this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2025
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Plastic recycling is one of the primary sources of microplastics. They use jets of air to remove labels, which creates an enormous cloud of microplastic. People who live near plastic "recycling" plants have more plastic in their bodies than people who don't.
There are articles about this out there.
does it do more harm than dumping plastic in a landfill though?
Yes, based on what I've read. Less than 5% of the plastic that consumers place in recycling bins actually gets recycled. The rest is shipped to other countries, who then dump it in the ocean. When you throw plastic in the garbage it ends up in a domestic landfill. Landfills certainly aren't ideal, but at least we know where it is, and it's better than the ocean.
they burn it. It has value as fuel to generate electricity.
Does the US keep any statistics on how much trash goes to where? I just checked the stats for my country, and here it's way more than 5%. link if you're interested
I'm seeing a lot of articles putting the rate at 5%. Google is just so much worse than it used to be...
That 5% figure is 3 years old, and one report from 2018 had the figure at 8.7% so it appears to be dropping. Based on the political climate in the US that number is unlikely to my rise anytime soon.
That 5% figure comes from The Guardian, a British newspaper, which I would actually trust more than a domestic source at this point. Based on what I've read about what the Trump administration has done to the EPA, I would imagine any new pollution reports won't be a possibility for a while.
Fine, I agree with all of you, let's stop recycling.
It's more like "Let's stop using plastic instead of patting ourselves on the back with a bandaid solution." I know this can be hard for people who equate their environmental consumer habits with = "I'm a good person" and in turn make it out to be a personal attack, even though it isn't.
Consider investing in a personality outside of environmental moral superiority and the switch to cardboard will be easy for you, barely an inconvenience.
Return plastic packaging to retailers. Dump it right on the front door.