Sigh. Bill Maher has given some of my favorite commentaries. But most of his comments about Plastic Recycling are Rubbish.
Here are some fact checks from last Friday's RealTimer claims about plastic recycling... in Bill's most finger wagging self-assured lecturing voice, Mr. Club Random poses as an expert in plastic recycling - something he has done over and over. Because - I do believe this - he's an environmentalist who cares about the planet.
But he's making up things about plastic recycling which will certainly lead to people not participating in plastic recycling collections, and he himself is doing more harm than good.
1. Bill, the 9% of all plastic recycled is not 9% of single use containers. It included cars and electronics and all kinds of other plastic.
2. Bill, most of the "ocean patch" of plastic is vinyl from ships and shipping industry waste, not single use containers.
3. Bill, the people who fly to the USA to inspect bales of plastic scrap, price it, pay for it (more than the value of paper these days), pay truckers to load it onto ships, and then bring it to the plastic factories which have web sites and are licensed by their governments and who pay taxes on it at customs - no, no, no, Bill - they do NOT then throw them in the ocean.
4. Bill, the textiles and other plastic items made out of recycled plastic would otherwise be made out of virgin plastic. And even incredibly weak recycling systems for plastic are obviously better than that.
5. Dear Bill, check out the Oregon DEP study on the lifecycle costs of different types of packaging, learn about forests and mining, and stop making our environmental degradation all about one type of lightweight packaging which happens to make a lot of sense as a lightweight anti-spoilage container.
Bill Maher is partially right about recycling creating moral licensing which may cause overconsumption of natural resources to a degree offsetting the value of the recycling.
But like @BillMaher likes to say about "progress" on social fronts, the progress made in plastic recycling - which started when the Bottle Bill states collected enough PETE to sustain a critical mass of material to invest in it - is not "fake".
