This article and its framing is a bit heavy-handed, in that recycling isn't bad per se, but our systemic plastic usage is absolutely destroying our planet. "It's not worth recycling plastic" misses nuance and takes a profit-oriented approach to the issue. The recycling of PET and HDPE plastics should be encouraged and subsidized, while we need to move away from most other plastics (and single-use containers in general).
The original Three R's framework is absolutely fantastic, and has simply been co-opted by capitalists. Reducing, Reusing, and Recycling are all good and necessary when appropriately administered in an economy.
The world would be so cyber punk if everything was in aluminum or glass. Imagine going to McDonalds and getting an aluminum bottle of diet coke, and little glass jars of dipping sauce
I remember when I travelled in China, there used to be stacks of glass bottles, usually in a fridge, with a aluminium cap on. These bottles were typically used by restaurants, small corner shops etc. And in them, they sell drinks such as soy milk, orange flavoured soft drink, coke etc. Once you're done with the bottle, they take it back to be sterilised elsewhere (probs a large processing unit), and refill with drinks. It was a massive thing, and it was everywhere.
I'm pretty sure it still is this way, and I really liked how it was done.
I mean, in a world where single use plastic is banned, factory farms and private vehicles are right behind them, if not first. So not really sure McD could exist in the world, but the image is cool to think about.
Building highspeed electric trains down the median of every highway in America, next to fiber optic internet, a next generation electrical grid and cover the whole thing with solar panels.
Buddy. Why should I clean up all this cum that you've forced out of me with your delicious words?
Banning private vehicles is a huge urbanist bro wet dream.
Get cars out of cities and make it so no one would need a car to get to a city. Most of the country would not be able to handle only buses and trains. We'd have a bus route 5 hours long with 6 stops.
People need to remember that the three Rs are in a specific order for a specific reason. If you're recycling, you've already failed twice, no reason to be proud of yourself tbh.
If a tax on plastic was made and used to offset the cost of recycling it, the problem would almost fix itself, but there's no way you're going to do that while the companies that profit from the production of plastic are in charge of making the rules.
That's why it would also need to be accompanied by dramatic execution of anyone trying to thwart it.
I recently moved to Europe from the US, and in my city there's a pretty huge incentive for households to recycle. Trash for curbside pickup has to be in these specific brightly colored bags with the correct logo that cost roughly $2 USD per 35-Liter/10-Gallon bag. Curbside compost pickup is twice weekly and cardboard recycling pickup is once a week, which is free. It's also free to recycle PET bottles, glass, aluminum, batteries, etc. This has really transformed my own approach to waste and recycling: now I only use about 1.5-2 trash bags per month. Plastic/Carbon taxes are of course still a good idea and need wide implementation ASAP.
I agree, I did not believe the original title actually did the contents justice.
Now shifting to glass/readily biodegradable paper/cellulose/aluminum would probably be better, but let's be real.
Americans love their snacks and treats, they half-ass recycling anyways, when they hear "recycling doesn't work" they won't go beyond that, they'll just start chucking everything into the same pile (more than they already do).
That 'consumer guilt' over plastic use is driven by corporations themselves in order for them to re-frame themselves as environmental heroes--see the 'plastic-saving' caps on water bottles or whatever the fuck. It's a manufactured downer-upper combination mainlined right into progressive liberal ethics. Electric cars are better for the environment because they don't pollute--oh wait, yes they do, just father from consumer observation. Solar panels will save everyone, accept for the rare earth metals and slave labor used to get them and rapid obsolescence.
It, like everything else well-meaning, was recuperated and co-opted. Just an aesthetic now.
I think it's important to note many people do consume plastic under the assumption it is recycled, and if it isn't, it isn't my fault. Whereas people's attitudes would most likely change if they knew at the time of purchase that recycling was "a lie to make them consume". Maybe chuds don't care about the environment, but they still care about being deceived/scammed/manipulated. Giving responsibility at purchase rather than passing the buck to local government waste systems is a start.
I know it's a lib argument, (I know in most cases there is no alternative choice), but consuming from oil Co.'s means supporting oil Co.'s.
There are vast, vast areas of plastic use that humanity could just stop making/consuming and literally nobody would give a shit. Almost everything in your local grocery store will be in a land fill in 6 months to a year, 5 years on the outside. Most of it is single use garbage that is pushed onto the consumer so for something for them to buy; demand is pushed by advertising, consumer culture. Halloween and xmas decorations, for example, make up millions of tons of garbage every year for what amounts to single use decorations.
Nobody wants that shit. If it simply stopped being sold, literally nobody would even notice.
My point is you have to just make that shit illegal.
I mean, they'd miss it for about 5-7 years I think. Then new traditions would take shape and everyone would be fine. If you think chuds and Karens were mad about Starbucks cups saying "Happy Holidays" on them, just wait until BiG GoVeRnMeNt takes their decorations.
I for one would love to see some stained glass decorations come back into style.
Nobody is walking into a Lowes this time of year with "Giant inflatable pumpkin with a Santa Hat that goes 'Boo hoo ho'" on their shopping list. Its all impulse purchases, which is why they have to have them on display. Sure, a few karens, maybe, but I honestly think most people would simply never think about them again.
I guess I'm talking about a world where you could magically make them disappear without telling anyone and see if anyone notices. If it became a stupid idpol/culture war, yeah, you're definitely right.
That makes sense, I get what you mean when you provide that kind of example, and you're probably right. The key would be getting it banned/illegalized in the first place. Barring a successful revolutionary workers party coming to power, I see the culture war narrative as an inevitability. Capitalist class isn't just going to LET us have a cleaner and more humane existence, not when there's a buck to be made.
There is a interesting Jacobin Article responding to something similar:
[Recycling is part of an insidious sleight of hand that reframed our growing waste problem as one not of corporate excess, but of irresponsible consumer choices and individual lifestyles.] (https://jacobinmag.com/2019/12/against-recycling-con-corporations-environment-waste-excess)
I think the parens need to be right beside the [] for the link markdown rendering to work.
Cause before they could turn some profit on it by selling it to Chinese companies who could scrape out a profit with cheap labor. 10 or so years ago they kinda moved on since their economy expanded and wages have been rising. Without exploiting the labor of a country that has low wages and subsidized industry, there's no profitable way to recycle plastic (especially if you have to sort and clean it yourself), so much of it has just gone to the dump.
PS: didn't read the article.
In posing the question, 'who is the subject supposed to recycle?' Jones denaturalizes an imperative that is now so taken for granted that resisting it seems senseless, never mind unethical. Everyone is supposed to recycle; no-one, whatever their political persuasion, ought to resist this injunction. The demand that we recycle is precisely posited as a pre- or post-ideological imperative; in other words, it is positioned in precisely the space where ideology always does its work. But the subject supposed to recycle, Jones argued, presupposed the structure not supposed to recycle: in making recycling the responsibility of 'everyone', structure contracts out its responsibility to consumers, by itself receding into invisibility... Instead of saying that everyone is responsible for climate change, we all have to do our bit, it would be better to say that no-one is, and that's the very problem.
-Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism
Even when you try to be conscious with your purchasing choices, there's so much goddamn plastic in American packaging.
Yes, individual choice isn't the answer, but it literally doesn't hurt to try to minimize your footprint.
Your steps try Japanese products. Everything in a bag and it's all individually wrapped
Zizek has an article I really like where he talks about this. He likens us recycling to polynesian island cultures making sacrifices into a volcano (idk if that's a real thing and yeah it seems a little racist idk). Basically living in the shadow of an active volcano is a massive threat to your home and life. But you have no control over it, nothing you can change what the volcano is going to do. It's hard as human to except this existential reality. So these cultures had these practices of making sacrifices to the volcano, giving them the idea of influence over the actions of the volcano and avoiding any feelings of guilt towards the outcomes. Basically for working/middle class people climate change is our volcano and recycling is our ritual sacrifice.
All of the oil in the ground, all of it, needs to stay in the ground, basically for forever.
It's easy to be doomer. Are there any 'solutions' to actually recycle?
I think the point is there is simply no pressure for companies to recycle (or consumers to use alternatives) as consumers have been effectively duped.
Easy solutions have always been available.
Word, so I should just be lighting my plastic on fire and huffing the fumes right?
