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In Japan, consumers are responsible for disassembling their waste when recycling. Something like that could work for the USA, though I'm not sure if Japan's more involved system actually gets better results than other countries. For example, https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry.... indicates that much of the recycling is oriented around energy production than actual material reuse.

Obviously we should expect energy/material loss when recycling (meaning, each time something is recycled it should require inputs), but perhaps we can get those numbers down more and more as time goes on.



Don't less the elaborate consumer sorting fool you. Japan burns everything except for PET, glass and metals.

They make you separate plastics because in some areas they burn the plastics separately in ways that attempt to reduce the pollution from burning it.




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