recycling plastic releases even more microplastics. ban plastic
this post was submitted on 23 May 2025
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Okay, just fucking leave the litter in the street then. 🙄
yea this is a logical fallacy, because nowhere did I say this guy does something that is worse than littering. reducing plastic usage is the most effective way of combating plastic pollution and I would like to see anyone claim we dont use plastic redundantly because it is cheap and convenient.
nowhere did I say this guy does something that is worse than littering
Huh?
I collected over 2000 bottles
recycling plastic releases even more microplastics
Certainly sounds like you're saying people shouldn't collect litter.
Look, I get it. Plastics suck. Plastic companies are bullshit and twist shit around to make the consumer out to be the bad guy. But when you said recycling releases even more microplastics in response to someone saying they collected over 2000 pieces of trash it sounds like you're saying they shouldn't do that. That isn't a logical fallacy, that is how communication works. An activity was mentioned and you criticized the activity. It is reasonable to assume you mean they shouldn't have done the activity.
If that's not what you intend then you should say something like "collecting litter is good, ..." to make it clear that you aren't saying they shouldn't have collected litter.
Ok, what I meant is it releases even more plastic on top of (maybe more than) producing it. Recycling plastic is not the magical solution it was once presented to us. Yes we all have recycling engrained to our spinal cords since primary education but unfortunately it is not the solution, it is a bandaid that is having difficulty covering up for the horrible consumption habits.
We already know a ridiculous amount of microplastics is accumulating in human brain tissue:
"Brain samples, all derived from the frontal cortex, exhibited substantially higher concentrations of MNPs than liver or kidney (two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), P < 0.0001), but comparable to recently published Py-GC/MS data from carotid plaques4, with a median of 3345 µg g−1 (25–75%: 1,267–5,213 µg g−1) in 2016 samples and 4917 µg g−1 (25–75%: 4,026–5,608 µg g−1) in 2024 samples"
doi: 10.1038/s41591-024-03453-1
If it turns out to be damaging to internal organs as well, we may have lost too much time on not impactful enough practices like recycling and soon pass the point of no return (given an exponential growth of microplastic pollution). So I don't have any patience for "recycle your plastic to save the world and win great prizes" type feel good stories.
Plastic is just the next stage of evolution. Once our brains are replaced entirely with plastic we'll enter a new era, no longer inhibited by our disgusting flesh.
Just fucking upload my consciousness to a hard drive and yeet me into space already (put an off switch though).
I think I read that no matter who you are and what you've done, only about 10% - 15% of all plastic you've recycled actually gets recycled. The vast majority ends up on barges being shipped overseas or to landfills.
This isn't to say stop recycling, if it compiles plastic into places instead of just distributing across the globe, then maybe later when people get off their ass and realize we're in trouble, they might make some kind of bacterial-world-ending-zombie-plague type solution for breaking down plastic waste, at least the plasti-zombie-plague will be isolated to particular regions and countries.
I really would like to know how you came to that conclusion. The OP is from Germany and is collecting abandoned bottles in the street and there are closed loop recycling programs in place. You return the bottle to the store, you get your 25 cents back, the bottle gets crushed and recycled into a new one. That kind of does work. Multiuse bottles are better, but I really struggle to understand how "Picking up discarded plastic bottles" releases more microplastics than letting those bottles out in the environment where they will become 100% microplastic
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772416623000803
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0269749124005694
This really seems like the kind of situation where you fix one crack and another one pops elsewhere.
Not to mention, car tyres are possibly also one of the highest contributers to microplastics so we might as well be fucked.
edit: maybe my initial post was worded in a confusing way read my update above if you are interested
Not to mention, the production takes petroleum. It's also not recyclable multiple times.
Here we get 3 cents for every bottle. I don't think I'll be buying a PS5 anytime soon.
Seriously, if you got a bunch for every four bottles around here it'd take a couple of years and a shoe change to find enough of them to fund a PS5
Government should increase the buy-back price even if it means increasing the initial costs. At least they'll return it. I think glass and aluminium are still better than plastic, unless ofcourse, profit and comfort. Population is still the ultimate cause of all, humans don't understand that Earth can't handle it.
Reusable glass bottles have their own issues, especially emissions from logistics if they are transported for longer distances.
Cleaning reusable bottles is energy intensive and uses a lot of water and chemicals. Melting and recycling glass is certainly more resource intensive than doing the same with plastics.
The best solutions to reduce resource intensity is local production and consumers bringing their own containers, going for dried instead of canned when it comes to fruits, beans and the like...
The chances of first-worlders putting up with packaging and preserved food habits that are essentially post-collapse "The Last of Us" levels of mild inconvenience: about -100% if such a ratio is possible.
"Ya'll telling me I gotta feed mah kids dried beans? How da fuck they gonna eat dried beans? they too crunchy!" will be the viral soundbite from a Kansas parking lot.
Capital won't allow change until it can no longer bleed a dime in it's present state. We're living under a locust plague and we've called it the modern world.
Glass Bottles are way too heavy and fragile.
But refill stations where you can refill your metal bottle and pay per litre would be a nice idea.
I like the ones that have a counter showing how many plastic bottles have been saved by refilling at the station
This is the way, get paid for cleaning pollution.
Nah, in Germany you're not paid for cleaning anything. You aren't getting any money: you are fined 25 cents (for some glass bottles it's 15, for some 8) when you buy the drink in case you don't recycle. You might get that money back if you bring the bottle back to the supermarket, they accept it, and the return machine is working at the time. It's a scam.
That"s not a scam. It's a solution. Take care of your Earth.
Unless the store is pocketing the money. I'm assuming the credit is going to a government program or non profit organization.
I’m assuming the credit is going to a government program or non profit organization.
Not really. It's complicated.
Basically all of the money is being shuffled between importers/manufacturers, stores and consumers.
Germany has about 95-98% return rate for the bottles (mainly because it's somewhat lucrative to collect them). So very little money is left over.
There's a company called DPG that is responsible to make sure that no part of the system is profiting of it unfairly
Germany wikipedia (annoyingly only available in german) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfand_auf_Einweggetr%C3%A4nkebeh%C3%A4lter_in_Deutschland
All in all, it's a net benefit. I remember the time before this system, and you had drink cans littered around everywhere. Ever since the system is in place, I can count the amount of littered cans (e.g. cans that are too crushed to be returned) on maybe one hand
It's a deposit system that works as a deposit system. And it's purpose is to decrease the amount of bottles that get thrown into the streets and that does totally work. Just compare how many bottles are lying around in Germany to other countries.
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