A useful piece on Grist looked at plastics and recycling and the inevitability of waste...
Students didn't really 'get' this when we discussed mobile phones recently... "we sold our old phone we didn't give it away...".... OK, so what did the person you sold the phone do when they'd finished with it... and the person after that. Do iPhone 3s still work?
"...a small number of researchers and environmental advocates, who are concerned with reducing waste more broadly, think the word should refer only to the conversion of a used product back into a new version of itself, or something of similar utility. They’d consider a glass bottle, for instance, to be “recyclable” because it can be crushed down, melted, and reshaped into a new bottle a virtually infinite number of times. Most plastic products, by contrast, can be reprocessed only once — if at all — by turning them into lower quality products that are eventually destined for the trash bin. Although such reprocessing prolongs the life of the plastic, it’s a one-way trajectory that ultimately ends at a landfill or incinerator. Such a system isn’t recycling, advocates argue — it’s “downcycling.”
Companies’ use of the word recycling to describe linear processes “does real harm,” It “gives consumers a false sense of confidence that what they’re buying is sustainable or environmentally friendly, when these industries know that is very far from the truth.”
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