Why recycling isn't a silver bullet

I think some people might see recycling as the silver bullet solution to plastic waste. Not only do they see that we might just eliminate plastic waste completely, but we might be able to stop producing more of it in the first place. Maybe we can just get into this closed loop where we recycle plastics over and over and over again.

Unfortunately, this is not the reality. Recycling can help. When you recycle a product, it can be produced into another product. But I think what's really key to highlight here is that you're often recycling it into a lower value product. The plastic waste bottle that you recycle is not then recycled and reused as another plastic waste bottle. It tends to be ground down and used into lower value products like maybe in a floor tile or other compositions of different plastics.

That means that ultimately your recycled plastic bottle will ultimately end up in landfill. It'll just be recycled maybe a few times along the way.