Since no one comments on the precise content of the article, I'll do it. First of all, it's mostly based on a paper "published Wednesday in the peer-reviewed j

Since no one comments on the precise content of the article, I'll do it. First of all, it's mostly based on a paper "published Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances". Unfortunately, there is no link to the article. The exact title is not even given. The date is unclear since the magazine published this in 2017 and updated some (undetermined) content in 2018. Most links are dead (home page of the lead author, web site of an association about statistics). The basis is scientific, but this National Geographic article is not. For instance, the title is misleading: "91% of plastic isn't recycled" means "an estimated 91% of all the plastic ever produced has not been recycled as of today (2017)". Another dubious sentence is: "79 percent is accumulating in landfills or sloughing off in the natural environment as litter." Since 12% were incinerated and 9% recycled, it assumes that the rest (100-12-9) is just garbage. I suppose the reality is that a large proportion of the plastics produced is still used. They mention that 40% of plastics are for packaging. According to PlasticsEurope, 20% for construction, 10% for vehicles. People often focus on packaging and forget the variety of plastics and their usages. What surprised me was that the USA were so bad at recycling (9%) while Europe and Asia were far better (30% and 25%). I had read that some American soda producers were mostly using recycled PET, so I wondered if there was a contradiction. I've just read more about it, and these companies recycle in many countries but not much in the USA because there is no large-scale infrastructure to do so. The lack of national leadership means it can only exist locally, with varying quality and lack of long term committing. Even when the recycling exists, consumers in the USA do not behave as well as they do in Netherland, so the recycled PET is more costly with a lower quality.