> The idea that all plastic recycling is "pretend" recycling is false It is a pretend _solution_ to plastic polution, because it is incomplete to say the least

> The idea that all plastic recycling is "pretend" recycling is false It is a pretend _solution_ to plastic polution, because it is incomplete to say the least (like all types of recycling)... and while that is ok for other materials, it is not acceptable for plastic . For most other recyclable materials it is merely unfortunate, a lost opportunity to reduce sourcing of virgin materials: most metals, glass, wood, cardboard, paper - if they go in the ground it is at least not toxic and even biodegradable short and long term, (and some quantity will always go in the ground, to say otherwise is wishful thinking). > , damaging and encourages adoption of environmentally damaging alternatives or use of virgin plastics. No, the idea that it is "pretend" allows us to break the delusion that we are ever going to stop plastic pollution by recycling and move forward: acknowledging that the current solution is woefully inadequate due to the nature of the material means environmentalists and policy makers can focus their efforts on the source of the problem. > We should either use more bins and pre-sort everything (which will result in lower recycle rates, but much more economic streams) or subsidize processors to sort streams out and turn them into useful material to be re-used. You keep doing that, for the few parts of the world that have the luxury to care about sorting their rubbish with more granularity, and can afford to actually recycle some minority of it... globally we will continue dumping vast quantities of it in the ground and ocean, the world will never be able to recycle even 50% of plastic waste (honestly 50% would be an incredible feat), so yeah... stop pretending this is going to work, if even 10% of plastics keep going in the ground each year we have failed. Alternatively imagine what might happen if all the effort focused on attempting to recycle plastic went into forcing packaging manufacturers to switch to biodegradable alternatives. Subsidize manufacturers materials research into viable alternatives, that's an investment that will eventually eliminate plastic pollution, not just stem the flow by subsidizing plastic recycling. TL;DR Plastic is pollution, paper isn't, keep recycling what paper we can, but don't pretend recycling plastic stops pollution. Plug the hole in the boat and stop bailing out water... otherwise we will definitely sink because the hole is much bigger than any bucket you can make.