Plastic recycling exacerbates global warming and costs taxpayers billions. Plastic recycling was a well intentioned idea that failed. After decades of effort only 5% of plastic gets recycled and failed efforts create 10X more global warming than doing nothing at all.

Washington — Plastic recycling rates are declining even as production shoots up, according to a Greenpeace USA report out Monday that blasted industry claims of creating an efficient, circular economy as “fiction.”

Titled “Circular Claims Fall Flat Again,” the study found that of 51 million tons of plastic waste generated by U.S. households in 2021, only 2.4 million tons were recycled, or around five percent. After peaking in 2014 at 10 percent, the trend has been decreasing, especially since China stopped accepting the West’s plastic waste in 2018.

Why the U.S. hasn’t figured out plastics recycling
Virgin production — of non-recycled plastic, that is — meanwhile is rapidly rising as the petrochemical industry expands, lowering costs.

“Industry groups and big corporations have been pushing for recycling as a solution,” Greenpeace USA campaigner Lisa Ramsden told AFP.

www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/plastic-recycling-failed-concept-us-greenpeace-study-5-percent-recycled-production-up/

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