I see some people being confused about the plastic recycling thing. especially people that are convinced that since they have seen a few products made of recycled plastic, surely it can't be that bad?

it is that bad, here's an engineer's perspective

when I studied mechanical engineering, the fact that plastic isn't recycled was kind of a given. you can kinda do it, IF you have it perfectly sorted.

this is the case, for example, in some countries' plastic bottle return programs.

those are the plastics that are recycled.

this explains all the products you've seen that advertise with being made from recycled plastic.

anything that is made from recycled plastic will DEFINITELY advertise it because otherwise it would be an economically useless expense, because it's more expensive than new plastic.

so yes, there is indeed a small percentage of plastic that does get recycled, but just go and count how many plastic objects you've got in your home that contain any amount of recycled plastic (those that advertise it), and how many you've got that don't.

see what I mean?

for plastic waste, basically there are 2 options. does the plastic go

a) in a container that collects only one very specific kind of plastic? then it can be (and sometimes is) recycled.

b) in a container that collects all kinds of different plastic? then it isn't recycled.

it's borderline impossible to seperate plastic once it has been mixed with different plastics. you might be able to fish out some specific kinds of items, with a lot of effort for meager gains.

that isn't done because it's not cost efficient.

you can't tell plastics apart without chemical analysis, you can't sort them with any efficient process.

you've got tons of shreds of plastic, most won't even have a label anywhere on them that says what they are, and even if they do, the labels get damaged and unreadable.

there are some, very few, specific uses for recycled mixed plastic. this is done by shredding it and using it as a filler material, for example for floor or roof tiles.

you may have seen these, they contain lots of colourful scraps.

so at university this was just. the engineering professors that had to do with plastic manufacturing talked about this often, and not even in a negative way, just in the same way as you talk about principles for designing moulds for plastic products. basic knowledge.

but okay, let's say you have this super neat use case, where you're collecting only one kind of plastic and can recycle it because it's already sorted. like plastic bottles.

the quality does degrade. many plastics don't tolerate temperature changes well, or UV light, etc.

they have different additives mixed in (most obvious example would be colorings). they get damaged chemically and contaminated with other stuff. you'll always end up with lower quality material.

recycling might add a few years, maybe even decades to the lifetime of the material.

but it can't be reused indefinitely. either way, within a few years, or decades at best, you end up with a mountain of plastic that's simply too low quality for anything.

so no matter what, ALL plastic, even recycled, ends up in a landfill or burned within a century. that's all.

this doesn't mean that we're doomed either way. there is a lot of research going on in regards to getting bacteria or fungi or other organisms to digest the plastic. personally I am quite optimistic that we can find a solution.

but we need to be honest about the facts.

it's also worth noting another basic knowledge of plastic engineering:

some plastics can be molten and recycled. plastic bottles, ballpens, you know the ones, they're called thermoplastic.

some plastics harden precisely once, they're called thermosetting plastic.

(that's how the dictionary translates the German terms, idk if those exact ones are used in English language industry settings, but they're precise enough to describe what I'm talking about.)

thermoset materials can only be split chemically, not moulded into new things.

so that resin everyone is using for their art? that resin that keeps carbon fibers in bicycles, cars, wheelchairs etc together? that PTFE that's used as coatings for pans, in pipes etc?

those pretty much can't be recycled at all. same with rubber.

so now you've got some more information. do good things with it. don't let yourself be bullshat by advertisements and industry euphemisms.

the vast vast majority of the plastic you throw out will end up in some colonised country's landfill or as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.