Inside America's plastic bag recycling problem | Nightline

#news #investigation #recycling #abcnews #trash #plastic #environment

[hgo]

It seems as if the rep for the American Chemistry Council was expecting some softball questions. He had his points ready but wasn't prepared for pushback. The journalist was patient but not backing down. Excellent journalist.

[Sparkysings]

It’s ridiculous how bad our recycling is in this country

[LouisWing]

As someone who tries to recycle just about everything, this breaks my heart 😢 I actually make an even bigger effort to collect all of the plastic bags we use in our house and walk them to Publix to deposit them in the plastic bags recyclable drop off bins..where I have always assumed they would be turned into new products and keep them from landfills. This is a sham played on us by the people we buy products from, who all need to take responsibility for the trash they created.

[lhead]

I can remember when the government thought that Paper bags were the problem back in the 70's and early 80's and they told us how much we needed plastic bags and that we didn't need to reuse glass pop bottles, we needed single use plastic and look where we are now. At least paper bags you could use them for other things, plastic bags can barely make it home before they rip.

[koneko_]

When I worked at Winn Dixie I had to take the trash out, we had recycling and regular trash cans. Both of them went into the same garbage dumpster behind the store.

[briansmith]

I don't know. Maybe we should stop blaming consumers. We WANT to reduce plastic waste.

[melindamcafee]

The $0.10 we pay for each bag we use at the grocery store, retail stores were suppose to deter us from using anything but recycle bags.
Where does that money go? What is it used for?

[Gandalf]

This is great reporting! Thank you for the investigation. I've been wondering about where my bags go when i take them to these bins.

[hydropeppers]

This is the type of reporting we need in USA, not stoking the flames of a cultural war. Expose these liars for what they are.

[garygatto]

I was involved with replacing the flooring in one of the largest international airports in America three different times over my career. Each time they claimed they were recycling the old removed carpet there idea, recycling. It was shipping it to an incinerator and burning it. Can you imagine what pollutants burning carpeting would put into the air I can’t.

[jessicathomas]

I have been reaching out to Walmart in every way possible with my idea on reducing plastic bag use and I have received no response. Walmart Pickup orders should NOT come in plastic bags and the items should be transferred from the baskets to reusable bags in the person’s car. This should at the very least be an option and if Walmart actually cared about the environment it would have been done already.

[brucewayne-cnvd]

I work at target and one of the issues with our recycling bins is that customers will throw more than just plastic in the bins and we do not have the staff or time to sort through all the trash. Unfortunately in our store it all gets thrown away.

[SoberBangBangVeteran]

About time. I hope corporations have to pay.

[tarkov]

My old job used to collect recycling with seperate bins for cans and plastic, only for it all to get thrown into the trash. Its easy to make it look like you do the right thing but hard to actually do it.

[chadevans]

This is disappointing. All local Wal Marts have large cardboard boxes for plastic bag recycling. The signs say to put any type of bag in the box even non-Wal Mart ones. They are shredded and made in to new bags. So the signs said. When I last worked at a Wal Mart Supercenter, there were huge plastic bags that were wrapped in products like furniture. These bags were collected in the back and once a month, a "plastic bale" was made in a compression unit just as we did with all the cardboard waste. I never dealt with the plastic bags out front. A third party collected those. But I now question where that plastic bale went to and where the plastic bags I dropped in to the box at Wal Mart goes. I have had people tell me for years that plastic recycling is a con. I resisted because the alternative was that the plastic went to a landfill. Turns out, the plastic bags I dropped in that box at Wal Mart IS just going to a landfill. George Carlin was right. Humans suck.

[LouRegla]

Over 30 years, sorting one’s garbage has became cherished ritual. I’m sure many would do it instinctively at this point.

[Goolienpackingbags]

Recycling bags is difficult. Our factory has been making degradable and recyclable plastic bags for 23 years. We also hope that people will take action to reduce plastic waste

[unsolvedmystery]

I'm really glad ABC is looking into stories like this & shining light on the truth.

The Seattle Aquarium has been working to reduce sources of plastic pollution in the environment—in 2020 we helped pass the Reusable Bag Bill to eliminate thin, single-use plastic bags in Washington state & the manufacturers of plastics are taking credit for Seattle's idea to make themselves look better so they can continue to make plastic bags & whatnot. Great research & reporting on this topic.

Please do a story on Lithium fracking and its environmental impacts, child labor involved, and look who owns over 85% of Lithium plants, China. Water pollution is caused by the process and how much water is needed. This would be a head turning news story. You would be surprised to see who is lining their pockets in CA. Selling people on the idea of a cleaner environment by pushing electric vehicles even though it's straining the power grid and depleting water in areas already lacking in water. How is a Lithium car battery recycled???
Check this out if you're curious.

[j-yazzie]

I have a huge bag of grocery store bags that I've been trying to recycle. I'm glad I saw this video before I took them to Walmart.

[gaylemora]

All they think of is MONEY. Everyone is full of it. The world has really changed and greed had a big part of it