Foreign Waste is The Real Deal
Facts about Plastic Recycling
Truth about Plastic Water Bottles 🍼
How are plastic bottles treated after being thrown out? Is it wrong or effective?
In Ontario, about 15% of the plastic produced from plastic bottles is recycled or incinerated the rest of the 85% ends up in landfills. 🚮 
Through these statistics it shows that the plastic bottle recycling system in Canada is not effective.
Landfill waste has been on the rise in Canada, this is due to population growths, low recycling rates, and less focus on recycling issues.
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The real question is how does plastic bottle recycling occur? ♻️
Plastic bottles end up in the bin, this is where plastic ends up in a factory and is sorted. Plastic sorting is done 80% by machine and 20% done by hand. This is where the plastic is heated to create small plastic polymers. This plastic polymers are used to create new products in the future. According to Tim Duret, the director of substantiable technology in the UK, the demand for plastic recycling was created by the demand for vegan milk cartons. 🥛 
Solutions for more Sustainable recycling
So where does this plastic end up? We don't see many landfills in Canada after all. The sad truth is that the plastic and garbage from developed countries is sent to undeveloped countries through cargo ships. Canada constantly sends all of its plastic landfills to Southeast Asia, in countries like Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia The Philippines, etc. 🚩
Many people make a living out of sorting plastic. Nguyễn Thị Hồng Thắm a 60 year old mother of seven inhabits the outskirts of Hanoi, Vietnam, living amongst piles of plastic and garbage. Tham is paid $6.50 a day to strip off non-recyclable objects and sort the rest of the recyclable ones. ♻️ 
An shocking estimated amount of 13 billion plastic bottles are recycled every year. 
Some plastics can take up over 400 years to break down!
Canada sends waste to foreign countries to limit there supply of waste and landfills in the country. This is due to the reason of urbanization. Canada is trying to make room for new infrastructure and designs and the concept of garbage and landfills would disrupt the development. 
Believe it or not but the factories which recycle these plastic bottles also cause pollution. It is quite water intensive meaning that it is used water extensively on it rather than being used for more important causes. When plastics are recycled VOC's are released into our atmosphere can cause shortness in breathing and even death. 💀 
Melting plastic into bottles requires a large amount of energy. The labels "eco-friendly" or "recyclable" entice people more into buying the product knowing that they are creating a positive impact on the environment. 
We can see that the process of water bottle plastic recycling is ineffective, yet there are some solutions towards sustainability when it comes to water. 🚰 
#1 Using Reusable Bottles: Even if reusable plastic bottles require less plastic to be manufactured they create less plastic waste then a plastic water bottle since they are most likely to not be thrown out after 1 use. Plastic bottles create lots of waste once thrown out.
#2 Reduce Use of Single Plastics: Single use plastics are primarily made from fossil fuel-based chemicals Some companies are starting to use paper-based products which are less environmentally harmful than plastic products. Paper-based products can also cause less health problems compared to plastic-based products. 🥤 
Its either incineration or recycling. Recycling reduces pollution. The plastic that gets sent to incinerators is heated up which causes large amounts of CO2 emissions and dumping.
Plastic was invented in 1907.
More than 40% of plastic is used once before its thrown out.
11% of household waste is plastic 40% of which is the waste of plastic bottles.
To conclude, plastic bottle recycling has shown to be ineffective from all of the research I have encountered. It is clearly wrong. We as a group can make the smallest effort to make these recycling companies realize that what they are doing is wrong. Together we can save the world!
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Many plastics are made out of oil and natural gases. This releases toxic emissions when these gases and oils are extracted. Drilling for them also releases many contaminants in the air. You can see that there is a large connection between the water industry and the fracking, oil, and natural gas industry. 
Surprising Fact: Over 40% of the world’s garbage is incinerated.
There is a large amount in the kinds of plastic, to turn plastic into another product it takes a large amount of sorting. Combining different kinds of plastic makes it useless for manufacturing. Just because plastic is recycled, doesn’t mean there will be a demand for recycled plastic. 
Foreign waste would be the most effective option left for developed countries. To limit the pollution released in the country they send all their problems away.
