Always has been, always will be.
Hardly any plastics can be truly recycled, and producers have known for decades: Report
Plastics producers have promoted recycling their products as an environmental solution for decades despite firsthand knowledge that it was not feasible, according to a report published Thursday.More than 99 percent of plastics are produced using fossil fuels, and of these, the vast majority cannot be “recycled” in the sense of being processed and turned into entirely new products, according to the report from the Center for Climate Integrity. Viable end markets, or businesses that buy recyclables to make new products, only exist for polyethylene terephthalate and high-density polyethylene plastic containers, according to the report. Environmental Protection Agency materials have documented this for at least 30 years.
Moreover, while some local and city recycling programs collect other categories of plastics, they do not fully recycle them. Those other plastics are burned or deposited in landfills, instead. In many cases, chemical additives or coloring make it impossible to recycle the same types of plastic together, while even plastic products that can be legitimately repurposed degrade in quality over time, and the cost of the process is more than that of producing entirely new plastic.
The Center blames the petrochemical industry for the perception that plastics are widely recycled, noting that the industry promoted disposable plastics through the 1950s and 1960s and has since promoted the idea of recycling in response to widespread opposition to single-use plastics. The industry began promoting mass landfilling in the 1970s, and then pivoted to promoting recycling in the 1980s.
“For decades, petrochemical companies and the plastics industry have known of the technical and economic limitations that make plastics unrecyclable and have failed to overcome them,” the report states. “Despite this knowledge, the plastics industry has continued to increase plastic production, while carrying out a well-coordinated campaign to deceive consumers, policymakers, and regulators about plastic recycling.”
Just like every other aspect of the Climate Change (formerly Global Cooling, formerly Global Warming, formerly The Weather™) nonsense, it’s nothing but a scam—no more, no less.
Metals and glass can be recycled - glass containers can be reused, in fact Hildebrand Dairy here in Kansas has these old-fashioned half gallon milk bottles - which carry a deposit of a couple of dollars so there's incentive to take the used ones back for the refund. We ought to go back to local dairies and glass milk bottles, in fact, bringing back the milkman and even local grocery delivery might be a good idea. I can remember my grandmother calling up Fred Wolferman at his grocery, reading off a grocery list for a week's worth of groceries, and a truck coming by the next day to restock the pantry. I think most plastics are going to wind up being burned for fuel to produce heat, I did some research in my synthetic organic chemistry group (where I did my PhD) on recycling, but it turned out to cost more energy than it was worth, if depolymerization could be done at all to give anything close to usable raw feedstocks. I'd support going back to paper straws, waxed paper, and what we put food in before plastics came into wide use. I can remember back in the mid-1970s eating Dannon yogurt out of waxed paper cups, which were great fire starters...