this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
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Here in Finland we have a really extensive and efficient plastic bottle and aluminum can recycling system. Every bottle and can has a deposit (0.40 โฌ for large bottles, 0.20 โฌ for small bottles, 0.15 โฌ for cans) and you can cash them by returning them at any store. Just toss them in a machine.
There's even some hypermarkets where you can just pour in a giant bag full of bottles or cans and the machine sorts and prices the things automatically.
It's super annoying we still can't really do the same for rest of the single use plastic, but at least trash sorting and recycling what can be recycled is a thing everywhere. We have a lot of projects that aim to reduce those. Probably the coolest recent thing was that someone came up with all-carton coffee cups. (I hope they catch on so we can get rid of the cups that have the Sad Turtle Warning. I don't want turtles to be sad, they're awesome.)
Ugh. Damnit Finland. Why do you have to be so SENSIBLE??
That's great! Our supermarkets have bottle deposit machines too, and even at only $0.05 deposit per bottle they are widely used. However, the poor people using them mostly obtain the bottles by rifling through apartment complex recycling bins on garbage day (all residents are already required to separate plastic from garbage).
Moreover I don't believe plastic is actually recycled. My city has started burning 90% of its incoming plastic stream and still calls it "recycling"! That's still fossil carbon coming out of the ground and ending up in the atmosphere, you doofuses! The minor fraction of plastic that IS recycled is either downcycled into lower quality items like plastic planks for outdoor decks, or mixed with at least 50% virgin plastic material if making new plastic bottles. There is currently no way to 100% recycle plastic into the same type of item AFAIK, because the polymer molecules chemically degrade.
When I think about recycling I want to think in terms of "is this kind of lifestyle sustainable for 100 years? for 1000 years?" Taking fossil carbon out of the ground is not sustainable. Aluminum and glass are recyclable 100%! Can we do even better with reuse?
There is a store near me that sells illegally-imported African coke. It comes in a bottle that looks beat up to shit, but that's because the bottle was probably used hundreds of times, since in the African country they actually reuse the bottle. It's still perfectly fit for purpose though! We just need to relax our expectations for how "pristine" we want our product packaging to look.