Plastic recycling is literally a scam. It doesn't exist, but companies will sell it anyways.
If you're not depositing PET bottles at the supermarket, the best case scenario for single-use plastic is that it gets burned for electricity like the rest of the 11 million tons of oil we burn every year.
Yeah, plasma gasification ftw. It apparently takes care of all municiple solid waste:
Pretty interesting tech. Here in Sweden I believe the majority of (sorted) plastic waste goes into incinerators which generate heat for district heating for homes and businesses.
We do have bottle deposits in Sweden too though which means that 85% of clear drink bottles sold are generally able to be shredded into >96% pure PET and resold to bottle factories. (though green PET bottles, HDPE bottle caps, and polyester labels are not yet recyclable). Unfortunately bottle return rates are on a downward trend, I suspect this is due to the fact that deposits haven't increased with inflation and are still sitting at around 0.1-0.2€. These deposits will probably have to be increased to 0.2-0.4€ per bottle to prevent Sweden's plastic waste from increasing more, but considering that the current conservative government in Sweden just eliminated taxes on plastic bags, I don't see it happening any time soon. Conservative voters are too quick to complain when they have to share the cost of their plastic waste.
Here in the US the trash just piles up in landfills or gets shipped elsewhere. Some does get recycled, but not nearly enough.
In other sectors, we've got things like factories polluting poor minorities, and an airforce that can't stop letting their forever chemicals leak into the environment...
Sounds like things are generally more progressive in Sweden, although the recent trends you mentioned are worrisome. It's unfortunate some people are willing to sabotage our future for a slighly more comfortable present :/
This is gonna be like the tire fire in the Simpsons.
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