Throwing your plastic soda bottle or lunch container in the recycling bin feels like an easy win for the environment. The plastic gets reused, creating less waste and a fossil fuel use. But the reality is less appealing. In the U.S., less than ten percent of plastics get recycled every year. In fact, in 2018, the U.S. burned almost twice as much plastic as it recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. It’s a big obstacle to the ideal of a circular economy, where everything we throw away gets turned back into something useful.
The most common way of recycling plastic is by chopping it into an avalanche of tiny flakes and then melting down and reforming them. The resulting plastic can be brittle and weak, and in many cases manufacturers simply prefer using new, or virgin, plastic. That requires them to use oil taken from the ground, even as ...
