How does recycling work? Is it a hoax?

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I’ve always wondered how legit recycling is and if it’s worth the effort to personally do it. (I live in a high-rise and I can toss my garbage down a chute on my floor, but have to bring my recycling down to the ground floor.) In college I literally saw them dump the recycling bin and trash bin into the same truck, but I know I see dedicated recycling trunks around.

I was told “soiled” recycling can’t be used i.e. greasy used pizza boxes, is that true? Recycling dumpsters are gross, isn’t everything soiled?

When companies sell a product that’s “made from recycled products” how truthful is that? Is it their own recycled products or do they source it?

Whats the deal with the recycling triangles and numbers on a product? If I recycle a number that I shouldn’t, does it ruin everything else in that dumpster?

How does any one/machine feasibly sort recycling? It seems like a herculean task.

Recycling, fact or fiction?

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30 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Yes often it’s more like downspiralling, collected PET bottles for example can be recycled ~9 times or so, then the material has degraded too much. You need lots of water and energy as additional input into the downspiral. Mixed trash can not be recycled in the sense that there just is no cycle. You can melt this trash into crude shapes like deck planks, railway sleepers, park benches and so on. But that’s it, you essentially delay the problem a single step into the future while using lots of energy. At least the stuff is not being burnt, so no emissions from that or at least not immediately.

People say it’s reduce, reuse, repair, recycle but if you had to – out of those 4 words – find the odd one out, then it would be “recycle” because it’s a lot less effective than the other three, and should be treated as a last resort.

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