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Coca-Cola’s Plastic Waste Polluting Oceans Projected to Reach 1.3 Billion Pounds per Year by 2030: Oceana Report - EcoWatch (www.ecowatch.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Coca-Cola products will be account for up to 1.33 billion pounds of plastic waste in oceans and waterways annually by 2030, Oceana reports.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

This is true. Both are obviously bad if they end up in a landfill. I'm not sure which is best to recycle. Aluminum cans are recycled about 50% of the time in the USA, compared to about 30% for plastic bottles.

When you recycle aluminum cans, they are shredded then melted in a 730°F furnace. I imagine most of that plastic, which is referred to as a laquer, ends up vaporized.

When you recycle a plastic bottle, the process is pretty similar. After a lengthy sorting process to make sure you have recyclables of the same chemical makeup, the bottles get shredded, melted and turned in to other products. Most of those other products, like polyester clothes, are not recyclable. Bottle-to-bottle recycling is difficult, thus not very common.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Aluminum can be more easily recycled, but there's still plastic in the can which will have chemicals leeching into the liquid. Glass is the best, with the downsides that it's heavy and dangerous if broken.