The Futility of Recycling Plastic

Rising use of plastics to drive oil demand to 2050: IEA

Global demand for petrochemical feedstock accounted for 12 million barrels per day (bpd), or roughly 12 percent of total demand for oil in 2017. The figure is forecast to grow to almost 18 million bpd in 2050.

Most demand growth will take place in the Middle East and China, where big petrochemical plants are being built.

But the IEA report said government efforts to encourage recycling in order to curb carbon emissions would have only a minor impact on petrochemical growth.

“Although substantial increases in recycling and efforts to curb single-use plastics take place, especially led by Europe, Japan and Korea, these efforts will be far outweighed by the sharp increase in developing economies of plastic consumption,” it said.

Under the IEA’s most aggressive scenario, recycling could hit around 5 percent of high-value chemical demand.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-petrochemicals-iea/rising-use-of-plastics-to-drive-oil-demand-to-2050-iea-idUKKCN1ME2QD

Meanwhile.... nary a peep about this:

http://deathbydesignfilm.com/about/

Almost all plastic in the ocean comes from just 10 rivers

Most of the plastic in our oceans doesn't get dumped there directly, rivers carry it to the sea. As it turns out, a very small number of them do most of the damage.

At last count, there were at least 8.3 billion tons of plastic in the world. Much of it gets discarded and eventually ends up in our oceans. Researchers are looking for ways to collect that trash in the sea using a variety of technologies but the overall consensus is that using less plastic, or at least catching the trash at the source, would be much better than filtering it out afterwards.

Read: There are 8.3 billion tons of plastic in the world

But where to start? Well, in fact, that might be an easier decision to make than one would think. It turns out that about 90 percent of all the plastic that reaches the world's oceans gets flushed through just 10 rivers: The Yangtze, the Indus, Yellow River, Hai River, the Nile, the Ganges, Pearl River, Amur River, the Niger, and the Mekong (in that order).

These rivers have a few key things in common. All of them run through areas where a lot of people live — hundreds of millions of people in some cases. But what's more important is that these areas don't have adequate waste collection or recycling infrastructure. There is also little public awareness that plastic trash is a problem at all, so a lot of garbage, gets thrown into the river and conveniently disappears downstream.

More https://www.dw.com/en/almost-all-plastic-in-the-ocean-comes-from-just-10-rivers/a-41581484

https://www.dw.com/image/15693182_303.jpg

Plastic waste disposal increased at 56 per cent of intermediate processors that incinerate or shred plastics and at 25 per cent of final processors that bury waste in landfills, while 34.9 per cent of companies said they were limiting or considering restricting the amount of plastics they accept.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/2175775/chinas-plastic-waste-import-ban-forcing-us-and-japan-rethink

Dead whale washes ashore in Indonesia with 115 plastic cups, 25 carrier bags and a pair of flip-flops in its stomach

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/2174220/dead-whale-washes-ashore-indonesia-115-plastic-cups-25