25
Mar
Plastic recycling is often presented as the silver bullet for plastic pollution. The reality is more complex. Recycling matters, but it cannot by itself stop plastic pollution because of technical, economic, behavioral, and systemic limits. This article explains those limits, provides evidence and cases, and outlines complementary strategies that must run alongside recycling to produce real change.The current scale: production, waste, and what recycling actually achievesGlobal plastic output has climbed to more than 350 million metric tons per year in recent times, and a pivotal review of historical production and disposal showed that by 2015 only about 9% of all…
