• stoy@lemmy.zip
    121·
    7 days ago

    Plastics are formed through chemical reactions, until we have a way to reverse that reaction, we should consider plastics to be unrecyclable.

    There is also a shit tonne of different types of plastic, which all need their own ways to recycle them, so unless we have a working way of sorting them all through the garbage produced by end consumers, we should simply burn it in efficient incinerators.

    • NightFantom@slrpnk.net
      2·
      6 days ago

      I guess burning them and then turning the co2 into plants and then the plants into oil and then the oil into plastics again doesn’t count as recycling in any ecological way 😅

    • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
      1·
      6 days ago

      good thing we have a way to actually genuinely recycle a lot of plastics, we recently opened a new facility here in sweden that recycles 12 kinds of plastics iirc

      we can do it, but it’s not going to happen if people keep insisting that it’s impossible.
      yes, we can’t do it right now, that’s why we need to gosh darn build the recycling facilities and regulate manufacturer responsibility to make sure their products are recycled.

      • stoy@lemmy.zip
        11·
        6 days ago

        Excellent to hear that the tech is available, the issue still remains that unless it can recycle all twelve types of plastic in bulk at the same time it is not really useful for consumer goods as you can’t really expect the public to sort every single type of plastic correctly.

        However, waste from industries can absolutely be sorted correctly.