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You should absolutely, 100% continue to separate your general rubbish from your recycling.

Check the label, pop it in the correct bin, and sleep easier knowing that you’re a good person.

There is one thing you should bear in mind, though – when it comes to plastics, it’s not a given that it’s going to end up being recycled in the way you think.

As CNET points out, plastic bottles, in particular, present a tricky scenario:

The bottle itself is likely a type of plastic called PET, or polyethylene terephthalate. The label is maybe made of another type of polyethylene, or polyvinyl chloride plastic. Both are recyclable, though not together.

If there’s an additive color in the bottle, that could send the bottle straight to the dump. And then there’s the cap — to literally top it all off — possibly made of polypropylene, yet another type of plastic.

The sheer variety of plastics in the world, and the fact that you can’t simply melt them down together to make more plastic, is just one illustration of how complicated recycling plastics is.

The stats don’t make for great reading.

A report from Our World in Data on plastic pollution, first published in 2018 and then updated in April of this year with new research, estimates that less than 9% of plastics get recycled. The vast majority is either discarded or incinerated.

Let’s just stress here again that this refers to plastic recycling only, with experts arguing that the low success rate mentioned above gives the whole recycling concept a bad name.

If you’re looking for a few pointers, consider the below:

On an individual level, people can cut their usage of single-use plastics by using refillable water bottles and reusable shopping bags. They can bring their own mugs to the coffee shop and buy products from companies offering reusable packaging.

There’s also research being done to improve plastics and polls point to the fact that consumers are ready to support policies reducing single-use plastic.

In addition, a new study by researchers at the University of Michigan has found a way to chemically recycle polyvinyl chloride, one of the most produced plastics, into usable material. This is from Helsinki Times:

PVC makes up a vast amount of plastics we use on a daily basis. Much of the plastic used in hospital equipment — tubing, blood bags, masks and more — is PVC, as is most of the piping used in modern plumbing…

[Researchers] have discovered a way to chemically recycle PVC into usable material. The researchers found a way to use the phthalates in the plasticizers — one of PVC’s most noxious components — as the mediator for the chemical reaction.

It will be a long time before this technology is rolled out around the world, if ever, but it’s a start.

My current gripe is reading the Woolies packaging which says something along the lines of ‘this plastic is not currently recyclable’.

Ja, the packaging said the same thing three years ago. When will it be recyclable?

[sources:cnet&heltimes]