Should we stop recycling plastics to save the oceans?

[DoodlePug]

Opinion piece on inews today explaining that the UK ships most of its plastic to developing countries to be recycled (where it generally goes to landfill) , but the larger countries are now refusing to take it so it's increasingly going to island nations and therefore ending up in the oceans.

In comparison if it went in your black bin it would go to UK landfill where there are proper processes in place to ensure minimal damage to the environment, with the hope that some future science will come up with a way to recycle it.

Googled to check facts and appears to be true. It also costs more to recycle plastic than create new so there's little market, and things that are made with recycled plastic like garden furniture are not themselves recyclable.

I hate waste, have made great inroads into reducing our plastic consumption but there's still loads.

Given this info I'm inclined to stop recycling plastic.

Anyone read similar and have more insight?

No. I live near a landfill. Those ‘proper processes’ you talk about are about as proper as trussenomics. You can contact sepa and the environmental health and the council or various useless MPs all you like and they all do the three wise monkeys routine. Never know if the smell of gas is a genuine gas leak or smell coming from the tip. And the bloody seagull noise is bad too. All the reports say that “well managed landfill sites should pose low danger to health” but when was the last time in this country anything was “well managed”?

I’d prefer just less shit packaging. Nobody asked for their milk or juice to be taken from glass bottles and put in plastic ones, nobody demanded three sodding bell peppers or a bunch of bananas wrapped in plastic, nobody ever moaned when you picked your mushrooms or apples and put them in a paper bag to be weighed did they? There’s more than a financial reason I mostly buy secondhand stuff and it’s to create less landfill.

I read the same article as you, just made me so depressed, I really hate plastic , we have ruined the planet with it, mostly since the end of the 2nd world war. I hate to say I would prefer it in land fill and not in the oceans.

While I get what you’re saying landfill isn’t the answer. You’d only be wrecking yet another form of environment. We need less of it in total, not to shove it somewhere else.

I don't know what the answer is, but neither what is currently going on, nor your suggestion, is the answer.

It's very hard to avoid. We try really hard as a family. Ultimately I think they need to legislate. But they won't. Fucking hate the government.