This Is NOT A Recycling Symbol

I want to point you guys to ColdFusion's video on Microplastics because I kinda hint at that problem and he goes deep into it. It kinda points to the reason why all this plastic build-up is really a problem. And it's a good video. :) https://youtu.be/4XDLSqn0dCk?si=wUTgo6DkUTV_3FjA

“Humans ingest the equivalent of one credit card’s worth of plastic per week” puts down the credit card I was munching on in disgust

I swear, growing up is all about finding out all the ways you were lied to

I miss the days when pop/soda/soft drink and milk came in glass bottles, you would go to the butcher to get meat and they'd wrap it in waxed paper. Appliances were made from metal and made to last. Clothes and shoes were made to last for years, not months. Things like pencil cases were made from wood or cotton fabric, and the zippers were metal. Hardly anything was plastic. Sure, things were slower but there was a sense of excitement when the Pepsi guy would come into town with his truck of soft drinks. My brother had a job on the milk run where he'd count the metal tokens, pick up people's empties, and replace them with full bottles of milk. Empty milk and soft drink bottles were returned to be washed and sterilised, and filled again. Milk and soft drink caps were recyclable steel or aluminum. It worked when there were fewer people and less expectation for speed.

My county banned "single use" plastic bags. So what did Walmart many others in the area do? They started using much thicker plastic bags instead, and called them "reusable". Problem is nobody re-uses them. Now we have the same problem as before, only it's worse as each bag that's thrown out has five times the plastic in it as before.

I work as a receiving clerk. I open 50-80 boxes a day. it’s insane how much plastic is used when it comes to packaging materials. However, a lot of companies have started using crunched up paper as packaging material, as well as paper tape to seal the boxes. It’s nice seeing companies using paper as a packaging material

The comment about plastic packaging is so spot on. We wrap things in plastic that have no reason to be wrapped in plastic.

When I worked at Starbucks we had a trash bin and a "recycling" bin in the lobby for customers to use. Except, we didn't have a recycling service, so the stuff in the the "recycle" bin just went in the same dumpster as everything else. That was every Starbucks I've ever worked at, in multiple states. Some of them had a special cardboard box dumpster that was recycled, I'll give them that, but that was essentially dependent on the town itself

Getting a handle on plastic packaging excesses would be GREAT but one area where plastic use is rampant that I feel goes unnoticed a lot actually pertains to that carrying case for your boom pole--textiles. Polyester is a petroleum derived plastic, and is EXTREMELY common in textiles, for everything from the clothes we wear, to our shoes, to boom pole carrying cases, to carpets, and much, much more. Polyester is ubiquitous. And it sheds. It sheds when it's worked into products, it sheds when it's worn or walked on, it sheds when it's run through a washing machine. I have no idea what to do about that or even if it's as much of a problem as I fear it is, but I felt it was worth mentioning because most people don't know what polyester actually IS. But I can't imagine that the environmental impact of this particular plastic product could possibly be any less than, say, water bottles or drinking straws.

I tried for many stressful years to BE THE CHANGE and now feel an uncomfortable amount of despair every time I hold an empty plastic container in my hand and wonder if I should just chuck it isn’t the regular bin because the system isn’t working and I’m tired of the ever-moving targeted “best” option in our sea-of-micro-trash solutions. But I am truly grateful that you’ve laid it all out so plainly. You are appreciated.

I used to work at a plastic recycling plant and probably 95% of the plastic bottles we took in went right into the trash. Worst $8 an hour job I ever had.

A furniture store was having problems with all of the styrofoam from the manufacture. They employed a device that melted down the styrofoam into bricks that could be used for building materials (they sold the bricks to other countries). The other countries could either build with the bricks, or reverse the process and remelt them while injecting air, turning them back into styrofoam 😮

As a Brit I know the companies (and more including the public) aren't doing anywhere near their part to actually help in this problem, but what has really shocked me was my visit to the US recently. In one single night stay in a hotel, I used more plastic than I'd used back in the UK in a year, the US really has a problem (from straws to plastic cutlery both wrapped in plastic etc oh and also a trip to walmart where I walked out with about 15 bags for 20 or so items). It honestly blew my mind how much of a sticking fingers in the ears and screaming it appeared to be compared to the rest of the world.

"Imagine what it was like going to the doctor before plastic"... I don't have to, I remember it. Well, not BEFORE plastic, but before plastic EVERYTHING. I worked in a hospital in the 1980s. It had a sterile supplies department, which had several massive autoclaves. After instruments and instrument trays were used, they'd be taken down there, cleaned, sterilised, and re-packed. Like those drink bottles with a deposit, they were re-usable not disposable. It was great

The other problem is that large tech companies have started using "reducing plastic use" as an excuse to not include things like chargers or cables in their packaging so they can waste even more plastic by selling it to you separately!

When ever I come across someone talking about the recycling scam I think of the little only ladies of Kamikatsu Japan lovingly sorting their trash at their town’s 45 bin recycling center every week. It claims to be a “zero waste town.” It’s a town of about 2000 people with one collection center and each household gets a big booklet explaining the recycling process and what the collection center sorting system is. They center also has a “zero waste academy” a non profit set up to teach you. Their paper category has 9 subsections, for instance. I’m unclear where their recycling goes now but I recall they used to incinerate their trash before this center.

Across EU states the recyclabe bin are color coded, green is glass, yellow is plastic, brown is for compost / food waste, grey is for non Recyclabe, blue for papers, there are battery bin across the town, there are used vegetable oil bins, if you have a broken eletronics you biring to the near eletroncs shops and they will bring to the recycling center.

In Australia, there was a soft plastics recycling program called RedCycle where you could drop off soft plastics like plastic bags, wrapping and films. But turns out they were lying and just stored it in warehouses.

In 2022, New Jersey enacted a ban on bags used at stores like grocery stores, hardware stores, garden stores, virtually all stores with few exceptions. This included the one time use plastic bags and even paper bags. It did cut down on the use of one time use plastic bags by about 80%, but it also banned paper bags which actually ARE recyclable and are often even made with recycled paper, and are also quickly biodegradable. Reducing plastic use was a good idea, but banning paper was a bone-head maneuver. Also stores began to sell polypropylene bags, which made the use of plastics go up by three times. In addition these heavier bags had a higher carbon footprint to manufacture, and in almost all cases are not even attempted to be recycled (even if it is a scam). So, I guess it falls under the category of “ no good deed will go unpunished”, or “be careful what you wish for”.

The reason for the switch from glass to plastic soda bottles is simple: with larger format bottle sbeing introduced, it was found that accidentally tipping a flass soda bottle could cause it to explode with glass shrapnel causing major injury on people. The industry was VERY VERY quick to change the large formet to plastic to avoid being sued whenever such a bottle exploded.