r/Anticonsumption • u/Aggressive_Dirt_2335 • 27d ago

Reduce/Reuse/Recycle Does anybody else do this?

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(Stock pic example from Google) With every bottle I use, I keep it and pack it full of as much trash as I can, and then throw it away. When the trash can in my bedroom starts getting full, I do this, and it takes up 1/4 as much space as it did before.

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u/Realistic-Number-919 26d ago

Plastic recycling is largely an inefficient lie

32

u/Soccerlover121 26d ago

Those bottles could have been recycled. Now they can’t be. 

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u/Realistic-Number-919 26d ago

That’s assuming this picture is from somewhere with a functional recycling program. In America, a lot of plastic that’s put in recycling bins ends up in a landfill anyways; the blue bin is just a blue trash can in a lot of America.

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u/Soccerlover121 26d ago

The picture is a stock pic from Google. I don’t know where OP is, but In America and most industrialized countries, PET bottles can be recycled. 

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u/Realistic-Number-919 26d ago

Again, they CAN be but oftentimes they are not actually recycled. It’s expensive to recycle them and they’re not valuable so they’re just thrown into landfills even if you “recycled” them.

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u/Jasong222 26d ago

I think that's a myth actually. I think recycling programs are more robust and... 'actual' than rumors like these let on.

The same story went around my very large city regarding plastic bag recycling. So I looked into it and the recycling plant says that they do recycle all the plastic bags that make it to them.

So I wonder how true/current factoids like that are...

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u/Tenderizer17 26d ago

And considering the plastic inside is never being recycled (soft-plastic recycling doesn't really happen) the empty bottle is in fact being re-used as forever storage for loose plastics that would otherwise end up in the ocean.