A bold vision for how plastics are produced, used and reused, not just how much is recycled per se, is what will move the needle on our plastic ...
But this focus on improving recycling rates obscures the real problem surrounding waste because the intuitive policy response is to focus on marginally increasing recycling rates, where the gains are unclear.Lessons learnt from around the world show how costly, inefficient and unimpactful current recycling programmes have been.
Any incremental efforts through recycling programmes would be considered wildly successful if they pushed plastic recycling rates to 10 to 15 per cent but even then, the amount of plastic trash continues to grow.Good is the enemy of great when it comes to addressing this problem worldwide. In the US, plastic growth is flat, and land is abundant, so the approach has often been to literally bury the problem through efficient waste management techniques.
Early fruit of such efforts are bearing out across the world. There are roads off Melbourne paved with recycled materials, including 200,000 plastic bags, over 60,000 glass bottles and toner from 4,5000 printer cartridges. A man shovels shredded plastic litter to be recycled into roofing tiles at the Envirogreen recycling plant in Mogadishu, Somalia January 13, 2019.
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