Is Plastic Recycling a Myth?

Last week California's Attorney General accused the fossil fuel/petrochemical industries of "perpetuating a myth that recycling can solve the plastics crisis," Reuters reports, and even launched an investigation into their role in "causing and exacerbating the global plastics pollution crisis."

And meanwhile, "The rate of plastic waste recycling in the United States fell to between 5%-6% in 2021, as some countries stopped accepting U.S. waste exports and as plastic waste generation surged to new highs, according to a report released on Wednesday." The report by environmental groups Last Beach Clean Up and Beyond Plastics shows the recycling rate has dropped from 8.7% in 2018, the last time the Environmental Protection Agency published recycling figures. The decline coincides with a sharp drop in plastic waste exports, which had counted as recycled plastic.... "The U.S. must take responsibility for managing its own plastic waste," said the report, which used 2018 EPA, 2021 export and recent industry data to estimate the 2021 recycling rate.....

Judith Enck, a former regional administrator at America's Environmental Protection Agency, said that recycling does not work and that no amount of false advertising will change that.

One sustainability site now even calls plastic recycling "a diversionary tactic preventing us from finding real solutions to our waste crisis," agreeing that it's being pushed by the plastics industry in "a clever, yet green-washed, ploy to maintain production by perpetuating a myth that all this plastic is destroyed. The sad truth is that it's not...."

The real problem is the ever-increasing amount of stuff, particularly single-use plastic stuff, that is produced, consumed briefly, and then added to existing piles of trash. The problem can't be solved by recycling.

Or, as Cory Doctorow put it recently, "Recycling is puffery. Which is to say, recyling is bullshit...." In 1973, Exxon researchers told the company that there was no feasible way to recycle plastics, and that there likely never would be. Exxon sprang into action! They created a puffery campaign! They lobbied state legislatures to mandate the use of the recycling logo, three arrows pointing at each other, telling us that plastic was part of a new, "circular" economy. Oil is made into plastic, plastic is used, plastic is recycled. Everybody wins!

We bought it. We bought the plastic, too. We put our plastic on the curb. It was never recycled. It will never be.

Thanks to Slashdot reader joshuark for sharing the link...