But plastic was never meant to be recycled. In fact, it’s purposefully designed to be hard to break down and turn into something new. Made from polymer chains and additive chemicals, plastic’s popularity comes from its resilience and longevity - attempting to recycle it goes against its reason for existing. 

History has proven this point. We’ve been trying to recycle plastic for 50 years, but only 9% has gone through the system once, rarely twice. In 2021, 51 million tonnes of plastic waste was generated by US households, and only 2.4 million tonnes was recycled. Plastic waste can’t be used to make the same products again because the quality degrades, so the majority of this was downcycled - turned into an inferior material that lasts only one or two more cycles before becoming redundant. The term should really be monocycling, not recycling, for all it’s capable of. 

The system is inherently flawed. Many countries don’t have a waste management system in place, and those that do aren’t aligned on how to collect and sort the plastic that comes through the door. Until recently, the Western world’s waste was shipped to China for it to deal with, and it wasn’t recycled there either, but burned or abandoned. China has rightly closed its doors to this onslaught, along with a growing list of other Asian countries. The waste is piling up to such unmanageable levels that in 2017/18 one council in London sent 82% of all household waste - including waste put in recycling bins - for incineration, having no other alternative.

Enter chemical recycling. The industry is so set on the myth of recycling that the evident failings of mechanical processes have only shifted attention to the potential of chemical solutions. 21 states have enacted laws sought by the US plastics industry that categorise chemical recycling as a manufacturing process, not a waste management one, meaning even those investing in the systems know they can’t be classified as a solution to our giant plastic problem. Yet brands, the fossil fuel industry, and global governments continue to perpetuate the myth that it will solve everything. We are once again chasing a dream already proven to end in a nightmare. Research from the US federal government’s own National Renewable Energy Lab has shown that only between 1-14% of the plastic sent through either pyrolysis or gasification recycling methods is retained as plastic - i.e. can be used as plastic again - while the environmental metrics are 10 to 100 times worse than when using virgin polymers. 

Chemicals pose further problems. Plastic contains over 13,000 different chemicals, with more than 3,200 of them known to be hazardous to human health. When plastic is recycled, toxicity levels exponentially increase, as the chemicals added at the beginning mix with those absorbed by the plastic throughout its lifecycle. Even more are created during the recycling process itself. The result is a material so toxic for human contact that one study in 2022 found that of 73 recycled plastic products from China, Indonesia, and Russia, every single one contained at least one globally banned flame retardant chemical. Why are we actively seeking ways to create more of this material to package our food and drink?

Litigation is finally coming. In 2021, California signed a bill into law that prohibits the use of symbols - or other claims suggesting recyclability - on any product or packaging that doesn’t meet strict criteria. Now, six environmental and health groups are pushing the Federal Trade Commission to adopt the state’s Truth in Labeling Law into federal regulation. Meanwhile, Keurig paid USD 10 million in 2022 to settle a case brought against it for selling disposable coffee capsules labelled ‘recyclable’. The plaintiffs alleged that the pods were not truly recyclable, because while recycling is technically possible, municipal recycling facilities aren’t able to separate such small materials. The plaintiffs won - proving again that plastic recycling doesn’t work. 

Pretending it does benefits one group, and one group only: the companies manufacturing and using virgin plastic. The longer the public believes their waste is being put to use, the longer these companies can maintain the status quo. There’s a reason why Coca Cola continues to fight proposed bottle deposit bills and has continually pushed the narrative that consumers are at fault for plastic pollution. There’s a reason why, after four years of operating, the Alliance to End Plastic Waste - founded by the world’s leading fossil fuel and plastic companies - has only managed to divert 34,000 tons of plastic from the environment, just 0.2% of its original and widely publicised target of 15 million tons in five years. Actively investing in waste management systems would compete with their reason for being, but telling people that recycling is their focus gives them permission to continue their polluting practices under the guise of progressive change. 

We rarely talk about plastic on PlasticFree - we are much more interested in the materials and systems of the future - but this mythical idea of the plastic recycling fairies is a bubble that must be popped once and for all. It’s delaying real, desperately needed, and life-saving change, and recycling’s ongoing failings give the petrochemical industry permission to continue pumping out millions of tonnes of virgin plastic a year. Designing plastic out at source is the only way forward. No one will thank us for pursuing a ‘solution’ that comes last in the pecking order of ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ for a reason.