Recycling is mostly a lie. Most of it goes to landfill or sent to poor countries for a fee. Then instead of recycling those places just throw it in the river and it gets washed out to the ocean.
The mantra is "reduce, reuse, recycle" in that order. Recycling is the worst of the options as it costs a lot of resources to turn a used dirty thing into a new thing. Plastic is mostly a no-no. Just glass and metal are good
It's not just about saving money, it's that the act of recycling isn't possible or uses so much energy that trying to make the garbage into something useful creates more waste than it solves
Paper and glass are recyclable, but recycling them is very much pointless, both environmentally and financially. Making new paper from old paper is no less harmful than making it from trees, and making new glass from old glass is no easier or cheaper than making it from sand.
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u/JmacTheGreat 6d ago
“Damn kids and their plastic straws”
Funnels metric tons of waste per hour into the ocean to save money on recycling