We all know we are supposed to recycle plastic. We are taught the three R’s in school, at home, and at the workplace: “reduce, reuse, recycle.” From an early age, we learn to separate plastics from trash using the recycling triangle and to put the blue bins out on the sidewalk once a week since doing so can help combat pollution, in particular the pollution of the oceans. We are taught that we can all be a part of the solution—if only we recycle.
The problem, however, is that plastics recycling is not and never has been a viable solution to pollution. As a recent NPR and Frontline exposé explains, the recycling industry was built from its inception on a lie: that plastics could be and would be recycled. Why? To sell more plastic in the first place. In other words, recycling is not a viable system for waste management on a vast scale, but an advertising scheme.
https://www.marxist.com/capitalism-s-recycling-lie.htm