Yikes. It looks as if the corporate plastic recycling propaganda machine is running on high! Especially these days.
Titled “Circular Claims Fall Flat Again,” the Greenpeace study found that of 51 million tons of plastic waste generated by US households in 2021, only 2.4 million tons were recycled, or around five percent. After peaking in 2014 at 10 percent, the trend has been decreasing, especially since China stopped accepting the West’s plastic waste in 2018.
Virgin production — of non-recycled plastic, that is — meanwhile is rapidly rising as the petrochemical industry expands, lowering costs.“Industry groups and big corporations have been pushing for recycling as a solution,” Greenpeace USA campaigner Lisa Ramsden told AFP.
“By doing that, they have shirked all responsibility” for ensuring that recycling actually works, she added. She named Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Unilever and Nestle as prime offenders.
According to Greenpeace USA’s survey, only two types of plastic are widely accepted at the nation’s 375 material recovery facilities. The first is polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is commonly used in water and soda bottles; and the second is high density polyethylene (HDPE), seen in milk jugs, shampoo bottles and cleaning product containers.
Brutal! While I can’t blame another country for not wanting our trash, something needs to change. We need to find an alternative – and fast! The Cock Destroyers can only do so much to recycle our plastics. Now it’s up to the higher-ups!
[via towleroad]
China pollute worse because they still rely a lot on coal – not at all to excuse them, since their pollution is also worse because some basic environmental pollution controls and protections, which other countries uniformly employ throughout the planet, they don’t bother with in favor of increasing their economy, even though IT HURTS their effing population.
That all said, my country, the United States, produced more garbage per person, which includes more plastic per person, than any place else on the planet.
It’s even worse elsewhere.
“Asia accounts for 81% of global plastic inputs to the ocean.” Africa, South America, and Europe are all worse than North America.
https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics
China is the worst pollution into the ocean by more than 3 times of any one else.
Rank Country CO₂ (million tons) CO₂ (tons)
1 China 10,666 10,665,904,000