Companies whose futures depend on plastic production are trying to persuade the federal government to allow them to put the label “recyclable” on plastic shopping bags and other items virtually guaranteed to end up in landfills and incinerators.
My rule of thumb is that “recyclable” is 99% greenwashing and 1% a clueless business actually meaning well.
Everything is recyclable to some degree - if they wanted to do something for the environment it should be made from recycled material instead of advertising that it’s possible to recycle the material they used
6even when recycled the whole process increases the amount of plastics in the air.
And plastic in general is always going to eventually end up in the enviroment. There is only so many times you can heat and melt plastic before its bonds start to collasps.
Right from day one recycling was a plastics industries attempt to green wash and delay shut down/ replacement.
Many better options exist. The only issue is production cost. And that will not improve while corperations continue to use plastic as the cheap solution.
The industry knew what they were doing when they claimed plastic could be recycled. And need to suffer for the lie that it was a solution to the harm their product dose.
Zero co actually just announced this bullshit - their former model was recycled plastic ‘forever bottles’ you refilled from recycled plastic pouches that you sent back to be cleaned and reused.
Now they’re doing much smaller single use packaging that’s ldpe lined cardboard, doesn’t work with their forever bottles (meaning you have to buy new proprietary kit) and are touting it as greener.
My rule of thumb is that “recyclable” is 99% greenwashing and 1% a clueless business actually meaning well.
Everything is recyclable to some degree - if they wanted to do something for the environment it should be made from recycled material instead of advertising that it’s possible to recycle the material they used
6even when recycled the whole process increases the amount of plastics in the air.
And plastic in general is always going to eventually end up in the enviroment. There is only so many times you can heat and melt plastic before its bonds start to collasps.
Right from day one recycling was a plastics industries attempt to green wash and delay shut down/ replacement.
Many better options exist. The only issue is production cost. And that will not improve while corperations continue to use plastic as the cheap solution.
The industry knew what they were doing when they claimed plastic could be recycled. And need to suffer for the lie that it was a solution to the harm their product dose.
Zero co actually just announced this bullshit - their former model was recycled plastic ‘forever bottles’ you refilled from recycled plastic pouches that you sent back to be cleaned and reused.
Now they’re doing much smaller single use packaging that’s ldpe lined cardboard, doesn’t work with their forever bottles (meaning you have to buy new proprietary kit) and are touting it as greener.