Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future

by Ed Conway

And while it is possible to recycle plastics at scale, the challenge is that while some types of plastic are perfectly suited to being melted down and remoulded, others are not. Soft drinks bottles made out of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), for instance, could easily be re-formed into a polyester fleece. But add a different type of plastic to the recycling process, a thermosetting one for instance, and what comes out is a bit of a mess. One argument about why plastic recycling rates remain so low (only about 25 per cent in Europe and 10 per cent in the US, compared with 80 per cent for steel) is that it is simply too complex, with consumers asked to distinguish between seven different types of plastic (those recycling codes you sometimes see on bottles) before putting them in the correct bin. The other argument is that the virgin material, those nurdles being churned out of ethylene crackers around the world, are so cheap that recycling makes little economic sense.