Post #3361107

2026-06-20 15:49 UTC

Plastic recycling is mostly a scam pushed through by petrochemical companies. Their goal was to keep making more plastic, so they pushed responsibility out to the public through a massive marketing campaign. The recycling symbols on plastic, with numbers in them? They don’t actually mean the plastic is recyclable. That’s an indicator of what type of plastic it’s made of. They say the information is to help recyclers, but there’s no way anyone can go through so much plastic and hand sort everything. Most plastic waste still ends up in the junkyard, incinerated, or in the junkyard and then incinerated. A lot of “recycled” plastic is recovered through corporate or industrial channels, when there are large volumes of the same type of material available.

Replies (3)

@HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 2026-06-20 18:49

Yeah. I feel like Japan has the best solution, which is to use specialty incineration plants with massive outlet filters to scrub the exhaust of toxic chemicals.

Open ##3361901
@BCsven@lemmy.ca 2026-06-20 23:53

The numbers and symbol is for when facilities do exist, you see the same number system on lithuium batteries and other products. I have seen hand sorting facilities, its labour intensive for sure, but betterthann drilling more oil to make more plastic. For stuff with missing number symbol they do spectral analysis, usually after a lot has been sorted by same product. Vancouver boasts 96% recycle rate, but not all plastic is recycled into consumer products, much of it it pelletized into fuel pellets. These are then sold to incinerator, furnace or heating places as fuel source rather than burning oil or gas. Not ideal, but better than new fuel use.

Open ##3363117
@evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world 2026-06-22 18:30

That’s not a recycling symbol, it’s a “resin identification code”. They just make it looks like the recycling symbol to trick people.

Open ##3375332