President of Beyond Plastics, Judith Enck joins the Mark Reardon Show to discuss her article in the Atlantic, "Plastic Recycling Doesn't Work and Will Never Work."
“I want to make it very clear… you should keep recycling. Metal, glass, paper, and cardboard. Keep doing it, but I think we need to be honest that plastic recycling has been an abysmal failure… Plastic recycling only achieves 5-6% recycling rate. At its peak, it never even broke double digits,” shared Enck.
Later Enck warns on single use plastic bags, “Film plastic only has about a 5% recycling rate in this country. If you tour a material recovery facility, which is a fancy recycling center, you’ll see those plastic bags get caught in the equipment and the gears. It brings the whole line to a halt. The people who run those big recycling centers really don’t like to see plastic bags in your recycling bins.”
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