<story><title>The recycling myth: A plastic waste solution littered with failure</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/environment-plastic-oil-recycling/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>trainsplanes</author><text>Have you gone to a beach lately?&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t live in the US but it&amp;#x27;s certainly not a developing country. Beaches are absolutely covered in plastic waste and it&amp;#x27;s noticeably worse each time I go. Forests are steadily becoming filled with plastic that either gets tossed there or blown there. Animals eat garbage and die. It&amp;#x27;s horrible. Assuming I live a very long life and die in 70 years, that plastic will still be there. New plastic will be there as well.&lt;p&gt;America and the EU &amp;quot;manage&amp;quot; their plastic waste by literally shipping it to other countries, then blaming them for mismanaging it. Most was sent to China, then it was banned by China.[1] Now the EU and US ship it to other countries, claim they manage their plastic, and blame new countries. The US and EU have yet to manage their plastic, though. They&amp;#x27;re just dumping it on their neighbor&amp;#x27;s property.&lt;p&gt;My worry about paper bags is that, corporations doing what they do and going for the lowest bidder, they&amp;#x27;ll be made with clear-cut rainforest wood from Indonesia and Malaysia instead of sustainable sources. I&amp;#x27;m sure a lot are.&lt;p&gt;I just reuse bags and never use paper or anything unless it&amp;#x27;s forced upon me. I bought some durable bags 5 years ago. I keep a couple in my vehicle, a few at home, and others in other places so I almost always have a bag with me.</text></item><item><author>relax88</author><text>One thing I’m always curious about is why we are so concerned with plastic waste.&lt;p&gt;My local grocery store recently switched to paper bags. So I got curious. Turns out you have to re-use a paper bag 43 times for the energy use to be the same as plastic grocery bags. This is impossible since they are made of paper. Aluminum and glass bottles require several hundred times more energy to produce as well (between 170-250x).&lt;p&gt;Then when you look at plastic pollution and see that for the most part North America is quite good at properly disposing of plastic you wonder why we are so obsessed with this as a problem.&lt;p&gt;Plastic waste really isn’t a big problem unless you’re talking about developing nations. North America is responsible for about 3% of mismanaged plastic waste. Asia and Africa account for 86% of it.&lt;p&gt;Don’t get me started on plastic straws. They make up 0.03% of plastic waste in the ocean.&lt;p&gt;If we want to make a difference here we should be helping developing nations to better manage their plastic waste so that it doesn’t end up in waterways.&lt;p&gt;The Yangtze and Ganges are releasing plastic into the ocean at a rate far greater than all of North America combined, and our response is to expend huge amounts of energy produced by fossil fuels trying to recycle our plastic instead of burying it in a landfill where it is unlikely to pose a major ecological threat.&lt;p&gt;Like many environmental initiatives I worry that we’re more concerned about making ourselves feel better than actually solving the problem.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>crazygringo</author><text>I live in NYC, we actually have tons of beaches here in the metropolitan area, and they&amp;#x27;re certainly &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; covered in plastic waste. Nor are our forests -- the hiking trails around here are great. And I&amp;#x27;m talking about the single most populated metropolitan area in the US.&lt;p&gt;Sure there are a few strewn candy wrappers or something, but there really isn&amp;#x27;t any big problem. It&amp;#x27;s all quite nice.&lt;p&gt;What country do you live in that your beaches are so bad?</text></comment>
<story><title>The recycling myth: A plastic waste solution littered with failure</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/environment-plastic-oil-recycling/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>trainsplanes</author><text>Have you gone to a beach lately?&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t live in the US but it&amp;#x27;s certainly not a developing country. Beaches are absolutely covered in plastic waste and it&amp;#x27;s noticeably worse each time I go. Forests are steadily becoming filled with plastic that either gets tossed there or blown there. Animals eat garbage and die. It&amp;#x27;s horrible. Assuming I live a very long life and die in 70 years, that plastic will still be there. New plastic will be there as well.&lt;p&gt;America and the EU &amp;quot;manage&amp;quot; their plastic waste by literally shipping it to other countries, then blaming them for mismanaging it. Most was sent to China, then it was banned by China.[1] Now the EU and US ship it to other countries, claim they manage their plastic, and blame new countries. The US and EU have yet to manage their plastic, though. They&amp;#x27;re just dumping it on their neighbor&amp;#x27;s property.&lt;p&gt;My worry about paper bags is that, corporations doing what they do and going for the lowest bidder, they&amp;#x27;ll be made with clear-cut rainforest wood from Indonesia and Malaysia instead of sustainable sources. I&amp;#x27;m sure a lot are.&lt;p&gt;I just reuse bags and never use paper or anything unless it&amp;#x27;s forced upon me. I bought some durable bags 5 years ago. I keep a couple in my vehicle, a few at home, and others in other places so I almost always have a bag with me.</text></item><item><author>relax88</author><text>One thing I’m always curious about is why we are so concerned with plastic waste.&lt;p&gt;My local grocery store recently switched to paper bags. So I got curious. Turns out you have to re-use a paper bag 43 times for the energy use to be the same as plastic grocery bags. This is impossible since they are made of paper. Aluminum and glass bottles require several hundred times more energy to produce as well (between 170-250x).&lt;p&gt;Then when you look at plastic pollution and see that for the most part North America is quite good at properly disposing of plastic you wonder why we are so obsessed with this as a problem.&lt;p&gt;Plastic waste really isn’t a big problem unless you’re talking about developing nations. North America is responsible for about 3% of mismanaged plastic waste. Asia and Africa account for 86% of it.&lt;p&gt;Don’t get me started on plastic straws. They make up 0.03% of plastic waste in the ocean.&lt;p&gt;If we want to make a difference here we should be helping developing nations to better manage their plastic waste so that it doesn’t end up in waterways.&lt;p&gt;The Yangtze and Ganges are releasing plastic into the ocean at a rate far greater than all of North America combined, and our response is to expend huge amounts of energy produced by fossil fuels trying to recycle our plastic instead of burying it in a landfill where it is unlikely to pose a major ecological threat.&lt;p&gt;Like many environmental initiatives I worry that we’re more concerned about making ourselves feel better than actually solving the problem.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>burlesona</author><text>As an American, one of the things that shocked me the most in visits to Europe was how much litter there is. I lived in Italy, and it was astonishing how there was just trash everywhere, even though Italy is a wealthy nation. I’ve traveled all over Western Europe and the only part that felt relatively “clean” to me was London - clean as in comparable to NYC or other major US urban centers in terms of litter level.&lt;p&gt;By comparison, I’ve lived and traveled all over the US, cities and rural areas, beaches, forests, etc. Litter is rare. Where you will find it are freeway underpasses, neglected urban or near-urban waterways and railways: places where people aren’t really “supposed” to go, and are therefore loitered in and rarely cleaned.&lt;p&gt;There are many areas where the US lags Europe, but in my experience when it comes to litter, we have far less of it.</text></comment>