The plastic industry knowingly pushed recycling myth for decades [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: The plastic industry knowingly pushed recycling myth for decades [video]

#21

Post by gklitz » Sun, Mar 17, 2024, 7:01 AM UTC

lukan wrote: post #12

DinaCoder98 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea the individual consumer is responsible for policing industry is farcical on the face of it.

The individual consumer cannot police the whole industry, but they can choose what part of the industry they support. If many care, they can make an impact. And that's the crux. Many, or most people don't give a shit. Not about climate change, not about plastic in the ocean. Not about animals living in factories without seeing the sun ever. They care about their immediate surroundings, their taxes and the money in th…

> The individual consumer cannot police the whole industry, but they can choose what part of the industry they support

This is true. Because I know the lies about recycling plastic are just a myth, I personally always shop at the store that doesn’t use plastic, furthermore to spare the environment I don’t drive my car there, I ride my unicorn instead. /s

The myth that plastic can be recycled is harmful. The myth that personal responsibility has any impact on these issues is another harmful myth. Chosing paper over plastic at checkout doesn’t matter at all. Any change that could make any real impact has to be institutional or political. Those pushing us to ignore this are the ones who want to avoid such changes.

Re: The plastic industry knowingly pushed recycling myth for decades [video]

#22

Post by lukan » Sun, Mar 17, 2024, 9:10 AM UTC

gklitz wrote: post #21

lukan wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The individual consumer cannot police the whole industry, but they can choose what part of the industry they support. If many care, they can make an impact. And that's the crux. Many, or most people don't give a shit. Not about climate change, not about plastic in the ocean. Not about animals living in factories without seeing the sun ever. They care about their immediate surroundings, their taxes and the money in th…

> The individual consumer cannot police the whole industry, but they can choose what part of the industry they support This is true. Because I know the lies about recycling plastic are just a myth, I personally always shop at the store that doesn’t use plastic, furthermore to spare the environment I don’t drive my car there, I ride my unicorn instead. /s The myth that plastic can be recycled is harmful. The myth that…

"I personally always shop at the store that doesn’t use plastic, furthermore to spare the environment I don’t drive my car there, I ride my unicorn instead"

Well, I do ride my bicycle to my local farmer store, where I can indeed buy things with very little or no plastic. I also drive my car to the bigger store to get everything else, but some years ago, I only had the big plastic store option. This local store did not came into existence, because it was mandated by politics. But because there was enough consumer demand for it.

Re: The plastic industry knowingly pushed recycling myth for decades [video]

#23

Post by takerjop » Sun, Mar 17, 2024, 11:03 AM UTC

tmaly wrote: post #13

I really can't believe it took this long for the mainstream to notice this. It has been common knowledge that 90% of the stuff is not recycled. We need a huge material science effort to reduce the plastic usage. All of the recent studies around micro plastic contamination is alarming.

Nothing will happen. Microplastics that get into human comes mostly from tyres. Since 5 decades ago, we did nothing to solve those old tyres and now realizing the grinded down tyre powder is health hazard. Nothing to see.

Re: The plastic industry knowingly pushed recycling myth for decades [video]

#24

Post by taylodl » Sun, Mar 17, 2024, 2:56 PM UTC

Plastic is simply the result of capitalizing on the waste of refining petro products. You have to do something with it so the thinking went, so might as well make plastic and make money off of it. You're also evenly distributing that waste all over, rather than at the refining site. Decades later we're realizing evenly distributing the waste all over may not have been such a good idea after all.

Anyways, if you want less plastic then you're going to need to pump less oil, and the way to pump less oil is to reduce the demand on refined oil products such as gasoline. It's pretty much as simple as that.