Many North Americans dutifully separate out their plastics for recycling, put them in the blue bins, and watch them get taken away in the big green trucks paid for through their taxes in the fantasy world called recycling.

Two years ago, Starre Vartan reported on a Greenpeace study, "Circular Claims Fall Flat," which found that almost none of it actually gets recycled. Only plastics labeled as #1 (PET, the stuff water and pop bottles are made of) and #2 (HDPE, the heavy jugs) are recycled, and even those are done in relatively small quantities. Everything else, the #3 to #7 plastics, from yogurt cups to packaging materials to plastic spoons, is usually landfilled or burned. Vartan was disillusioned:

"This is clearly frustrating for those of us who have spent time and energy recycling these plastics and encouraging others to do so, assuming they were being made into new products. I feel misled by the many times I've heard from a company that their product is sustainable because they use packaging that's recyclable."

Now Greenpeace has updated the study with "Circular Claims Fall Flat Again," and finds that the situation has gotten worse, not better, noting "that U.S. households generated an estimated 51 million tons of plastic waste in 2021, only 2.4 million tons of which was recycled." The report notes that only 5 to 6% of plastics were recycled in 2021, down from a high of 9.5% in 2014, although that was when plastic waste was being exported to China.

The report's title uses the words "circular claims" rather than "recycling claims" because circular is recycling 2.0, where plastics are theoretically broken down into usable chemicals before taking a round trip back into new plastic. I wrote previously in "The Plastics Industry Is Hijacking the Circular Economy":

The new report confirms that these high-tech promises haven't worked. "In reality, so-called advanced or chemical recycling is not technically, environmentally, or economically viable. It has failed and will continue to fail for the same down-to-earth, real-world reasons that mechanical recycling of plastics has failed."

Greenpeace gives five reasons that recycling of any kind—mechanical or chemical—always fails:

In a statement, Lisa Ramsden, Greenpeace USA Senior Plastics Campaigner, comes to a very Treehugger conclusion:

Ramsden is absolutely correct; we are never going to twist a linear system into a circular one. I noted previously: "Linear is more profitable because someone else, often the government, picks up part of the tab. Now, the drive-ins proliferate and take-out dominates. The entire industry is built on the linear economy. It exists entirely because of the development of single-use packaging where you buy, take away, and then throw away. It is the raison d'être."

It is a societal problem caused by what I have called the Convenience Industrial Complex, and it is not going away. Ramsden continues:

The time for that drastic change is now. But for 60 years, we have been sold on this culture of convenience based on a linear economy. The fake circular economy would have you somehow magically pick everything up and turn it into new plastic, but it is a fantasy. If we want a truly circular economy, we should just ban single-use disposable plastics and be done with it.

"Report: Circular Claims Fall Flat." Greenpeace, 2020.

"Circular Claims Fall Flat Again." Greenpeace, 2022.

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