Plastic producers have known for more than 30 years that recycling is not an economically or technically feasible plastic waste management solution. That has not stopped them from promoting it, according to a new report.
“The companies lied,” said Richard Wiles, president of fossil-fuel accountability advocacy group the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), which published the report. “It’s time to hold them accountable for the damage they’ve caused.”
Waste metal is basically always going to be purer and easier to deal with than metal ore, so it’s worth recycling nearly anything that it’s worth mining the ore for. Aluminium’s particularly recyclable because it’s expensive to make it from ore, and much less expensive to melt existing aluminium.