It's not so much that consumers aren't motivated to recycle or that they don't have ready access to recycling programs; the United States simply doesn't have the proper infrastructure. "In most of the country,
How Much of the World’s Plastic Waste Actually Gets Recycled? This was originally posted on ourVoronoi app. Download the app for free oniOSorAndroidand discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources. The United States, the world’s largest plastic polluter, recycles ...
Related: How much plastic actually gets recycled? Underpinning all this is the fact that, depending on the ingredients used to make it, plastic can be incredibly resilient and might never truly biodegrade (which for the purposes of this article, means being efficiently reduced to basic reusable ...
Today, impermeable clay caps and plastic sheeting prevent much of this run off, making the landfills much safer than they were just a few decades ago. Still, any leachate is too much if it's draining into your neighborhood. New Goods Use Up Resources Making a brand-new product without any...
Today, less than 10% of plastic dropped in the bin actually gets recycled. Because it’s cheaper to make products from new plastic, the cost to recycle also continues to rise. Reduce the need to recycle in the first place by ditching single-use products. Provide reusable alternatives for co...
Plastic drainage pipes and storm liners collect water from areas of the landfill and channel it to drainage ditches surrounding the landfill's base. The ditches are either concrete or gravel-lined and carry water to collection ponds to the side of the landfill. In the collection ponds, suspende...
Glass bottles wait to be recycled outside a restaurant in Stockholm, Sweden. Ian W. Iott/Getty Images As far as having an environmentally friendly reputation, you couldn't do much better than Sweden. After all, it's the country that brought us plogging, the fitness craze in which runners...
The first is a calibrated drape—a simple plastic sheet placed under a woman during delivery that collects blood and shows, through printed measurement lines, exactly how much she’s losing. It gives healthcare workers a fast, accurate way to spot dangerous bleeding before it becomes life-threat...
#1: PET Plastic PET plastic, or #1 plastic, is one of the most common plastics used in packaging, and as a result is one of the most commonly recycled plastics in the world. When recycled, this can be used to create everything from clothing to new bottles. This can be recycled in yo...
I agree that seeing how much plastic waste people still end up with while doing their best can be disheartening. But what the Show Your Plastic photos don’t show is how much plastic these guys have actually REFUSED while doing the challenge. One participant, Michelle Cassar from...