this post was submitted on 23 May 2025
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Oh boy, here I go ranting against misinformation about recycling again.
Your claim that 60% of these bottles will be burned is false. The recycling quota for single-use plastic bottles in Germany is 97.6% (2023; source).
60% was the quota of all non-recycled plastic packaging material combined, back in 2018. This quota has further decreased since, and is now at about 30% (2023, source), so almost 70% of all plastic packaging in Germany is recycled. It's still not perfect, but far, far better than just burning everything.
Recycling isn't an easy and cheap process, but it can definitely work and be steadily improved, if it's properly implemented. I'm so tired of this dumb suggestion, that recycling is bad because it's not perfect (or, in the case of the US, full of corruption). Every bit of plastic that isn't polluting the environment is a win. And recycling is definitely helping with that. As opposed to propagating false information on the internet.
So separating my plastics when I bring them to the Wertstoffhof actually makes sense? I never bothered because I've always been told it gets all thrown together anyway.
People's main gripe with it is that a huge percentage of plastic has traditionally just been separated and then would either still end up in a landfill or sent to China or wherever to recycle. I don't know however how much of a case that is still.
China has not been taking our trash for quire a while now.
Do they still count energetic recycling (aka burning in a power plant) as recycling?
According to the second source „energy recovery“ isn‘t included in this statistic.
So — though using collected plastic as fuel feels sort of cheating — the percentage of plastic that is put to any use after use is even higher.
If I understand that article correctly, this should be the case, yes. Unfortunately I'm unable to find any official statistics on that matter.