Recycling is one of those activities we should all be required to do by law, but as it stands, our planet might be past the point of no return with recycling. In her new blog post, Katherine Dunn discusses one woman’s journey of self-discovery surrounding glass bottle recycling and how her friends from Germany were able to help. She also takes this time to highlight the level of effort their country places on recycling and some more common problems with current processes vs. current levels of waste.

Key Takeaways:

• Germany has the highest recycling collection rates in the world, but even they struggle with plastic packaging.
• There are many types of plastic packaging that are hard to recycle, such as soy sauce packets, fast food containers and blister packs.
• Manny manufacturers consider recycled plastic to be inferior to “virgin” plastic.

“The paper and plastic was simple enough: collect and sort into a series of color-coded bins ubiquitous in German neighborhoods. But there was no bin for the bottles.”

Read more: https://fortune.com/2019/04/22/earth-day-2019-recycle-plastic/