Plastics recycling is in trouble

At the end of the last decade, the plastics industry and consumer goods companies came under fire once again for the plastic waste they generated. People were outraged by damning documentaries such as Blue Planet II and scientific estimates that millions of tons of plastics end up in the oceans every year. To respond to the crisis, the industry dusted off an old standby: recycling.Promises to recycle more have quelled public outcry in the past. For example, amid a backlash against clamshell fast-food containers in the 1980s, chemical companies responded by building recycling facilities for polystyrene foam. Many of those initiatives later flopped, and plastics recycling rates have remained agonizingly low: around 9% in the US according to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s latest survey, in 2018.When concerns about plastic waste welled up this time, the industry mobilized in concert. Consumer product companies such as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Danone made global commitments to reduce their use of virgin plastics, incorporate more recycled resin, and make plastic packaging simpler and easier to recycle. The initiatives usually had deadlines of 2025 or 2030.The goals were meant to reassure the public that the world’s largest users of polymers were doing something. The firms also hoped that by setting high marks for themselves, they could make substantial progress after decades of floundering. Their demand for recycled plastics was also supposed to pollinate a new ecosystem of plastic waste collection and recycling.But as in the past, the results have been disappointing. While companies are using