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Comment by ClumsyPilot | Hacker News Reader

> When I looked at the offset market in the past, I realized that it was one of the few markets where both the buyer and seller are perfectly happy with fraud.

> I can't think of many other markets where this dynamic exists.

Recycling market is the same - UK government pays you to recycle plastic, £60 per tonne. You find someone in a 3rd world country that will take it off your hands for £30 per tonne, and pocket the difference. They give you a document saying the plastic was 'recycled' and dump it in the ocean.

The sums may be wrong, but you get the gist

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Or they illegally burn it!

Or legally burn it

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SELCHP

I actually wonder if incineration is the best way to dispose of plastic as it avoids the recycling fraud problem

Generally we try to minimise our plastic use but it’s hard

Well you can't minimise plastic use if the rest of society doesn't.

I think landfilling is fine, we just need to make sure it does not end up in the environment floating about and causing contamination. And that we are not getting defrauded.

They must be recycling enough of it to recover their £30. They may dump the unrecyclable parts into the ocean, but nobody doubts there are unrecyclable things mixed in with it. It can't be 100% recycled.

In this scenario they don't pay for the plastic. They receive £30 and a tonne of plastic.

To expand on this for anyone who doesn't quite follow, the government pays citizens £60 for recycling, which requires a certificate of proof, a citizen can give their plastic and £30 to a company for a certificate, but the company doesn't actually do the recycling.

> the government pays citizens £60 for recycling

The government might as well be part of such fraud too? What do they care, if the plastics is not actually recycled.

But if they cay say to the voters, "Now we're recycling all plastics", then, some more votes, they'll get, in the next elections? (Maybe just a few more votes, if most voters also don't care)

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