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Comment by jh00ker | Hacker News Reader

The US barely even recycles any plastic to begin with!

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/plastic-recycling-failed-concep...

It's worse than that... Even for ideal, highly recyclable materials like aluminium and glass, the majority is thrown away globally.

Aluminium and glass are more economical to recycle than sourcing virgin materials! comparably simple and infinitely recyclable - and yet we still can't get that right - Plastic is expensive and complex to recycle, the idea that recycling it was ever a solution to plastic pollution is complete BS, there will always be a significant quantity that ends up in the ground and in the sea.

Aluminium certainly, but glass is not clear cut. A quick web search leaves me thinking it depends, not just on whether you measure energy, greenhouse gases, or cost (versus cost of disposal if not recycled), but also all of those vary between countries.

Yes, economics of recycling plastic are very bad, I wonder how high the cost of landfill would need to increase to make it more expensive than recycling.

The economics only indicate the practicality of recycling. But the other component is environmental impact for the portion not recycled... not only is their immense economic friction for recycling of plastics, but there is also a high environmental cost.

Compared to other widely used materials that are essentially inert, the environmental cost of not recycling is mostly limited to the impact of sourcing virgin materials that could have been from recycled sources.

Yup. And landfilling plastics is actually a decent and environmentally responsible thing - carbon re-sequestration, essentially.

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