I was dragged to a recycling plant with a bunch of curious engineers from Google a long time ago. The takeaway was that is was a giant scam- we can't recycle glass, paper is iffy, msot of the stuff is meh, but aluminum is ok. Trash trucks literally pulled up to the plant and removed the "unrecycleable" waste.
We were all so pissed we went into software, when one could literally just put trash into a different container with a green/blue color, and thus purify and bless it, and then send it to a dump.
The part we missed was the ships just taking all this trash to China and Bangladesh.
Wait, how is the glass unrecyclable? Glass should be one of the most recyclable bits, along with metals.
Just because plastic is a scam doesn't necessarily mean everything else recycled is. Scrap metal is big business. Old rubber tires get shredded and vulcanized into new products.
Glass doesn't have to be clear for most disposable uses; it's mostly useful in things such as windows, where you probably want to keep them around. For bottles, it doesn't really matter much.
Nearly all glassmaking involves adding all the glass bits you cut off or broke back into the kiln. Almost no glass is actually 100% virgin glass. So glass is absolutely recyclable.
The only caveat is colored glass can only really be used to make the same color glass (at least economically).
I mean the goal with glass isn't to recycle it anyways, it is to reuse it. And when glass does eventually get thrown away, it is completely inert. It is just sand but in large solid pieces instead of grains. Hell if we cleaned it first, we could literally throw the glass in large piles in designated areas of the coast and just let the waves smash it all back into sand with zero ill effects.
I guess it is just a US thing. I read a lot of HN so naturally had the same very skeptical disposition, until we went to see one of those plants in town. Started recycling at home the same week.
Metals, Glass and paper are profitable to be recycled, plastic a bit less so, but still doable.
But in EU there are a lot of programs to cut taxes or subsidize recycling so maybe that’s actually working?
I was dragged to a recycling plant with a bunch of curious engineers from Google a long time ago. The takeaway was that is was a giant scam- we can't recycle glass, paper is iffy, msot of the stuff is meh, but aluminum is ok. Trash trucks literally pulled up to the plant and removed the "unrecycleable" waste.
We were all so pissed we went into software, when one could literally just put trash into a different container with a green/blue color, and thus purify and bless it, and then send it to a dump.
The part we missed was the ships just taking all this trash to China and Bangladesh.