Thread by @gauravsabnis

Yesterday, caught a repeat of this NPR story that blows the lid on plastic recycling. I've known about the futility of it for years thanks to an older longform. But had never thought of the plastic industry being THE champion of recycling. Machiavellian!

npr.org/2020/09/11/912…

TLDR - while metals, glass, some paper can be and is recycled, plastic recycling is too expensive with current tech so doesn't really happen. All that separating and sorting of your plastic bottles is basically collective theater orchestrated by big plastic.

There's a similarly counter-intuitive truth behind the collective "don't print, save a tree" delusion. Most paper in developed countries comes from trees planted on private land specifically for paper. Reduction in paper use will just reduce the number of such trees planted.

I'm not saying printing a billion copies of everything will be an environmental masterstroke. But the paper you use, especially in developed countries, doesn't come at the cost of innocent wild trees being hacked down like in previous centuries. Has a carbon footprint obviously

Plastic recycling is a collective lie that helps the industry because it allows us to pretend like using this cheap convenient thing is okay. If everyone recycles, everything will be recycled, DuPont etc want us to believe. Just throw it in a green bin and buy a new one they say.

Some relevant bits.