PROBLEM WITH RECYCLING PLASTIC

The Problem with Recycling Plastic: Less than 10% of all plastic waste is currently recycled, in large part because so much of it cannot be economically recycled. Virgin plastic produced from natural gas is cheaper for manufacturers to buy than recycled plastic—another reason why the volume of disposable plastic waste is ever-growing. The reality is that most of the plastic we drop into recycling bins is not being recycled—it either goes to landfills or is incinerated (resulting in toxic air emissions) or is shipped overseas where it can end up in the ocean.

The plastic industry has been long aware of this reality and now points to an emerging technology they call advanced recycling—a chemical process they hope will solve the problem by turning discarded plastic waste into an oil that can be used to make new plastic. There are different types of this emerging technology, but critics point to the fact that such facilities, those that exist, and the ones being planned for, could at most process only a small fraction of the 160,000 million tons of packaging products being manufactured each year. They say the real fix is to simply reduce the volume of single-use plastic being manufactured—a solution that would ultimately require a ban on its usage, as France and other countries have done.