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Plastic recycling: a harmful, costly and even anti-ecological myth; New Jersey Bans Single-Use Plastic Bags, Triples Plastic Consumption

2 articles from reinformation.tv :

https://reinformation.tv/recyclage-plastique-mythe-ecologique-jallais/

https://reinformation.tv/new-jersey-consommation-plastique-dolhein/

Plastic recycling: a harmful, costly and even anti-ecological myth

Plastic recycler: it has become a virtue that cannot be discarded unless one is immediately accused of being unconscious, regressive and even murderous, given all the animals in the oceans that are apparently condemned from the outset. The State advocates it, companies boast about it, citizens claim it as their own by opening, day after day, with determined eyes, their multiple trash cans...

But what about the actual reality of plastic recycling? And what , above all, about its merits? The European Union has made it a standard of morality, while the process is much more complex than it seems. This is the Telegraph 's unequivocal observation : "Many of these initiatives are confusing, some are far from keeping their promises and others directly cause more environmental damage than they prevent."

And no one wants to admit it, from the State that adheres to all the "sustainability" programs imposed by the globalists, to the oil companies and businesses that, entangled in overly restrictive standards, turn a blind eye and entrust the dirty work to poor countries. The green diktats really provide the biggest lies.

The ecological myth: a recyclable item is not necessarily recycled

First lie: by making the effort to sort, consumers participate in the recycling of plastic.

The Telegraph cites the example of British supermarket chain Tesco, which in 2021 installed bins in its stores for customers to deposit their hard-to-recycle “soft plastics,” such as low-density polyethylene from shopping bags and film lids. At the time, the company boldly predicted it would “collect more than 1,000 tonnes a year” and recycle as much of it as possible.

A recent investigation by the Environmental Investigation Agency and the pressure group Everyday Plastic showed the other side of the story: the vast majority of this waste ended up being incinerated rather than recycled.

So customers are being misled, and this is not limited to soft plastics, of course. According to Greenpeace, 58% of all plastic waste in the UK is incinerated, 14% is exported to other countries and 11% is sent to landfill: only 17% is actually recycled (France achieves 23%). And the situation is even worse in the US, where, according to investigative journalist John Stossel , only about 5% of plastic is recycled.

This is less of a scientific question than an economic one.

Second lie: Recycling is economically smart.

If companies are failing to play the green card, it is simply not feasible, both practically and economically. “The reality is that most plastics are incredibly cheap to produce. It is difficult to recycle cheap materials profitably because the margins are so low,” The Telegraph points out .

Already, the public itself does not understand anything about it. Who has never disagreed, at home, about whether a recipient could receive a particular plastic? The fact is that there is no legislation concerning recycling symbols on labels. There is what is called the "Mobius loop" (three arrows continuing around a triangle), but this just indicates that an object can be recycled, not that it will necessarily be accepted in all collection systems.

The real sorting is done on conveyor belts, in recycling plants, thanks to infrared (or Raman) spectroscopy that analyzes plastics and identifies the structural imprint of the molecules. But after that, they still have to be processed, differently, in machines appropriate for each type requiring it – and there are about 40,000 types of synthetic polymers…

All this costs a lot of money. And Western countries often do not have the adequate infrastructure (and do not want to bear the cost either). In France, for example, no site is capable of recycling the polystyrene plastic that yogurt pots are made of: the little that is recovered in sorting is sent to Spain – with the cost of their famous carbon footprint that transport represents!

Dr. Chris DeArmitt , considered one of the world's leading plastics scientists, puts it bluntly: "The real reason plastic often isn't recycled is that it's not worth it." The worst part is that the state knows this, but that doesn't stop it from slapping companies on the knuckles, as we saw last month with California's lawsuit against ExxonMobil, accusing it of falsely promoting the recyclability of thermoset plastics...

Recycling: A Crazy Ideology That Became Public Policy

Today, while standard mechanical recycling might work, in theory, for much plastic, it actually costs much less to ship plastic around the world to be burned – and so that's what's happening.

Bogged down in standards that are too high, Westerners have been sending their recyclable plastic for many years to those who are willing to take them, namely poor countries (China has finally banned it) where waste management is less expensive. But the latter recycle little or only in very polluting conditions, preferring to burn or especially throw it into the ocean . And as abuses multiply, hazardous waste often rubs shoulders with recyclables.

A great success for the West, which is burying its head in the sand.

A 2018 report written for the Global Warming Policy Foundation by an assistant professor of general epidemiology at the University of Helsinki (and titled “Saving the Oceans – Stop Recycling Plastic”) was quick to point to the ideological environmentalists of the 1980s and their dreams of recycling as the ultimate cause of the marine litter problem: “The sensible and effective solution to plastic waste is to incinerate it. This reduces its volume by 80% and allows it to be safely disposed of in landfills.”

Plastic, greener than expected

Third lie: plastic is anti-ecological.

Green policy would either recycle plastic or ban it altogether. For Dr DeArmitt quoted by The Telegraph , "this is short-sighted and completely ignores the side effects. Dozens of life-cycle studies have shown that in 93% of packaging cases, plastic is the option with the lowest environmental impact."

A study conducted by Imperial College in 2019 found that replacing plastic on food packaging with alternatives (such as cotton, glass, metal or bioplastics) would on average increase the weight of the packaging by 3.6 times, energy consumption by 2.2 times and carbon dioxide emissions by 2.7 times! In addition, plastic preserves food products better, allows for better conservation and therefore less waste. For Dr DeArmitt, honesty is about acknowledging the positive side of the equation.

And let’s not forget, scientists remind us, that plastics only make up about 0.5% of the manufactured materials used by humanity: cement and steel have a “carbon footprint,” if we must use their distorted jargon, much larger. The organic cotton bag that we make the effort to buy is at best a signal of false good virtue…

The war on plastics by international institutions that claim to be fighting climate change is a pipe dream.

By Clementine Jallais

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New Jersey Bans Single-Use Plastic Bags, Triples Plastic Consumption

Banning plastic bags won't save the planet, and now we have further proof... In New Jersey, a close study of the effect of the measure taken by the Democrats in power reveals that it has resulted in a near tripling of plastic consumption for shopping bags. This is according to the research firm Freedonia Custom Research (FCR) of MarketResearch.com. A perfect example of the perverse effects of state interventionism in everyday life...

The ban on single-use plastic bags was implemented in May 2022, forcing larger retailers and food businesses to sell reusable, exchangeable bags made of woven or non-woven polypropylene plastic. But the average New Jersey shopper didn’t like it, complaining instead about seeing these bags pile up in their homes, as they have to buy new ones or have their grocery orders delivered in new reusable bags. Many end up in the cellar.

Other customers don't keep them, preferring to throw them away as they go.

Plastic consumption has tripled with the arrival of reusable bags

In any case, before the ban, New Jerseyans used about 24 million kilograms of plastic per year, compared to more than 68 million today. The math is simple: it takes 15 times more plastic to make a reusable bag than a single-use bag, but they are not used 15 times more often in this American state, but only two or three times on average.

As for single-use bags, they were not really single-use, being used several times to transport other objects or recovered as garbage bags... Their disappearance forces the good citizen to buy commercial garbage bags, which doubles the expense for the customer and leads to the manufacture, transport, and packaging of even more bags.

For Selwyn Duke of The New American , this measure, which has clearly backfired , is not about to be abandoned. Simply because it works to the financial advantage of retailers: he cites the example of a retailer who made a tidy $200,000 in sales over twelve months.

The question of plastic in the oceans remains. But is it our shopping bags that created the problem?

Lack of education provides part of the answer. Why else do we find swathes of bags and other plastic objects floating on the surface of some rivers and streams?

Plastic bag consumption is not what pollutes the oceans

The real problem lies elsewhere, however, Selwyn Duke points out.

• Most plastic waste originates in five Asian nations, with China alone responsible for 28% of the total.

• Around 46% of plastic waste in the ocean is made up of abandoned fishing nets.

• 95% of the plastic we think will be recycled will not actually be.

• Plastic that we throw in the trash never reaches waterways: it ends up in landfills or dumpsites.

The environment has much more to expect from the development of new materials, from technological innovation, therefore: for example this bio-plastic of plant origin and biodegradable in a few months in a domestic compost invented by Plantswitch , which offers the same performances of plasticity, and especially of resistance (try to transport two kilos of apples in a biodegradable bag distributed today in the vegetable section of your supermarket!) as plastic of petroleum origin.

But it was not a law "for the planet" that led to the development of such a product: it was human ingenuity and the entrepreneurial spirit!

By Anne Dolhein