this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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Germany is the best at recycling plastics in the world, yet they recycle less than half of all plastics... I won't call that misinformation based on this. Also please don't twist our words, we aren't saying recycling is a scam in general, just plastic recycling is a scam,
When we call plastic recycling a scam, we are advocating for not using plastics. Reduce, reuse, recycle, remember that.
Firstly, I‘m not twisting words, there is no mention of „plastic“ in the post I was replying to, just plain „recycling“.
Secondly, I’m sorry, but I really don‘t understand how a non-perfect rate makes plastic recycling a scam. Recycling is hard. There‘s no magic recycling machine, which just converts 100% of plastic waste to newly usable material. There are so many reasons for a less than perfect recycling rate (non-separated trash, contamination, badly designed packaging, technical limitations when sorting etc.pp.), that I find it just very strange and unhelpful to call it a scam without substantial support for that claim.
Sure, not using plastic would be best, but that‘s just more idealistic than realistic. I think that plastic is such an integral part of our lives right now, that it‘s not going to go away anytime soon. And that makes recycling, for now, an important step to reduce the total amount of plastic we use.
In addition to recycling quota OP also claimed that supposedly recycled trash is trash dumped on poor countries while it's actually a trash management issue. The first comment is just pure populistic misinformation as you said.
Thread OP didn't specify that
The other person called plastic recycling a massive lie that causes more harm than good. That is misinformation plain and simple.
Since the lie that plastic can be recycled resulted in a massive increase in the amount of plastic being used over actually recyclable materials like glass and aluminum, it does, in fact, do more harm than good.
Yeah I get all of that, but for a person living in Germany, the original comment is just plainly false and potentially harmful, so it should rather have been "plastic recycling is a scam in most of the world", which makes regional differences clear and does not appear like there was something inherently non-functional with recycling plastic.