Yeah, the meme has colonized their brains.
It all started in the 1970's, there was a huge grassroots movement pressuring corporations to stop or cut back on all that non-recyclable glass and plastic coming in their products. Before that most bottles, like, milk and soda, were returned to the manufacturer for cleaning and reuse, some of us remember those days. And
That, was recycling. Not what we do now, convert the plastic bottles into tree ties or crappy garden spades, at great expense. Or send plastic to Asia where they burn half of it to power small industries like tofu manufacture. Anyway the movement became quite pushy and the corporations felt their profits were being threatened, they were switching from glass to plastic bottling and from paper to plastic packaging at the time. So they went to their friends in Government and the Government came out and said "This is deplorable!" "This needs to Stop, Now!" And they gave everyone a recycle bin, basically pushing the problem back onto those who were complaining, and everyone else who wasn't. It didn't cost the corporations a cent but it did add a large expense to the public purse and of course it added a huge new infrastructure network that never existed before. The long extended city recycling chain with it's thousands of diesel burning trucks and all the rest.
What happened before all this? The drink truck would offload it's crates of full bottles and cart back the crates of empty ones for cleaning and reuse. At shops, but mostly at your door, home delivered soda ok. The milk van likewise, at your door. Bread and even fruit and Veg came to the door.
ONE small fleet of vehicles servicing hundreds of households instead of HUNDREDS of vehicles all going to the supermarket every 3 to 4 days. Think about that for a moment... Imagine the fuel savings.
But guess what? This sort of recycling doesn't fit the corporate supermarket model and corporations were taking over retail food from all the small business and driving them out. Corps don't want thousands of empty bottles piling up out back. As a Bonus soda sales went through the roof once mom could easily cart four 2-liter plastic bottles of drink home with no fear of having broken glass everywhere if they got dropped. People now buy their vegetables pre-cut and along with their meat it comes piled on styrafoam trays wrapped in plastic. The butcher used to wrap it all in paper, the meat wasn't full of water back then, it didn't leak all over the place. Anyone ever remember the big stink 40 odd years ago over McDonalds styrafoam packaging? So it never went away lol lol.
Meat is often injected with a saltwater, broth, or phosphate solution—a process called "plumping" or "moisture-infusing." While producers claim this tenderizes the meat and keeps it juicy, it also increases the product's weight.
So please don't talk to me about recycling unless it's lead acid batteries or copper pipe. The whole modern recycling thing is just a scam to keep people believing 'they' are making a difference while companies flood the World with ever more waste packaging. Here they used to sent the plastics collected to China but since China no longer accepts them, it mostly goes into the local landfills. But the second bin is still collected every week, and idiots are still washing their milk bottles out. No one sent them the memo. If you want to do something for the planet then boycott the supermarket and box store chains. But it's too late now anyway, the freight train is up to speed and the corner is approaching.
Brisbane city council: Glass from Brisbane's yellow-lid recycling bins is taken to Visy’s Material Recovery Facility (MRF) on Gibson Island, where it is sorted, crushed, and distributed. It is primarily transformed into new glass bottles and jars or ground into sand substitutes for construction and roadbase
Grind glass back into sand? Sounds expensive doesn't it.
Globally, only about
9% of plastic waste is successfully recycled. The remaining 91% is either sent to landfills, burned, or leaked into the environment as pollution.
