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Is that so? Do you have any sources for that? Honestly curious.


There won't be readily available and easily digestible English sources for these topics but... ~20% of total wastes are recycled[0], of which:

  - 86% of plastics are "recycled", of which 56% is "thermally recycled", the rest 25% is only quoted as "chemical recycling and material recycling combined" in most PR materials, which I think is enough indication that it's not going back into bottles.[1][2]  
  - I was wrong about glasses: 70% of glass bottle source materials comes from recycled materials[3], and use of reusable bottles have declined over the years and converging into 50%[4](by numbers of bottles?).  
 - Papers and milk cartons[5] are fine as had always been; I think those were recycled to toilet papers.  
... but the bottom line is 76% incinerated, 1% buried[0], rest recycled of which major part is by "thermal" means. So most of it is burned. Personally I think there won't be rapid drastic changes in this front and it's possibly more worthwhile to find green sources of plastics such as grain straws and fruit skins(but I think I did see a lot of such presumably failed attempts at it in the past couple decades)

0: https://www-cycle.nies.go.jp/magazine/kenkyu/202008.html

1: https://www.sustainability-hub.jp/column/learn/about-chemica...

2: https://www.wbsj.org/activity/conservation/law/plastic-pollu...

3: https://www.glass-3r.jp/data/

4: https://kyushu.env.go.jp/content/900177400.jpg

5: https://www.jpa.gr.jp/states/used-paper/




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