From the course: 34 Things to Know about Carbon and Climate

Plastics recycling isn't useful

From the course: 34 Things to Know about Carbon and Climate

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Plastics recycling isn't useful

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- Plastics recycling isn't useful. And it's a story that was invented by the plastics industry. - Okay. We are piercing myths one after another. Here we go. Only 9% of all the plastic that's ever been made has been successfully recycled. That most of the plastic that you are throwing into a blue bin where you work is almost certainly being incinerated. That sorting it makes you feel better. Sorting it makes the factory, the plant where they're incinerating stuff a little bit more efficient. But no there isn't somebody there who's carefully taking the peanut butter out of the plastic peanut butter jar. And then looking at the little thing on the bottom and deciding that they can turn this into another peanut butter jar. The chemistry isn't there, the systems aren't there, it's inefficient, it's not actually happening. And the plastics industry invented this idea because they wanted us to feel less guilty about buying things in plastic. And my local supermarket I'll walk in. They've shrink wrapped the grapefruit. Last time I checked grapefruit came in its own container. The container works just fine, but it's a little more convenient and a little bit more profitable. So organizations keep using plastic. And one of the distinctions here is this instead of buying stuff in plastic and then pretending to recycle it. A- don't buy stuff in plastic, but B- significantly more important. The company where you work stop making things that are in plastic. That this shift back to the way we packaged things 20, 30, 40 years ago, we know it can be done. We've done it before and taking plastic out of the production stream. It's not as hard as it looks.

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