this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
456 points (100.0% liked)
World News
1039 readers
19 users here now
News from around the world!
Rules:
-
Please only post links to actual news sources, no tabloid sites, etc
-
No NSFW content
-
No hate speech, bigotry, propaganda, etc
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
A new EV breaks even with a used car in less than a decade. It does not matter if it is getting its energy from coal, it still will emit less carbon within a decade.
90% of plastic recycling. That is thanks to the oil companies who saw backlash against the ridiculous amount of plastic in the 70s and decided to invent a resin code whose symbol mimicked the recycling symbol. Recycling centers were flooded with a ton of plastic which they did not have infrastructure to actually recycle. China took it for a couple decades and then it became unprofitable for them. Basically only resin codes 1 and 2 are recyclable. But most people think all of it is. Absolutely recycle metals. If your city has recycling pickup and you are not recycling stuff like aluminum, you kind of suck.
You don't need to; all trash, no matter the bin, goes under a magnet that will pick out anything ferromagnetic, and through an induction trap that will pick out non-ferromagnetic metals. Even if for some reason it gets dumped in a landfill, it's still possible to mine it out.
Aluminum in particular is more expensive to mine+refine than to recycle. Some places you can even throw it on the ground, and someone will pick it up to sell for recycling. Copper you can get even stolen from you, and don't start me on Palladium, some people will "recycle" the catalytic converter from your car if you don't park it in a safe place.
I read somewhere that this is false and all of them are recyclable. Don't quote me on it though.
I think you can technically recycle probably almost any plastic, perhaps almost any material in general. It's just a question of if the recycling process is affordable and competes in price with just buying the unrecycled version of that plastic. So other plastics besides PET and HDPE I'm sure you can recycle, it's just that the cost is prohibitive.
Technically yes but there has to be the infrastructure to do it. Most cities cannot process them. It's also generally not profitable and does not save much from an emissions standpoint either.