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Glass and aluminium are recycled. This works quite well. Plastic (and clothing) on the other hand, is now mostly just collected and afterwards discarded (burned, shipped overseas to dumping grounds, etc.).

Plastic recycling factories are going bankrupt (five in the tiny Netherlands in the space of one year), because they can't compete with new plastic. Textile processors are stuck with warehouses full of unusable discarded fast fashion.

Littering is just a tiny part of this problem. Reducing plastic (by charging for bags) is good and works, but the bigger issue lies with the fact that we use so much plastic, and often have no real choice in the matter.

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olejorgenb 9 hours ago | parent [-]

> Plastic (and clothing) on the other hand, is now mostly just collected and afterwards discarded (burned, shipped overseas to dumping grounds, etc.).

This is not true for drink bottles. (though they are not 100% recyclable due to material degradation, and there might be safety challenges for products made of recycled feedstock) I can't claim nothing is burned/etc, but it's most certainly not "mostly" for countries with a collection scheme.

	▲	Freak_NL 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They are collected — this is probably good, it means that at least it doesn't end up in the (local) environment — and a part of that is certainly reused, but have a look at the reporting digging into the actual numbers from the past few years. What do you think happens with those plastic recyclers who file for bankruptcy? In one case a local municipality is now stuck with thousands of bales of shredded PET left on the facility's grounds that no one other recycler wants to have, not even for free. In part, it is the oil industry itself which kept the myth of plastic recycling going: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/23/climate/california-exxon-...