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'Recycling' Makes Plastic Pollution Worse | The Libertarian Institutelibertarianinstitute.org/articles/recycling-makes-plastic-pollution-worse/
181 sats \ 9 comments \ @Undisciplined 11 Feb econ
Do you save the planet by recycling that used water bottle? Brian McGlinchey argues recycling can do more harm than good in his latest article.
"As for the rest of the RIC spectrum, feel free to make pointed inquiries with your city government, but chances are extremely slim that any #3, #4, #6 or #7 items you throw in your curbside blue bin will be made into anything else. That heap includes lots of packaging, such as non-cardboard egg cartons, fast-food clamshells, styrofoam cups and to-go containers, flexible 6-pack rings and bread bags."
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21 sats \ 3 replies \ @Msd0457890 12h
Although your argument about recycling not saving the world sounds very coherent, there are a few things that I don't understand because at least I am in Latin America, exactly in Peru, and I see how people collect plastic and cardboard, they pay them in Fiat for it, and I also see how containers or trucks of recycled plastic pass by in squares, which I imagine will go through a process and will be used for other types of things, just like paper, just like things made of iron or metal, so it's hard to think that this whole process won't lead to a purification of our environment, talking about the contamination of beaches, rivers, jungles, all that which human beings have contaminated and that all these recycling plans have tried to help to purify.
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 11h
The article describes how a very large percentage of plastics end up being incinerated rather than recycled. That's quite a bit worse than burying them in a landfill.
I'd be curious to know who's paying people for collecting those materials. If it's private recycling centers who then sell to private manufacturers, then there's a good chance that recycling activity is worthwhile.
It's not that recycling, per se, is bad. The issue is that recycling, de facto, is often worse.
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23 sats \ 1 reply \ @Msd0457890 9h
They are not private entities, they are people who set up a place as a deposit and accumulate plastic, for example, I am dedicated to this and I bring you a certain amount of plastic and you give me an amount of fiat money, in this case soles, they pay for the plastic at a certain price and they accumulate it and I imagine that they sell it to the large recyclers.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 8h
Yeah, my question is about whether those large recyclers are private enterprises or if they're state funded programs.
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27 sats \ 3 replies \ @LibertasBR 11 Feb
Garbage is still money. I think it is necessary to measure the impact of recycling and not recycling. Because in practical matters, recycling generates income for many people and theoretically reduces the need for newly extracted raw materials. No longer recycle?
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 11 Feb
Aside from a couple of materials, my understanding is that it's a net cost: i.e. the costs of recycling programs are greater than they produce.
The market test would be whether you get paid for doing all that recycling work, since it's an input into their industry. If it were profitable they would pay people to do it, rather than force them to do it through tax funded programs.
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36 sats \ 1 reply \ @LibertasBR 11 Feb
Oh yes. Good point, in fact in many economies the cost of recycling is higher even considering all the people who do this service for free. Even so, I think that the accumulation of garbage would bring harm in the long run, of course, with this open and aimless market, new business opportunities would arise from this discarded and non-recycled material. I don't know of any studies and I haven't looked into it in depth to actually know what the best option would be.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 11 Feb
My knowledge is outdated, but since it's dominated by state actors, I doubt there's been much innovation.
That's another important element, though. Maybe it would be economical, if there were a real market at work.
At some point, landfill mining will be economically viable. For now, though, it's generally cheaper to keep producing materials.
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23 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 11 Feb
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