Recycling, especially of plastic, is very fashionable. Rather than throwing plastic bottles etc. away, it's much better to recycle them so that they end up reused rather than throw them in a landfill, in nature, in the sea, polluting the environment for hundreds of years to come.
I have noticed a strange omission when it comes to the plastic recycling conversation. Because of this omission, most people think that plastic can be recycled forever. In other words, that if all plastic was recycled, again and again, then none of it would end up in nature, and thus plastic pollutants would be essentially eliminated.
That's actually not so.
The plastics used in bottles, plastic bags, plastic containers, plastic wrapping etc. etc. quickly degrade after each recycling. So much so that such plastic can be recycled only once, maybe twice in the best case scenarios, before it has become so degraded that it just can't be recycled anymore. After that there is no place for the resulting junk, other than the landfill.
This means that plastic recycling only slightly delays the problem, it doesn't solve it! You get maybe one round, at most two rounds, of recycling and that's it. After that it will still end up as useless polluting junk.
Why don't they talk about this fact? I'm genuinely puzzled. It's not like it's some kind of big secret that they are keeping under the wraps. It's widely known, and completely public knowledge, and nobody is actively trying to hide it. People just don't talk about it. All the PSAs, TV programs, fliers, all that jazz promoting the recycling of plastic, doesn't mention this fact as all. Have you ever seen this fact mentioned anywhere? Because I haven't.
But why?
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