Did "Big Oil" Sell Us on a Recycling Scam?

Repair! We should fight for that. I want to be able to repair not just my electronics (or pay someone to do it for me), but also my tools and machines.

Reducing consumption is the ultimate taboo. That message is effectively censored from all commercial media.

For what it's worth, the mantra I was taught in the U.S. in the 1990s was ordered "recycle, reduce, reuse," but there was no indication that the ordering mattered. We were just taught about all three things.

Another concept comes to mind: Identity Theft.

It's a crime from a criminal to scam the bank. Instead of the bank being held accountable for mistaking the identity (or don't do enough due diligent), the concept shifts the blame to the account owner, saying it's their fault for having their identity "stolen", despite them was not involved in the scam process.

> An organized effort to shift blame/responsibility

That seems like a very odd view to me. The article points out the rising tide of traffic accidents that led to these laws being passed. As automobiles became ubiquitous it was more and more dangerous for pedestrians to walk on roads. So the laws followed this. That auto companies were involved in the lobbying process is a non-factor; even if we had increased criminal liability for traffic fatalities, the fundamental problem is that law is downstream of culture, and that we would reach a breaking point where juries would simply not convict drivers, as it became more and more common wisdom to be wary of automobiles when crossing streets.

No grand conspiracy is necessary here, this is just technology changing society and laws adapting to that reality.

Jaywalking was an invented term but it was not a new concept created as part of a conspiracy to steal the streets from pedestrians.

Prior to the invention of the automobile, if a pedestrian walked onto a public street and was struck and killed by a vehicle, the pedestrian was 100% at fault unless the driver was negligent. Merely operating a vehicle in a normal manner was not negligence.

It has been understood since the construction of Pompeii at the latest, that pedestrians belong on sidewalks and vehicles in the road.

Pont Neuf, the oldest bridge in Paris was built in the 1600s with sidewalks.

All of the oldest photos from the 1800s of major cities show a separation of vehicles and pedestrians.

If you have access to a newspaper archive like I do you can run a search for jaywalking and sort by oldest result.

Most of the pushback to jaywalking laws was because they required crossing at corners, not the middle of the street.

People instinctively (wrongly) believed that crossing in the middle was safer. Statisticians know that corners are safer.

Fun fact: you were more likely to die being run over by a horse in New York City prior to the invention of the automobile than you are to be struck and killed by an automobile today.

Much MUCH more likely.

>Horses killed in other, more direct ways as well. As difficult as it may be to believe given their low speeds, horse-drawn vehicles were far deadlier than their modern counterparts. In New York in 1900, 200 persons were killed by horses and horse-drawn vehicles. This contrasts with 344 auto-related fatalities in New York in 2003; given the modern city’s greater population, this means the fatality rate per capita in the horse era was roughly 75 percent higher than today. Data from Chicago show that in 1916 there were 16.9 horse-related fatalities for each 10,000 horse-drawn vehicles; this is nearly seven times the city’s fatality rate per auto in 1997.

https://www.accessmagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/20...

344 is a lot. In 2024, there were 252 auto-related fatalities (drivers, occupants, cyclists, and pedestrians) in NYC.

I once saw an article that in the 1800s there were over 150 fatalities per year in San Francisco due to street cars alone so I wager the increasing value of human life in the early 1900s also contributed to jaywalking laws.

Everyone just used to accept people dying left and right due to horses and trains.

But again, it WAS NOT a conspiracy to steal the streets from pedestrians.

To be clear, plastic recycling is pretty much a scam.

Recycling aluminum cans is fantastic. Clear glass bottles and corrugated cardboard are also great for recycling.

For recycling one of the hardest problems is separating plastics out from the rest. The rest is causing issues in landfills: landfill gas containing methane, which is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, leachates contaminating groundwater. If you have the plastics already sorted out recycling them makes more sense even on the short term.

It's also very easy to underestimate the costs of landfilling, because you have to keep them up basically forever. Having one person look after it for ten thousand years is higher than having ten thousand people look after it for one year, because wages rise faster than inflation.

The vast majority of landfills eventually leak. It's overall a terrible way to handle this waste w.r.t. environmental impact.

WHy is your initial answer 'no' when the backend of the answer is functionally "But they got away with the recycling scam."

Seems like your initial answer would actually be 'yes?' Specifically because the "non-functional governments were unable to implement this as a cost to the producers."

Plastics producers are absolutely trying to shift the blame of these failed programs onto "personal responsibility."

Glass and other metals such as steel, copper, etc. is still worth recycling.

I've spent 6 months building a software program and then been told we wouldn't be using it. Sometimes work is just a paycheck.

But yeah, it's nasty when you look in the big recycle dumpsters we have here and see the things people throw in there.

Especially on trash day when dog walkers go out of their way to throw their doggie bags in recycling bins on the sidewalk rather than the trash bin next to them.

There's no real punishment for missorting recycling, but I guess it's hard to prove who did what when trash collection is the way it is.

I think "recovered" includes burning it. I can't imagine how burning recycling is carbon positive.

> ‘recovery’ means any operation the principal result of which is waste serving a useful purpose by replacing other materials which would otherwise have been used

By the definition, 75% seems very good. I'm not sure if that definition is a legally sanctioned term or if your municipality has some screwy definition of 'recovered'. But if it really translates to "If this service didn't exist, we would 4x our production of plastic" - then that does not seem like a scam at all.

With that definition, a plausible extreme is they take 75% of waste plastic to create one single plastic cup. Meaning the production of plastic would not change if this program did not exist. If that's the case - then yes scam.

TL;DR not enough info

Hang on, politicians won't enforce sustainable living because the voters won't support it, but violent global revolution (presumably from a voting-minority?) does it?

And the "save the planet" faction (which we might think are left-leaning) overlap with the mostly non-violent faction? Whole the conservative drill-baby-drill faction overlap with the gun-loving, govt overthrowing militant types?

So your second possibility doesn't pass the smell test.

And of course we won't destroy the planet. At worst we'll make it unsuitable for human life. The planet itself will be just fine, and life will thrive after-people just like it does everywhere people have left.

Yes, I think the planet will change. And those people unable to adapt will perish. But plenty of people will survive, just perhaps not with current US lifestyles...

Regrettably, I don't think 2 will happen until it's too late, and agree that 3 won't. We are coasting towards one. Any other options?

Two a) in a world government adapting to a shittier and shittier life over time

Maybe we can get AI to recycle something... I'll see myself out...

> And no politician is going to suggest/vote for the serious changes we need as a planet and risk not getting reelected.

We have solved this in the EU by having politicians in the commission that nobody has elected.

What BS. People want to do good.

In the pacific northwest we have Ridwell where people go out of their way (and pay an extra monthly fee!) to separate their garbage so it has a better chance of being properly recycled/downcycled.

You'll see entire neighborhoods where everyone's got a Ridwell box on their porch.

I think you have it muddied a little.

Consumers often accept less convenient options because it is the right thing to do. Humans are a collective species and we make sacrifices for each other all the time. Quick examples at this level plastic bag ban, electric vehicles, disabled parking etc.

The groups who are kicking and screaming to try and avoid change is capitalist corporations. They will literally do anything to prevent a hit to their bottom line (they are perfectly happy to murder people for profit) and frankly should have no decision making power.