Amazon says its plastic packaging can be recycled. An investigation finds it usually isn't. | Grist
Amazon says its plastic packaging can be recycled. An investigation finds it usually isn't.
Not just Amazon. So much plastic waste is designated recyclable with caveats, caveats that the average consumer is not aware of and will not follow up on.
I was pleasantly surprised to see Amazon shipping some items in paper envelopes that are padded with paper instead of bubble wrap. I don’t know how they decide which envelope to use though.
Whichever one is closest to the employee who has to use it to pack your stuff in 6 seconds or less otherwise it’s pee-pee in a bottle time again
Pretty much everything I order off Amazon comes in paper packaging these days. Getting a plastic or bubble mailer is pretty rare.
One disappointing thing though: the ink in almost every printing process is some form of polymer which ends up as micro plastics that long outlive the paper they were printed on. Of course, still way better than wholly plastic mailers, just not perfect.
All of this packaging simply needs to be made...easily compostable & biodegradable, with a low-impact manufacturing process. It rots away? Cool. Make more.
It will become garbage. It will often not get recycled.
The world will not be made better by 50,000 people recycling everything perfectly. The world will be made significantly better by hundreds of millions of people recycling imperfectly, by companies making products & packaging better by design.
Most recyclables in general aren't even all that recyclable to begin with. All those campaigns telling you to recycle plastics are just pushing the blame onto consumers when it has always been the fault of manufacturers. Coca Cola even funds some of them, because its easier to fool people than to use different materials.
I assume everything I put into recycling except for glass paper and aluminum is just thrown away. I still do it on the off chance the plastic actually is recycled though.
Steel and copper are the most valuable
It's fucked up, but recycling is an empty thing when it comes to plastics of any kind. Limited times it can be done, economic non viability for most types, and lack of facilities to actually recycle any of them in a given state (for the US, but I doubt that's unique to here).
Pretty much, if it isn't a drink or milk bottle, it's trash that is going to end up as a problem. Even then you still run into how many times you can recycle the same plastic afaik.
Glass is a lot better. It's way cheaper to make new than recycle it, but at least it doesn't cause problems by existing.
What sucks is that plastics are bloody useful; doing away with them entirely would be more expensive, and lead to materials that just aren't as good at a given job being used instead.
Glass is not 100% recyclable. All recycled glass needs virgin material mixed-in.
The reason glass is great is because it can be reused, not because its a good candidate for recycling
Cool beans, thanks for the info
Isn't it a play on words? It CAN be recycled, but it doesn't mean that it WILL be. That's the case for a lot of things, recycling is mostly a scam because of this.
It can be recycled in a very specific facility that only exists in a few select locations. ^not near you^
Is this some regional thing? Everything I've ever ordered from Amazon has come in a card box or thick paper bag and even has paper tape.
It seems to be fairly random, but I've certainly seen them use plastic bags for shipping. These are the two most common styles, with one being a bag, and the other being a bubble-wrap envelope.
Random.
I can get 8 items at one time... Two will be in a box, four will be in paper bags, and two will be in plastic bags.
For such an automated company, you'd think that everything would just be in a single box.
You might have updated your settings to tell them yo only ship you paper st some point. This should be the default, really.
Get paper. Plastic free is the only way
This is true with most plastic. Even bringing recyclable plastic to a recycling center doesn't mean it will be recycled.
Fact is, it's more expensive to recycle than to make new plastic.
The sad fact is the best use of used plastic is probably burning it to create electricity.
It likely won't be recycled or reused and even if it is, it's likely that will only happen once (as recycled plastic is low quality).
So the option is bury it so it can outlast humanity underground or burn it to free up the carbon for hopefully regular consumption in the carbon cycle.
The only way plastic makes sense, then, is if we start using Carbon extracted from CO2 to create plastic.
Down cycling to lower quality plastics seems like another good use, but yeah, plastic is fucked lol
.... the best option is not to create more co2 and other toxins, as well as aerosolize the microplastics. Burying it is 1000000% better.