| ▲ | gryson 5 hours ago |
| Japan is nowhere near the worst for plastic waste per capita, and it has very high recycling rates. Rely more on statistics and less on personal observation. |
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| ▲ | no-name-here 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Even better to provide a source for each statistic. Japan has about half the plastic waste rate, yes [1]. However, the top recycling search result claims Japan only has a 19% recycling rate compared to the US’s 24% [2], but you might have been referring to a specific recycling type? [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/plastic-waste-per-capita [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling_rates_by_country |
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| ▲ | gryson 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | You're greatly misunderstanding that second link: that's the breakdown of what happens to collected municipal waste within each country (notice they all add up to 100% for each country). That says nothing about total amounts of plastic waste collected or recycled. See Table 1 here and its sources: https://circulareconomy.earth/publications/how-japan-is-usin... Japan recycles about 24% of its used consumer plastics into new products, while the US recycles about 8%. That's NOT factoring in thermal recycling, which Japan is far better at than the US. |
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| ▲ | armada651 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Since very few types of plastic are actually recyclable most of it ends up being burned despite being separately collected, so I don't think you can simply discount the recycled plastic from the plastic waste being produced. |
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| ▲ | gryson 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Japan burns about half of its collected plastic via thermal recycling (recovering the energy) and recycles about a third into new products. The key point is that Japan recycles 85% of its plastic waste, which is excellent compared with a country like the US that recycles about 10%. And, the per capita plastic use in the US is far more than in Japan. This whole point pops up on the internet so frequently because tourists go to Japan and see lots of individually packaged items in supermarkets and convenience stores. Yes, there is room for improvement there, but overall the situation is not as bad as many countries and probably doesn't deserve the attention it gets. | | |
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| ▲ | georgefloid 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
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