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0 pointsno-name-here29d ago0 comments

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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gryson29d ago· 2 in thread

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.

curio_Pol_curio28d ago

Thermal recycling is a classic Japanese euphemism for burning plastics. Yes, for energy, but it's still misleading

https://www.mitsui.com/solution/en/contents/solutions/circul...

>it produces CO2 and toxic substances when it is burned.

dcrazy28d ago

Yes, the bin for general waste is even labeled “burnables,” and in my experience that is where non-rigid plastic films go.

(Films are very difficult to sort automatically; we landfill them here in SF.)

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