Depends on how much you generalize these statements. Plastic manufacture and logistics scales better than almost everything, mostly because of its chemical resi

Depends on how much you generalize these statements. Plastic manufacture and logistics scales better than almost everything, mostly because of its chemical resistance, which is fantastic for transport and storage, even when its useless to the end user. One aspect many miss is that it does not matter if plastics can be recycled as long as it is used rather than dumped into landfill or rivers. Almost all consumer plastics, like most trash, can be profitably burned as fuel in almost all rich countries rather than being recycled. A typical example of this is the trashburning thermal plant in linköping which quite profitably heats the entire city while also providing power and not contaminating the environment beyond the co2 released. It takes a great deal of prefiltering, but it works and the plastics and organics which make up most garbage are good fuel. The additional CO2 released isn't great, but its worth remembering that while plastic in landfills do not contribute to global warming, the methane released by decaying biomass its mixed with both of which could have been burned is a hundred times worse per mass. So burning trash is better for the environment than dumping it in a landfill, and far better than dumping it in oceans or rivers. Burning collected garbage does not solve littering, but littering is insignificant compared to the amounts collected as garbage and then inappropriately disposed of. Inappropriately disposed of includes landfills where birds get to it and fly away with it btw. This is so obvious and so ignored by the current debate it makes me wonder if someone is trying to point to single use plastics as a scapegoat for bad landfill and garbage management, rather than actually caring. You know, just like they successfully convinced people the problem was caused by individual littering, rather than poor garbage collection a few decades ago.