The Delusion of “Advanced” Plastic Recycling
www.propublica.org
The plastics industry has heralded a type of chemical recycling it claims could replace new shopping bags and candy wrappers with old ones — but not much is being recycled at all, and this method won’t curb the crisis.

Turns out even the most “advanced” modes of plastics recycling are bullshit, just as 40+years of plastics recycling efforts before them.

  • becausechemistry@lemm.ee
    0·
    16 days ago

    There are alternatives to pyrolysis that are slowly coming online. They have their drawbacks – it’s certainly easier to chuck a bunch of mixed plastic into a reactor and heat it up until something happens – but they’re real.

    I worked on one of them for a few years. It’s pretty cool! They’re currently building a pilot plant to demonstrate the technology at scale.

    • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
      0·
      16 days ago

      Doesn’t matter if the plastics never make it to the recycling center. Only around 5% of plastics in the US get recycled. Sometimes that’s because it’s cheaper to not recycle or because the particular plastic is non-recyclable, but most of the time it’s because it just gets thrown out with the rest of the garbage.

      Sorting and separating materials en masse is by far the most difficult part of the process.