51
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] rekabis@lemmy.ca 2 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

When you really look at it, only type 1 & 2 plastics are recycled with any real frequency (80+%). And even then, there is a subset of plastics marked with those two types which cannot be easily recycled.

Meanwhile, while types 3 through 7 are “recyclable”, in reality these are actually recycled in the very low single-digit percentages, or not at all. Most of the rest are incinerated or shipped off to third-world countries for “processing”.

As such, most any plastic that are not marked type 1 or 2 should be binned with the trash, especially if said trash is going to be effectively and correctly entombed in a landfill.

Not only does it contain said plastics so they don’t contaminate the wider environment (especially if the landfill is correctly designed with a liner), but it also puts them all in one spot for when technology unlocks effective ways of recycling these types - there are emerging companies that foresee a time when we will “mine” our landfills for resources, and our best current strategy is to contain and concentrate our waste in as convenient a manner as possible.

this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2025
51 points (100.0% liked)

Australia

4414 readers
165 users here now

A place to discuss Australia and important Australian issues.

Before you post:

If you're posting anything related to:

If you're posting Australian News (not opinion or discussion pieces) post it to Australian News

Rules

This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone. In addition to those rules:

Banner Photo

Congratulations to @Tau@aussie.zone who had the most upvoted submission to our banner photo competition

Recommended and Related Communities

Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:

Plus other communities for sport and major cities.

https://aussie.zone/communities

Moderation

Since Kbin doesn't show Lemmy Moderators, I'll list them here. Also note that Kbin does not distinguish moderator comments.

Additionally, we have our instance admins: @lodion@aussie.zone and @Nath@aussie.zone

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS