The little-known unintended consequence of recycling plastics

[douglas9]

Instead of helping to tackle the world’s staggering plastic waste problem, recycling may be exacerbating a concerning environmental problem: microplastic pollution.

A recent peer-reviewed study that focused on a recycling facility in the United Kingdom suggests that anywhere between 6 to 13 percent of the plastic processed could end up being released into water or the air as microplastics — ubiquitous tiny particles smaller than five millimeters that have been found everywhere from Antarctic snow to inside human bodies.

This is such a big gap that nobody’s even considered, let alone actually really researched,” said Erina Brown, a plastics scientist who led the research while at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland.

The research adds to growing concerns that recycling isn’t as effective of a solution for the plastic pollution problem as many might think. Only a fraction of the plastic produced gets recycled: About 9 percent worldwide and about 5 to 6 percent in the United States, according to some recent estimates.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2023/05/22/plastic-recycling-microplastic-pollution/

[pwb]

1. Our State banned plastic grocery bags.

If you can't get them you can't pollute.

[jimfields33]

3. That's a very small part of our plastic inventory

It’s a feel good measure. Just like recycling is a feel good measure that doesn’t do much (5-6 percent in the U.S.) But gives people a nice feeling inside.

[pwb]

4. So fuck it then. Right?

Come on.

[Diamond_Dog]

2. And our state banned banning plastic bags.

[Lulu KC]

5. Argh

This is one of those "didn't we already know this?" moments for me, but I guess it's worse than I thought. Plastic bottles. Avoid, avoid, avoid.

[GenXer47]

6. I remember returning beer bottles to the liquor store with my dad

What ever happened to that? Beer was sold in strong brown glass, in a sturdy cardboard case. It was fun, he let me put it on the conveyor and I'd watch it slide down this shaft, into the basement. I assume the unchipped bottles were simply washed and re-used.
We have to stop trying to "invent" our way out of this crisis and stop creating/wasting all this crap in the first place.
The film "Planet of the Humans" is a good explainer of this - that the only real solution is to drastically lower our consumption of pretty much everything. No tech is coming to save us, this way of life!

https://planetofthehumans.com/

[Rhiannon12866]

7. One of my earliest memories is that cardboard case of those empty brown bottles in the kitchen

I was too little to know how they were returned, but I used to take them out and rip off the labels - I remember the smell.