it's been publicly known for decades that most plastic is not recyclable and the stuff that is can only be recycled a few times. I'm not saying that to make people feel bad for not knowing, but to invite you to consider how corporate propaganda actually works

I learned in primary school that you can only really recycle plastic types 1-3 and they degrade significantly. i'm 32. this information is there if you look for it, but most people don't; this is what information suppression looks like, usually

do you know what this logo means? it means you can't recycle this plastic type because it's made of a mix of various crap that will burn instead of melt if you try to reshape it. that is... not what it looks like lmao

most plastics aren't really recycled and if they are they usually aren't recycled into the same stuff, or at least not indefinitely. like, soft drink bottles are used to make polar fleece, not new soft drink bottles. and then the polar fleece isn't recycled

anyway i fucking misremembered which plastic types are recyclable so i really truly wanna emphasise it's not people's fault they didn't know the answer is "basically none". nobody has time to thoroughly investigate the basis of the instructions they're given every time

this too! recycling sorting is incredibly hard work and badly underpaid. i saw some vacancies at these plants when I was jobhunting and I couldn't believe what they were offering for a 12-hour overnight shift, and I'm sure many workers don't even get that https://twitter.com/arielestrins/status/1305034095043293184

it's also just, people have their worldview and they generally just won't accept stuff that doesn't fit into it. to assimilate the information that plastic recycling is not really worth it, you have to reject the whole liberal environmentalist framework, basically. it's a lot