by ap8889 » May 23rd, 2017, 1:45 am
Anyone who hopes plastic can be recycled indefinitely needs to take a walk on a beach, which will rapidly reveal the true extent of plastic recycling.
Most plastic is used once and discarded. There are no good options to refine junk plastic material, so mostly we don't. That's human nature. We see the same pattern with nuclear waste, greenhouse gases, and a whole host of other issues.
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text edited. As far as I am aware from government rules, untreated sewage cannot be released into the sea (directly) or rivers. I may be wrong but EU directives forbid this. Raptor.
As we are not very good at managing to recycle even something as biodegradable as simple fecal matter, it is utterly hopeless to expect to progress to total reuse of every scrap of non biodegradable plastic.
Yes, one can see evidence everywhere to support this thesis of "we won't"
But the history of humanity is that if we find something we don't like someone usually comes up with a solution. E.g. Not that long ago the Thames was one of the polluted rivers on the planet and many said it could never be cleaned, but now it supports a whole range of acquatic life. Similarly there were billions of used tyres that no one could recycle, but solutions were found. Similarly electronics which mostly went into landfill, only the gold was at one time recovered, now Apple have shown most electronics can be recycled & the original design can be made recycle friendly. Sure plastic is a much more difficult problem, but there is a lot if it and folk are now beginning to think of ways to recycle it. Anyone who comes up with a good method will likely make a lot of money.
Regards,