this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2025
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Recycling started off as the third R and last resort, the first two were Reduce and Reuse. Those were not compatible with an economy based on consumerism and growth, so Recycling became the focus, creating an industry to pick through the few things that could be recycled and trashing the rest, and encouraging the public to buy more because it's not a problem as long as you participate.
And if you don't participate, all the problems are your fault. Not the companies making the stuff, they're just doing what you want.
They also told us all this stuff was recyclable. They got us to separate our trash. Municipalities changed their waste collections services. Added new trucks. For 40 years. Then they were like “yeah, none of this stuff can actually be recycled”. lol. And THEN after they got called out on that, they’re like “yeah, we lied last time. But now we really are working on a way to recycle these things. And it’s really really going to work this time totally for sure.”
I think it's even worse. They didn't tell us what was and wasn't recyclable. They used symbols very similar to the recycling logo to stamp on various types of plastics to classify them. Most of the types used are one time use, they never were meant to imply recycling, that's just the symbol appearance.
And even still, not everything of any particular code is recyclable.
I finally discovered that what is accepted in my recycle cart is determined by who will buy it for recycle. For example, some company might buy yogurt tubs and milk jugs but not other shapes of the same plastics.