name a couple, can be near infinitely recycled and reprocessed. Without getting into too much shop talk, though, it does bring additional difficulties with processing it into something useable.
As hard as I try to limit the amount of plastic i "consume", it is a very difficult thing to do. Thanks for pointing out the logo's the plastic industry created to fool us into thinking that we are buying recycleable plastics. I think that making people aware of this problem is a good step, and people should be more aware of their own contribution to this issue as small as it may seem. As I have recently been made aware of the amount of microplastics found everywhere is in a large part due to our clothing being made of synthetic fibers, so that is another thing I need to take into account when I buy new clothing. One of the biggest issues in our societies is the throw away culture... we always seem to need new stuff... Keep up the good work.
Just as the increase in vegetarians has not brought per-capita meat consumption down to a level of 1960, individual recycling and consumer choices haven't brought down single-use plastics. Anarchists, Libertarians and Corporatists don't want to hear it, but government action is needed to either ban it or tax it (excluding some medical products).
Well, it hasnt come down to that level bc the world has EXPLODED with humans in that time. And with that many ppl, more resources are required to sustain them. More ppl using more plastic and eating more meat and using more electricity.
@@Pomagranite167 We do not have limited resources, we just have people who don't think humans deserve access to those resources unless they can pay. Plenty of water, land, and food for every human being on earth, but daddy capitalism says they have to pay before getting * checks notes * a thing they need to survive.
I have a lot of highly-educated friends who think that "bio-degradeable" plastics, advertised to be completely dissolved in nature in 3 years to be "sustainable" and "environmentally friendly". I mean, where did the microplastics go? Ah that's right... they can't see them. But yeah, gonna enjoy them with our sashimi and sushi then!
There are plastic bags that decompose into little pieces in time. The problem with them is that it when picking up trash on the street, there are then hundreds of little pieces to pick up, and when trying to responsibly reuse them, the thing you're storing in them is left in a pile of little plastic pieces in the attic. The thing is to prevent people from using too much packaging it in the first place, not to create self destructing objects.
I have one of those biodegradable plastic spoons and have been using it for five years now wash it in dish washer and all no sign it’s degrading in the slightest.
My friend in the UK bought a very expensive fleece jacket made from recycled bottle. It seems bottles from the UK were sent to France to be chipped. The chips sent to Eire to be made into yarn. The yarn sent to Canada to be made into jackets The jackets sent to Europe to be sold as Eco Friendly Jackets.Funny ole World init.
And on top of that, plastic clothing is an environmental disaster of an idea. Each time plastic clothes get washed, they dump loads of microplastic into the drains.
My dad worked at a recycling firm and PET, PVC, and HDPE can be partially recycled with subsidies. The other plastics have no value past the one time use and are usually incinerated or sold to small countries illegally where they are burned in pits.
anyone who has ever tried to recycle 3d print fillament is aware of degradation. every time you recycle, the plastic is basically 30% worse than it previously was. after two or three cycles, it's basically unusable. and holy shit is it hard to do.
@Tommy Barlow for better or worse there is such a lot of kinds of plastics so there is probably a plastic that can be used as building material. There is a reason why it was called a wonder material.
@Tommy Barlow And putting plastic to anything that is in sunlight ie top of the ground and in extreme abrasion environment like asphalt is fucking terrible idea, witch creates micro plastics to surrounding environment every time car driver or people walk there... on cold climates with winter tires and need to blow the roads.. ou boy that will be even worse. But guess out of sight out of mind is a thing here. As solution we might want to look into putting plastics under the roads as we already do as in filter fabric to let moisture trough but support the structure. In this case as interlocking shapes that create support and base for the road, while allowing moisture that causes problems during frost season to seep trough with out issue. Its underground so no sun light and there should be minimal if any abrasion.
@@Hellsong89 So, you are okay with it underground. Then what's wrong with burying it all in land fills? Recycling is a waste of energy, so just bury it all. Most of the alternatives to plastic are bad. The grocery store that I go to quit using plastic bags and are now using paper bags. They tend to tear and allow your food to drop to the ground. Not exactly a good replacement. Cloth bags need to be washed or can become contaminated. Plastic helps preserve food. Getting rid of it will lead to more wasted food.
@@Hellsong89 Your arguments will be attacked mostly because you are willing to analyze potential drawbacks for things that the anointed know it alls have decided is settled science. I do agree with some of your arguments, may have a few different ideas, but am willing to listen and research. There are many "forbidden topics" in conservationist circles, just try to open a discussion on the pros and cons of forest management, or 10 years ago about the potential benefits of nuclear, or about the pros and CONS of wind and solar.... or simply point that negative consequences of not having an integrated approach to protecting the environment... like highlighting the bad consequences of mainly concentrating on carbon emissions while ignoring waste, water misuse, availability and disposal of rare earth elements, etc.
If only 10% is getting recycled, it doesn't justify all the pollution caused by the recycling effort, itself. Picking up the recycling, separately from other garbage is extremely costly. We need to refocus our efforts on reduce, reuse, and safe storage. We should also be using plastics as fuel, as cleanly as possible.
Where I live in Mexico, people actually go around picking plastic out of the trash and sell it to recycling centers. So, there's obviously a market for it.
I was familiar with the plastics numbering system and new that some plastics were not recyclable yet I never asked myself why the plastic number was "housed" in a recycle symbol even when not recyclable. Clearly, I've been hypnotized. In my case, their ploy totally worked. I sub-consciously assumed that "they" were working on the recyclability. Another realization: juice companies are actually packaging companies: the liquid they sell is often cheaper than the packaging. What's your take on aluminum use in food packaging?
I can't believe humans are actually ok with dumping trash into the ocean. I actually think these people need to be put into hospitals for mental illness.
I am old enough to remember that commercial. At the time it was needed. Back then people would just toss their trash out the window of their cars. Since then, the amount of litter along roads etc has dramatically decreased. Although I completely agree with the video, just wanted to point out that the commercial did have a positive effect to some extent.
If anything it seems like it had a negative impact. Not being able to see the extent of the issue has led society to discount the negative externalities of single use plastics. If there was plastic everywhere maybe we would start to see some change in manufacturing and environmental protection legislation.
It always comes down to the money folks. There is little money to be made in recycling and it is very time consuming. Years ago here in Saskatchewan and in Manitoba we had roadside containers to put your trash in and the dept. of highways disposed of it. It was discontinued as I suppose someone in government was looking for ways to save money and deemed this would save us tax dollars. They probably felt so good about this decision that they gave themselves nice raises and topped up their pension plans. In all fairness though the recycling programs might have made this practice problamatic. Personally I cant believe no one mentions the emissions and money we are spending on hauling all this garbage all over the country, but there seems to be few people especially in government that want to look at the long term approach or the big picture : they just want to take our tax dollars and run.
I'm old enough to remember it too but my parents taught me not to toss my garbage on the side of the road even before it aired. I guess it's not unlike Smokey the Bear needing to tell you not to burn down the place. By the way, I knew from a young age not to do that too.
@@roberttucker4196 In my city in Ontario the public garbage cans became scarce not long after we were given a weekly garbage limit. People used them instead. The solution was to remove them instead of admitting that forcing people to be decent doesn't work. Now we get to regularly call the city to look through the bags left behind our house to see if they can figure out who dumped it there. If we don't they come after us for having garbage on our property. Well, their property, but our responsibility. They make the rules and the responsible people pay the price.
There is still a lot of roadside litter. The state Departments of Transportation have just talked local non-profits, service clubs and civic organizations into picking it up on a regular basis. This makes it look like less than it actually is. You can see the signs all over: "The next 2 miles of roadside kept clean by _______" or words to that effect.
I think it would be wonderful to give people some alternatives: use glass instead, traditional shopping bags instead of the plastic ones...I'd love to watch a video suggesting some alternatives even if it's just a matter of shifting your mind- my brother used to think that carrying a glass bottle of water is heavy but then when he reframed it into: Im strong and this extra weight gives me the exercise I need to get healthier then the whole thing changed!
I've done my shopping for years based on how I recall my Mother shopping in the 1950s when it was more pre supermarket era. I even when I lived in the city of London (UK) tried to buy items in glass which I could use for storage afterwards or recycle; I save the bags in cereal packets which have a good consistency for refrigeration ( after a rinse I can put various meats from a local butcher /delicatessan/ and cheeses as well ) The cheeses and hams last very well wrapped in greaseproof paper thus not going sweaty in the refrigerator...and after all they were often stored in an aerated side box or safe on the side of the hose in the old days where it stayed cool .)Shopping nowadays is done less frequently and is so monotonous in a supermarket culture so that people just want to drive there and get it over with ! I now live on one of the Scottish Isles in a small village where there is a local baker and butcher as well as general grocery shop.(But I duplicated this same sort of action when I was living in London by looking around creatively-finding local family run businesses and shops to use near to where I lived so I know it can be done if there is a will!)! At present on the Island of Arran I can get milk refills from a local farmer from a machine at the shop thus reducing waste bottles. I reuse paper bags over and over for carrying and storage and the plastic cereal ones again freezing .Having said that I do recall when I was younger that cereals were usually in WAXED PAPER BAGS -NOT PLASTIC so that should be revised!! At another village there is an Eco Store where you can buy loose Nuts and dried fruit and all sorts of things as well as refill household cleaning and dishwashing and laundry fluids etc. (If this was organised once more and became mandatory everywhere -it could go some way towards solving this problem... but there would still need to be STIFF PENALTIES for LITTERING and WASTE as happened once during WW2 because there is too slack an attitude with so many people now.
While not using plastic bottles all together would be the best solution, you can still use them and be smart about it. For example, if you have to buy a bottle of liquid while out, then make sure to get whatever is in a stronger bottle so you can reuse it more. Avoid the flimsy ones that are made to "reduce" plastic waste since they can't be reused as much. Get a proper reusable bottle of any material for daily use as well. Glass would likely be the worst option only because it is more likely to break sooner and I'm not sure if places accept broken glass for recycling (even though they break it as part of the recycling process) If you do get plastic shopping bags reuse them! They make great small trash-bags for picking up around the house or in a car. Plus weighing them down with other trash means they won't float out of a dump. If you live in a city area you can also use them as dog or other animal poop bags. (if you live in a more rural area it is better to leave the poop on the ground). They can also be used for packaging fragile items when moving if you collect a good amount of bags. For plastic containers that aren't good enough to reuse for food storage, try and find a use for them that would replace a plastic item you would be buying new. Personally, I use the plastic mac and cheese cups for paint water or mixing small amounts of epoxy. No need to buy and ruin a plastic container when I can just use those until they are too dirty and need to be tossed out. The best thing to do is find uses for the plastic you are forced to buy for certain products since it isn't realistic to not buy anything with plastic packaging currently.
I'm not an expert and I'm not an old man, but I know some things, including some history and back in the early 1900s, before capitalism took over because of the big money interests, there was a pretty strong ethic for minimalism, simplification, standardization, repair and reuse. You'd get your milk delivered in glass bottles, picked up, refilled and returned. No plastic needed. You'd get many other food items in aluminum cans. Those could be washed, refilled, reused as well. There was also many developments in more Earth-friendly biomaterials like hemp that were extremely versatile and, of course, those developments were largely squashed by big business, particularly the Big Oil and Gas industry. Lovely folk, they are. Of course, they are just playing along to the rules of the game of capitalism. So, who could expect any different? Truth is, we need system change, not just legislative change. We can't continue in an economic system that is based on growth on a planet with finite resources. In fact, a resource-based economy using the advanced tools of science and technology is the most logical direction to go. A resource-based economy would use scientific protocols to ensure any product made would already be made to the most efficient standard possible and it's 'end of life' process would be well established before ever starting to create such a thing. If it isn't made to be reused many times, then it must be made to break down easily in the environment, and fertilize or feed the planet from which is came.
As a student industrial product design i can confirm all the crap about recycling, even if we could recycle everything it would still be worse than just reusing packaging. Id love to see a future where products are sold in some sort of Tupperware that you can return to the store. We already have this for beer bottles and PET bottles in my country and it saves a lot of trash and energy.
I think it might become something like that in the future. Companies are already starting to realize that if you can reuse packaging, then you actually save a lot of money on the long run. In my town, many companies are now starting to use standardized size wooden skids which are made in a much more though manner. Instead of throwing them away after a few weeks, they can last during several years. By adopting some simple methods, the amount of trash generated can be reduced immensely However, we also all have our part to play. For example, a lot of single-use plastics are required to manufacture and transport all the highly modified food and drinks that people consume on a daily basis. If everyone restarted to cook by themselves using fresh ingredients instead of purchasing industrial food, a large portion of single-use plastic would be eliminated
I basically save every plastic container and reuse them until they break/warp to the point that they’re unusable. I also try to recycle what I can, but (A) most plastics aren’t recyclable, and (B) many recycling services are a sham and just dump whatever’s in the recycling bin into the same dumpster with the non-recyclable trash. Oh, and you have to prep your recyclables properly before “disposing” them or they won’t be viable for recycling-this includes cleaning/washing them. It’s too expensive and time consuming for recyclers to do it, so if you don’t, they’ll get dumped with the rest of the trash.
This is being done in my area already. Products being sold in specific tupperware containers with a barcode sticker and you can return it to several nearby locations where it will get provided to a new food seller to use again.
@@MiraBooReusing plastic containers until they break/warp is a very effective way to poison your body with microplastics. Do some research on the effects of microplastics in the body and consider whether you actually want to be doing that.
I had a strong hunch my whole life that plastics couldn't be recycled because of their complex composure. They are fairly soft and malleable but are toxic. You can't heat up toxic material without creating toxic vapors. Also, it will destroy the molecular structure of the softer materials. So I was confused as to how this process would succeed to create the same material again after destroying its infrastructure. But only today have I found the conclusion to be in line with what I already had a suspicion of because of *THIS VIDEO* . Thank you 👍
Main problem nowadays is the inter-plastic contamination which limits the potential of plastic to be recycled. Climate Town guy explained that nicely. Heating the plastic too high would decompose the molecular structure of course, but keeping it at a malleable temperature the plastic can be reshaped. PET is known to be recycled although it is often contaminated with other plastics rendering it 'infeasible' to recycle. Sigh, in the end using less plastics and reusing plastics is a good way to reduce the chance of you adding up more plastic to the already very depressing plastic soup.
One of the biggest problems with plastics is just from a material standpoint. It's not like paper where it's all basically the same dyed wood pulp, there's dozens of different types of plastics and the only way they can effectively be recycled is by grouping them together. A lot of plastic items don't even have the fake recycling classification number. You can recycle them, the plants that make the objects in the first place start out with a bunch of pellets they melt down and normally injection mold. any extra material is sent to a shredder and then added back to the pile. I'm not even an environmentalist, just worked with plastics. It doesn't really work from a practical standpoint. Then again, the US at this point is pretty much the only country that doesn't recycle anything other than metal so recycling in general is a scam. We used to export our literal garbage to China and other countries for recycling, but they've all started doing their own and stopped buying it, so now there's "recycling centers" that are just buying warehouses to store thousands of tons of paper and other garbage to be recycled.
Having been in plastic producing industry for a long time, I was always puzzled by the secrets of recycling. I understand filtering metals out from a heap of mostly plastic is somewhat easy, but I could not wrap my mind around how they sort all the incompatible plastics, and filter out dirt from small to large particles, filter out paper, glass, etc. - and that the end product could be used for more than filler material. So eventually it turned out they don't, then (technically) all made sense, it's just a political front. What bothers me is that people generally believe that if they buy a PET bottle of water, then dispense of it in a proper container, that it will eventually become a new bottle. What bothers me probably even more is that plastic bottles are just marginally cheaper than actually recyclable glass bottles. Which, by the way, do not leech any of the endocrine disruptors into the liquid. It also bothers me that some products use heaps of Styrofoam (a huge nuisance, really) as packaging, where paper could be used - here I absolutely applaud IKEA, who never use Styrofoam.
I try so hard to avoid plastic. Makes me cry when I am when I see all the plastic I was forced to buy. I look around my house, and I wonder how did we manage to live without it. It's destroying our oceans, and it's destroying our world, yet I have no idea how to live without it.
Hello, when it comes to plastic non disposables second hand is the way to go, try to find solutions or routes around to our never ending plastic problem lol
I remember in 2010 a college graduate asked me, "How can we force people to recycle" I shuddered and laughed and asked, How much will China buy? Where do all your kids toys come from? I think that is the disconnect of reality people live in.
It depends what type of recyclign he was refering to. Metals and paper/cardboard can actually be recycled at 100% and it even requires less energy to recycle those than to create new one from raw natural resources. Unfortunately, there still are tons of people throwing away their stuff either directly in nature or in the garbage...
@@PG-3462 though that was not referred to, I belive it was about plastic. Are you simple or just slow? Yes, cardboard and paper can be recycled. If you wanted to be super smart youd ask, why is plastic oil based and not organic? Henry Ford pushed that a 100 years ago. Why Not? Hmm, look up he richest man who ever lived in the U.S.
You have the absolute textbook perfect face for a horseshoe moustache. You're leaving value on the table for not having one. I love your channel already 💜
@@snap-off5383 see I always called it the handlebar too, but I keep getting corrected that the handle bar is the twirly. If you image search handlebar is almost all twirly moustaches. 🤷♂️
My city banned single use plastic bags a few years ago so now all of the grocery stores have “reusable” plastic bags that everyone just treats like disposable bags only they use like 4 times as much plastic as the old ones:/
Great points, it's 100% the packaging industry's responsibility to end single-use plastic packaging and use hemp or bamboo and end this madness of single-use plastics.
It's also about us to consume less highly modified crap. The overproduction of anything highly modified and imported on thousands of kilometers will always require tons of single-use materials. Even if you replace all plastic by hemp or bamboo, it will simply generate massive monocultures of those plants, which will destroy the environment and require tons of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. I'm not asking you to go back to the Dark Ages, but simply to consume in a better way. Select higher quality alternatives and only purchase what you truly need. Single-use plastics are also highly required for industrial food. Simply by learning to cook by yourself using fresh ingredients and by drinking less industrial stuff (soft drinks, alcohol, juice, etc.), you can cut off a huge % of the single-use plastic required in your life. Actually, companies aren't using single-use plastic just for fun. They do it because the products that we want to overconsume on a daily basis need to be overpackaged in order to even exist.
Aluminum containers would go a long way in reducing the amount of single use plastic. Beverages, shampoo almost anything sold in a plastic container could be sold in an aluminum container.
@@PG-3462 customers can't fix those problems.. most of us are actually poor or otherwise unable to make those live changes. Just imagine yourself buying stuff that would be better for the environment but 4x as expensive.. you couldn't keep up and that's also why nothing will change for a long time. We literally have no cheap alternatives and no incentives to make those changes
@@cobalius The vast majority of people are overconsuming tons of things they don't even need. The amount of food, fuel, clothes, water, plastic and all kind of things that are wasted every year is INSANE. To reduce pollution, we must consume less and more intelligently. If you consume less, then you will end up with much more money to buy things that are a bit more expensive, but that will last much longer. If you take care of what you own, it will also last longer and on the long run you will end up with more money in your pockets. The argument of "most people are poor" is simply wrong, as the vast majority of people in developped nations are participating to all this overconsumption. Just look at 4x4 SUV and pickup truck sales, or the fact that nearly all major cities in the world are currently increasing the size of their airports because people keep travelling more often by airplane... Or the fact that Americans in dry states like Arizona, Utah and Nevada consume more water in average than most Western Europeans... People are simply wasting things without even realizing, nor caring
Ya, none of this is accurate. I designed and built plastic recycling plants from 1995-2007 and they operated rather successfully I might add. Type 1 plastic, HDPE is 100% recyclable into new bottles. Unfortunately the labels are PVC and the caps are HDPE. The good news is these can be separated through processing. The rest, type 2-8, we were told "couldn't be blended". That was until we proved them wrong. My plants would grind, pelletized, and extruded these plastics quite well. In fact, 90% of the plastic lumber you see is blended plastic that's proven to hold up for decades. You can recognize them as recycled just by the color. Brown or Grey. That's recycled plastic. Now, there is a "scam" aspect to recycling but it's not what you're positing. It's in the collection, fees for collection, taxation and sale of these plastics to plants like mine. That's where the real "scam" is, but to say that these plastics can't be recycled...that's patently false. Sorry but no soup for you.
Clickbaity title combined with an 8 minutes-long video and 4 cited sources, is surprisingly enough not that reliable. Sadly, it seems to have convinced many here, just because simple black and white answers are easier to believe.
Yeah, you're correct. Plastic is wildly recyclable. The problem is the effort from people to make their containers recyclable. I wash and remove labels. I KNOW my stuff is being recycled. The real problem with recycling is human laziness. They just want to throw their trash in a blue bin and feel good about themselves.
@@AdjustinThings Washing isn't the issue they tell you it is. It just costs the recyclers more to run wash tanks as well as grinders but my plants were well able to handle unwashed recyclables.
So we need to vote for politicians who will actually do something, and we ALSO need to vote with our money. Stop buying plastic. Here are some simple methods: Bring re-usable grocery bags when shopping. If you keep forgetting them, leave some in your car, or even get those little compatible ones that fit inside their own little pouch in your pocket. Buy vegetables on the shelf instead of in packaging. All those celery sticks and carrots and tossed greens in neat little plastic boxes and bags? Take 5 extra seconds to wash and cut it yourself and instead buy the ones that are bundled in a wire or rubberband sitting under the sprinklers. Get pen cartridges instead of buying new pens all the time. 99% of pens can be refilled by opening them and replacing their ink cartridge. Better yet, get a fountain pen that has a dip refill (not those with replaceable cartridges) if you can afford it. Stop using suranwrap at home. You don't need it. Use aluminum foil instead, and reuse the foil. If it isn't burned/ dirty, you can flatten the foil out, fold it up, and use it again. This is part of the original purpose of foil (but for gods sake don't bake with it). If people stop buying it, they'll be forced to stop making it. Or at least try to lobby to find a way to force people into buying it. In which case it will be easier to use that as evidence against them.
"Plastic" isn't specific enough. Polyethylene is worth recycling, due to Economies of Scale. At one point, Aluminum wasn't worth recycling, until we started having enough furnaces capable of handling those temperatures efficiently, but compared with the furnaces to refine bauxite. You can't just say "Plastic." Comparing PETE to LDPE is like comparing Steel to Aluminum, and even Steel isn't specific enough, when it comes to recycling. Paper recycling is the real scam, because that's renewable, and it comes from a byproduct (Sawdust) of another industry (Lumber mills.) I'm not even getting into how much CO2, Methane, and Water Vapor that Paper Recycling produces.
My local recycling system (and I live in a reasonably large city) recently requested to dump hundreds of tons of newspaper in the landfill because it couldn't be recycled. Recycling is a terrible scam that's cause far more environmental damage than not. it needs to be reformed from top to bottom.
@@jnauttube Again, "Recycling" isn't one thing. We've been recycling steel since the middle ages. However, paper recycling is worse for the environment than putting it in the landfill. We need lower toxic dyes for things like magazines, which are also laminated with plastic, but putting newsprint in the landfill isn't that bad a thing. in fact, you should be able to tap off Methane from it in a few decades. It's literally like throwing out banana peels.
That's not really the issue here is it? And I'm curious why you can't compare steel and aluminium in a debate about recycling (or any of the plastics for that matter)
@@lindsaywebb1904 No, thanks for telling me it's not "The" issue, when it is An issue. I've seen "Plastic recycles" which is just as misleading as an industry sorting code which looks suspiciously like a Recycling symbol. That's exactly like saying "America Recycles." While true, it's also extremely misleading, and it ignores the important fact that not all America recycles, not all Plastics are recyclable, and what are recycleable aren't actually recycled in in most places, so putting bottles in a recycling bin is basically shipping them to the sorting plant, where they can be put on another truck, to the landfill, incinerator, or whatever they do with trash in your city. So yes, while it isn't "the" issue, we're allowed to bring up other issues, on this channel, where he has multiple videos about the many many issues at stake here. Thank you. It's not the issue, because there isn't just only issue. See how misleading that is?
I study Industrial Design, and the only person I've ever heard talking about that scam was ONE of my teachers. A big THANK YOU for exposing this! It's so important!
I'm bald...haven't used a bottle of shampoo for 25 years...no conditioners either. Plastic bottles of "body wash"?! Plastic bottles of hand soap?! Nothing like a bar of soap wrapped in paper. Do we really need so many types of...soap? I used to clean a particular "hidden beach" in Costa Rica 2x per week, a section about 1/4 mile long. Each time, I would fill a medium sized garbage bag full of plastics: bottles, toothbrushes, lids, combs, bags, bits and pieces of plastic. I kept that beach super clean! One time a storm came through and deposited countless bottles and plastic junk up and down the beach. Completely overwhelming. A beautiful place otherwise.
forgot to mention...all those plastic bottles I would pick up...labels were printed in at least 5 different languages...English, Spanish, Japanese, German and another Asian language I wasn't sure about.
Hi! Thank you for your eye opening info! I was part of the Keep Omaha Beautiful team as a teenager, and am now in my 60s, so a clean environment has been important to me for a long time. I wish we would get back to the paper packaging and paper sacks of my youth. Another aspect that you didn't address is the polyester and acrylic and nylon clothing out there. At least my cotton blouse that is worn out can be safely burned in our barrel, as we are rural. Natural fabrics and yarns are more durable, breathable, washable, and remade into new fabrics. I never buy "plastic clothing" or yarns. The plastic industry is a greedy monster, and hopefully we can make legislation forcing them to be responsible. To start with, they should have to pay to clean up the ocean. Anyway, thanks for the heads up that recycling is a sham. I buy as little new plastic as possible. Thrift stores are great places to buy and reuse some of the helpful plastic out there.
I always laugh when I see something like, _"5% recycled plastic content"_ You just know it's a scam, if that's all they use, and just a marketing ploy to claim they are "environmentally friendly" or "green."
So no more Saran Wrap. No more pre-packaged cold cuts or hot dogs or Polish sausage. No more microwave dinners. Even if you replace plastic with paper, you'll still be burying it in landfills. No problems are solved.
I've been trying to inform people about this for years. Plastic costs more energy to recycle than to make new. Sometimes things just need to go the landfill as long as it's done properly.
@@opossumlvr1023 Dude, burning plastics is not the solution. Burning things got us into a climate mess, it's not going to get us out. We need alternative sources. Unless we can figure out how to convert mass to energy some other way, which has eluded us so far. Nuclear fission doesn't really count, it has the exact same heat problem as normal burning.
@@opossumlvr1023 It releases an incredible amount of pollution when burned though. Stolen from Joe Yager: 1- Incinerating plastics is just as dirty as burning coal. There are many toxins released into the atmosphere by burning plastics. 2- Collecting residential (consumer) waste plastics and processing it and delivering it to power plants would be very expensive and unreliable. 3- Power plant boilers would need to be redesigned to handle using plastic waste for fuel. 4- Pyrolysis could be used to break down waste plastics to solid, liquid or gaseous fuels, but the process requires heating plastics in the absence of oxygen to about 1000F. This process alone is very energy intensive. 5- Most proposals for incinerating plastics are from incinerator manufacturers and the plastic and petroleum industries. They actually have no intention of supporting this, this is just a way to pass the problem off to someone else. 6- Most plastics are made from petroleum and natural gas and these sources are not considered renewables. 7- The best solution is to reduce the amount of single use plastics from becoming part of the refuse waste stream, but this won't be easy, since there are multiple industries that are in business to produce these.
I'm from a small town in Mexico where people are always short on money this has caused people to reuse their glass bottles and charge more for people to take them, if my small town can do it billion dollar companies can
Does anyone else remember the days of sorting the different recyclables in the small vegetable type bins? I grew up in the PNW and remember when I was a kid recycling was the big environmental thing. That and saving the salmon spawning runs lol. Anyway in our suburban neighborhood growing up they actually had separate city-issued small boxes for sorting recyclables. 1 for plastics, 1 for paper/cardboard and 1 for glass/cans. And the recycle trucks had separate chutes for each category and on pickup day the guy would dump each little bin down each sorted chute. I remember because my parents made a game out of sorting the recyclables (IE just getting me to do the work lol). Anyway, I knew something was up in my teens when the city abandoned all that in exchange for one big recycle bin to dump and mix everything together. It is 3 times bigger than a typical trash can. I think it coincided with the increase in plastic we're producing. But it also makes me wonder if there was a point to the sorting on the consumer side before then? Or did everything always just get mixed together anyway?
Finally I don't feel crazy and bullied when I say that CORPORATIONS are the most responsible for pollutions and not individuals. Yet individuals pay carbon taxes and other stupid taxes, place taxes on corporations till plastic becomes a luxury to produce. Supermarkets are still full of bags made out of plastic, fruits are still placed in plastic
Taxing corporations simply means they pass that cost onto their consumers. Unfortunately. it's always the schmuck lowest on the totem pole who pays taxes.
Ironically, you just used a terrible example for true environmentalist. Environmentalist understand the harm of consuming commercial candy ( plastic pollution, deforestation, soil degradation, etc).
The solution is probably hemp. It makes a great plastic type product. With more money invested in that we could refine/specialize the product and have a biodegradable ‘plastic’ that puts nutrition into the soil.
It was the plastics industry that pushed for the illegalization of Marijuana to take hemp out of the equation so they could profit off things like polyester. Hemp was used to make cloth back then so DuPont and the petro industry needed that out of the way to sell their product. I'm sure they would have cancelled the use of cotton if they could find a way.
@@valvenator that’s generally how things work, solutions aren’t wanted by the elite, just money, power and control. There were good electric cars like the Baker over a century ago but oil and gas was where the cartel were pointing their sights. The Doble steam car back in 1925 was sweet andcould do 132 mph.
Be careful what you use plant based plastics for as rodents love it. they went to canola oil based plastic wire coating in the auto industry and now mice and rats are eating the wiring in vehicles. Very expensive to repair the damage but maybe the vehicle industry likes that.
@@roberttucker4196 there are always issues to face no matter what. I’ve known a couple of ppl that have had their regular wiring chewed up and screwed the electronics in their cars.
Like all trained citizens, I’m duty bound to put plastics in a special bin, else it doesn’t get collected by that separate lorry, that takes it to a high tech centre, that (maybe) sorts it into type, packages it into cubes, loads it onto lorries, that delivers it to the docks, to a ship to an offshore processing plant where it’s either dumped mid transit or ends up on a foreign tip. Meanwhile bureaucrats pockets are lined by lobbying money to say the right words, kick the can down the road rather than addressing reality and make out all this is the consumers fault..
Everywhere in Japan we are required to separate PET from other plastics since it is one of the few plastics that can be recycled. Other plastics are either put in their own bin or bunched in with all other burnable garbage depending on the city. It's ludicrous to me that not all places are at least separating the plastic that CAN be recycled from everything else.
Love your videos! I'm from Europe and after engineering school I went to work for the recycling industry because I wanted to do something ecological.... and I quit after three years and different positions. One of the main issues is that revenues are based on the amount of waste. More waste coming in the recycling plant = more money. Therefore the industry has ZERO interest in shifting to reduce and reuse. Feel free to ask any details, and I agree with your call to recycle : a tiny amount of recycling is better that none. Thanks again!
In europe we use less plastics than the US ! We do not drink in disposable cups in restaurant, café, parties or at home ! Same thing for the food, in a restaurant you do not eat in disposable containers. Even in McDonald's now, we have a new legislation where if you eat at the table disposable containers have to be avoied. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-jA8VZsILuSc.html but the new recipients are still made of reusable plastics with endocrinal disruptors. The biggest problem is, I think, that the biggest polluting countries of the area think that they are the most eco frendly, beacuse they are recycling more than the others. California in North America, and Germany in Europe. That is quite the opposite !
In my city they introduced Single Stream Recycling several years ago. A blue bin, instead of a black bin, where you put cardboard, aluminum cans, plastic, metal....a catch-all for anything that wasn't just straight up garbage. And then China stopped taking our "recycyling," aka all the plastic that was in those bins. They claim that it is recycled again now, but having seen the workings of these facilities I can tell you the main point is recovering the bottle deposit money and cardboard/paper. It is not energy nor cost efficient to pick up each material separately and so single stream will continue. And maybe the city is genuinely ensuring all this material is ending up recycled.
Many years ago Penn & Teller did an episode on this. And they argued its actually worse because now you have separate trucks coming for pick-up and effectively doubling the amount of gas and emissions the trash trucks use.
That's not true, because if one truck takes everything it's gonna fill up faster and you'll need a second truck anyway. The total capacity is still the same, it's just split by waste types.
@@mnoovurvi you are definitely right about the total amount of trash collected, but if you collect them separately, you have to have more vehicles for it. You also need more management and bureaucracy involved.
@@brocktuna I was rather shocked they just blatantly copied most of the talking points. And later in the video John Oliver makes a comment about how hard their research team works. What? Like a high school student who forgot to do their assignment and phones it in by copy another kids work.
It has been stated that 70% of Recyclable material in Australia ultimately ends up in Land Fill because Australia lacks the Infrastructure to recycle the material
My recycling is used for my art hobby. Plastic jugs hold supplies. Junk mail shredded as stuffing for my cans and empty baking sodas boxes. Glass jars I stuff with paper and put aside for a future project. Plastic dishwashing liquid are washed out and saved as a base. Plastic TV dinner plates they make good bases for centerpieces. Paper tubes from aluminum foil I cut up for smaller bases for animal stickers. Bill envelopes I either shred or paper punch and scraps go into my stuffing bags. I have a big collection of metal empty air freshener cans which will become art. Packaging I use. Endless supply of cardboard and thinner cardboard. Empty acrylic paint bottles are washed out and used as a base. Empty TP rolls turn into art. Empty plastic glue bottles become a base. Their tops become an embellishment. There’s very little I need to recycle. Empty ribbon spools am figuring out how to use those in my art. I have recycling built up for years to come for dozens of new art projects. Endless supply. Even my scraps are encorporated. Get creative!
It does depend on the country's infrastructure though, e.g. in Sweden 97% of all PET plastic bottles are recycled and Japan is also famous for having an efficient recycling infrastructure. Plastic CAN be recycled but it needs to be the right type, and the proper infrastructure and consumer demand needs to be in place for there to be an incentive to use recycled plastic in products.
@@Alexander97D nope, its true. Every time you shred and melt plastic, the polymer chains are partially broken down, which weakens the plastics strength and durability. That's why even "recycled" plastic, is mixed with new virgin plastic.
@@Alexander97D bruh, you are literally just so wrong. There are no words to describe the state of incorrectness in which you reside. *All recycled products* (except sometimes aluminum IIRC) need to have new, virgin material added to them to bring their properties back in line with the original material. Paper, glass, plastic, all of it. Even one run through the recycling center degrades plastic by like 30%, they have to add new plastic otherwise the final product would be flimsy and unusable. Paper and glass are only marginally better at being recycled, and they still need new material added after every round of recycling. Reduce and Reuse are Beyoncé. Recycle is the other two. That's the takeaway from this video.
Libertarians aren't litter bugs. I'm a libertarian, and recycle 90% of things . The other 10% I have nowhere to recycle them. That was a dumb statement.
I think he says it because libertarians are going to be the ones most put off by his ultimate point that is he wants the government to ban single use plastics. He is a shill, through and through and libertarians have the mindset to recognize his bullshit.
I found this out reading a recycling pros vs cons list distributed by recycling companies. The only meaningful pro was "raises awareness," though recycling never raised awareness of the fact that no one knew it was of virtually no benefit.
What upsets me the most about the plastic industry and the anti-plastic movements is that neither are willing to accept the reality of the material they're working with. Plastic is not inherently disposable. It's quite possible to create extremely tough, high-durability plastic with a lifespan of years, if not decades. My family has a number of plastic utensils made in the early 60's and 70's, and they are completely unscathed after decades of continuous usage. Plastic is, frankly, a miracle material. It could be used safely and sustainably in a myriad of ways, but the industry is so geared towards the disposable model that fantastic advancements in material sciences are totally ignored or only used in very niche industries. There have been demonstrations of functionally indestructible plastic buildings which weigh much less than any conventional structure and can be built using hand tools. We ignore how easily our lives could be revolutionized again and again, if only technology wasn't controlled by people interested in profit over progress.
Don’t forget about microplastics washing out of our plastic clothes. 1% of them go straight to tree nearest body of water… 99% end up in sewage sludge often used as fertilizer for our food. We eat so much plastic
The problem with plastic recycling is that recycled plastic would be more expensive. Until pollution costs are imputed and plastic industry and users are made to PAY for the damage, then there would be less incentive to recycle.
John Oliver stole ya flow. I watched this video months ago and searched for minutes to find it after seeing John Olivers. Someone on his staff is guilty of seeing this video and lifting the concepts.
An ex of mine used to run a recycling center in a very well known ski town in Colorado. A couple of years into our relationship she told me they would drive all of it down to Denver to a massive land fill there, couldn't take it to the local landfill or people would find out. This was around the same the same time I figured out what a lying dirt bag this chick really was in every other facet of her life as well. They had been doing this for years, I imagine they still do.
People also like to say population is not a problem. Okay well if that's the case. Have 100 people over for Thanksgiving instead of two.😮 Tell me how they take up the same amount of space, eat the same amount of food, drink the same amount of water, make the same amount of waste. It'll become pretty obvious
As somone who practically survives on microwavable meals, this video makes me feel really bad. I also have washed and thrown many of those microwavable finished meals into the recycle bin, and they do have those numbers.
i dont think you should feel bad for microwavable meals if they genuinely help you. another one of the plastic industry's scams is pushing the blame on individuals, rather than the corporations which have much more power
Hey! Libertarians aren't anti-recycling. As a matter of fact, they are probably the same type of people who would call out recycling scams and ask people to use reason and apply our tax dollars properly. As a matter of fact, Penn & Teller did a Bullshit! episode about recycling and covered some of this. They were also very PRO recycling aluminum. Anyway, that was a cheap shot that didn't make a lot of sense.
I agree. I think a lot of people get confused with the libertarian party because the party generally is against regulation and taxes. The truth is libertarians are not anarchists(not all anarchists are bad people and even some of them recycle). Libertarians do believe in some regulation. Hurting the environment hurts people. Libertarians are not for hurting people unless you try and harm them. It's sad all the laws that are in place because too many people are stupid to do the right thing. It was a cheap shot but at the same time I think it was more meant to be a joke since Libertarians are normally against regulations.
libertarians are too naive about human behavior. the amount of evil people are willing to overlook for profit, for convenience, or for just straight up not giving a shit. libertarians live in a fantasyland were humans wont cause self harm via short sidedness. the disaster that is the carona virus is all the proof you need of the failure that is libertarianism. this is the preamble of the libertarian party afterall “As Libertarians, we seek a world of liberty: a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives and are not forced to sacrifice their values for the benefit of others.”
@@AbsurdAsparagus breaking news: almost every political platform is idealistic and needs pragmatism and moderation to work. You paint libertarianism here in the same narrow and disingenuous way that Trump supporters rail against socialism.
Came here to say essentially the same thing. Libertarians believe in liberty, that’s freedom and responsibility. Libertarians also believe in negative externality costs being paid by the manufacturer. Hence why we believe in environmental policy. As for the argument that we don’t think people can be evil, that’s exactly opposite. We believe that all people have the capacity for evil so other people shouldn’t be able to control your life. We need to voluntarily work together to end single use plastics. To do that will take a massive change in market demand and finding a different viable solution for delivering goods in a similar way as single use plastics.
Where I live the recycle bins only take glass, metals, and paper and cardboard. Because they can resell it make a profit. And they charge you $30 a year they called it Waste Management. So I make it a special point to put everything in the recycle bin that I can! Especially styrofoam and all Plastics I can find. Recycling is a total rip-off to the American people. What does the county do with all the money they make off of recycling. I'll tell you they give each other high raises. I also give them every single Tire I can find. I put nothing in the recycle bins that the county can make a profit off of
It's because of this type of activism that you've spurred the industry into investing into full chemical recycling. In this method, plastic is broken down into it's starting materials, namely ethylene and even some fuel oils. They do this through pyrolysis over a catalyst and its typically done with PE resins. Most of the plastic that's produced in the world is (PE) polyethylene so it would have a large feed stock of waste plastic to draw from. It still needs a decade of research and development to fully commercialize it but it actually benefits everyone. Feedstock for virgin plastic for the industry and a real financial incentive to recycle. Unfortunately, it will emit CO2 because it's a heat intensive process (pyrolysis). You always have to pay a price. Mechanical recycling is the dominant form as of now and it's not a great option.
It is good to note that since 2001 there is a company established here in the Philippines that utilizes assorted kind of plastics that are melted and "recreated" into usable items such as school chairs, park benches, tables, plant pots, tiles and so on. Even those 'soft plastics' such as straws and sandobags together with other single-use plastics are now collected and made into other resuscitated products. Plastic collection became some sort of a big business here. And it helps considering tons upon tons of waste plastics were generated daily and ends up on bodies of water such as rivers, lakes and oceans. And everywhere!
