The plastics industry is corrupting, and undermining efforts across the globe to help combat plastics pollution. Basically, the more people invest in recycling and a cleaner planet, the bigger the financial loss for the plastics industry. One of the major players in this is China, who recently stopped accepting other countries plastic waste, which has clearly shown the flaws in today’s plastic recycling industry. If people are going to save our planet and stop polluting it with plastic waste, than drastic change needs to happen sooner rather than later.

Key Takeaways:

• China stopped accepting plastic waste from other countries in 2017, leading to an increase in the burning of plastic waste in the US.
• The plastics industry champions the virtues of individual recycling while fighting aggressively against local bans on plastic bags.
• Starbucks rolled out a “recyclable” lid made of polypropylene, of which there is little market for in recycled form.

“Although recycling does little to alleviate the mounting plastics crisis, the promotion of it has proven extremely useful to the industry when local bans on plastic bans have been proposed.”

Read more: https://theintercept.com/2019/07/20/plastics-industry-plastic-recycling/