this would be a legitimate argument if any of the plastic was actually recycled … last time i checked it all goes into the incinerator to make electricity out of it.
the recycling of plastic is difficult, not because melting and re-shaping the plastic itself is difficult (it is not, it’s trivially easy); the problem is that you basically never get correctly-sorted garbage. when you get “plastic waste”, it has at least 20% things in it that are not plastic, including food waste, aluminum, paper, etc. some even throw toxic batteries in it, chemicals (soap), pharmaceuticals … then there’s the risk of infections on the plastic (viruses, bacteria, fungi). there’s absolutely no chance that you’re just gonna take plastic waste and mold it into a new shape that’s food safe. best you can do is to mix it with concrete and use it as a construction material in road construction.
Even if you perfectly sort the plastic out, it can only be recycled about 1.5 times before the structure changes so much it’s not suitable for the original use. Plastic recycling is a scam.
yeah btw this is because it’s not purely-sorted input. mixing is up with other plastics is what leads to the molecules to not properly align and that’s what makes it brittle.
this would be a legitimate argument if any of the plastic was actually recycled … last time i checked it all goes into the incinerator to make electricity out of it.
the recycling of plastic is difficult, not because melting and re-shaping the plastic itself is difficult (it is not, it’s trivially easy); the problem is that you basically never get correctly-sorted garbage. when you get “plastic waste”, it has at least 20% things in it that are not plastic, including food waste, aluminum, paper, etc. some even throw toxic batteries in it, chemicals (soap), pharmaceuticals … then there’s the risk of infections on the plastic (viruses, bacteria, fungi). there’s absolutely no chance that you’re just gonna take plastic waste and mold it into a new shape that’s food safe. best you can do is to mix it with concrete and use it as a construction material in road construction.
edit: the video you linked is really watchable.
Even if you perfectly sort the plastic out, it can only be recycled about 1.5 times before the structure changes so much it’s not suitable for the original use. Plastic recycling is a scam.
yeah btw this is because it’s not purely-sorted input. mixing is up with other plastics is what leads to the molecules to not properly align and that’s what makes it brittle.