EU reaches deal to stop sending waste to countries that can't process it

Lee Duna@lemmy.nz to World News@lemmy.world – 246 points –
EU reaches deal to stop sending waste to countries that can't process it
reuters.com
15

Now send it back to the manufacturer please!!!

I don't know why we let corporations use a publicly funded recycling and waste collection program, paid for right from our pockets.

I buy the product, and then I pay to have it thrown away?

Uhm yes? You bought it, it's yours. You made the decision to buy something that contains plastic or is wrapped in it or whatever, that's where the responsibility went to you.

People generally have a poor understanding of what is and is lot recyclable in their own waste collection areas. I don’t know what kind of plastic or polymers are in each product. Only the manufacturer has the knowledge, capital and power to choose more environmentally supportive materials. They’d be more likely to actually do it if they had to process them afterwards.

And that's the job of the government, imo. Regulate the shit out of the free market, force the manufacturers to not use the worst things possible

Except if you pay attention, in some places you can't even buy a freaking lettuce that isn't wrapped in 5 layers of plastic.

Is there another option available though? When was the last time you saw a loaf of bread sold in anything other than a plastic bag?

While the consumer does bear responsibility in what theh choose to purchase, we cannot shift the blame for the entire product and it's packaging onto them unless there are truly viable alternatives.

Put a recycling charge directly onto the manufacturer so that those with the ability to make real change are the ones bearing the cost of not doing so.

Warburton's bread is sold in paper.

But yeah, most stuff is in plastic. AFAIK, most plastic can be recycled, but not into the same plastic in the same way that metal and glass can. And often it just gets exported for processing, and then gets thrown in a landfill somewhere poor.

I constantly buy bread in paper bags, I don't know what you are on about.

In Germany, (pre-)sliced bread generally comes in plastic. Bakeries use paper bags, supermarkets use similar bags with transparent windows (so that cashiers can see inside) and they, too, are plastic, not cellophane. They might be compostable or something though I bet a lot of them are ending up in paper waste.

If it were like that producers would not care a bit about how cheap (and easy) packaging is to dispose of properly. You may have seen this logo on stuff which means that the manufacturer has paid for disposal of the packaging, but responsibilities go further, e.g. the consumer generally doesn't pay for disposal of electronic devices at all.

Let's say I buy a large appliance like a washing machine, or maybe a electronic device like a tv. My thinking is why at the end of the life of the product does the whole thing need to go to a landfill? Which is paid for from by the government from "our pockets" in a sense. These items have plenty of plastics/metals/rubber in them, things we as consumers have no idea (and maybe we don't really need to know)

Each brand or company should be responsible to take back their products once its "end of life" is reached. Either the consumer takes it to the manufacturer direct or a "collection service" forwards the product. And the manufacturer should have full capabilities to disassemble it and re-use or recycle each item fully and safely in-house.

Just throw it in the trash. We dug it out of the hole; CO² is what happens with the processed oil sooner or later anyway, be it by burning or deteriorating via UV. And trash burning facilities have better filters for sulfur & co than the ocean, and it doesn't cause agonizing deaths on the way.

This is the best summary I could come up with:


PARIS, Nov 17 (Reuters) - European Union lawmakers and member states have reached a deal to revise the bloc's waste shipment regulation and end exports of certain types of waste to third countries unable to process it properly, the EU Parliament said on Friday.

It added that compliance with international workers' rights would also be taken into account.

The European Commission in 2021 proposed a revamp of EU rules on waste shipments to make it harder for member states to offload their trash into poorer countries.

"The EU will finally assume responsibility for its plastic waste by banning its export to non-OECD countries", Danish lawmaker Pernille Weiss said in a statement.

EU countries must stop shipping plastic waste to poorer nations within two and a half years of the legislation coming into force, the Parliament said, adding that rules for plastic waste exports to countries inside the OECD - the group of the world's main rich countries - will also be tightened.

In previous years, around half of the EU's waste exports went to non-OECD countries with weaker waste management rules than in the EU - effectively shipping EU pollution abroad.


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