this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2026
54 points (98.2% liked)
No Stupid Questions
3977 readers
65 users here now
There is no such thing as a Stupid Question!
Don't be embarrassed of your curiosity; everyone has questions that they may feel uncomfortable asking certain people, so this place gives you a nice area not to be judged about asking it. Everyone here is willing to help.
- ex. How do I change oil
- ex. How to tie shoes
- ex. Can you cry underwater?
Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca still apply!
Thanks for reading all of this, even if you didn't read all of this, and your eye started somewhere else, have a watermelon slice ๐.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Recycling is the final reasonable option, not the first.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
The scam is in the material choices.
Metal and Glass are easy to recycle. It's also cost and environmentally effective. Particularly with reuse of glass bottles.
Paper can also be recycled. It can also be composted with food waste.
Plastics are the big problem. They can't easily be recycled, and the resultant plastic is low quality. Any more than 20% remelt is considered unreliable. The only viable options are landfill or incineration.
Recycling plastics is basically a scam. It shifts the blame onto consumers, letting big companies pocket the savings over glass or (waxed) paper containers.
We need to bring back a culture of reusing glass containers. Return, wash, and repack.
We now get milk in glass bottles (extra plus, it tastes FAR better than supermarket milk). We are also trying to phase out plastic use where we can. IKEA is actually remarkably useful for that. They have a lot of glass or wooden kitchen stuff.
I'm also careful to avoid "perfect is the enemy of good" situations. I'm not plastic free, just changing what can be changed without huge disruptions.