Most plastic will never be recycled – but who’s to blame?

It’s no secret that oil and gas companies make far more money creating new plastic than they would reusing older plastic – so where’s the incentive for them to do so? The only issue here is that the public are often on the receiving end of the blame for all the excess plastic on our planet, but who is to blame? The manufacturers of plastic? The customers? Or the recycling centres who claim to recycle correctly and responsibly?

According to one analysis, only 9% of plastic ever made has been recycled , and a separate investigation by National Public Radio suggests that large oil and gas companies have known for decades that recycling plastic on a large scale was never going to happen, due to the large amount of money that can be made selling it rather than reusing it, however, in order to keep selling it, the industry had to clean up its image. A member of the NPR described this as the “sustainability theater” – Oil and Gas companies invested in advertising to make the public think that recycling is working – explaining that if the public thought recycling was working, then they aren’t going to be as concerned about the environment.

In contrast, we suggest that as a customer looking for a recycling company, you need to be careful who you deal with! There are a lot of companies who claim to successfully remove all of your items of plastic for a small fee, but there are a huge number of scams out there, and if plastic waste is traced back to you that hasn’t been dealt with correctly, you will find yourself in deep trouble.