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Plastic Recycling is Largely A Myth.
The world produces an average of 430 million metric tons of plastic each year. The United States alone produces tens of millions of tons of plastic waste annually. Yet on average, only about 5 to 6 percent of plastic in the U.S. is recycled.
Basically, the vast majority of plastic either literally cannot be recycled, at all, or would be astoundingly expensive to properly seperate according to it's different types and run through the recycling process.
... So, in most cases, it isn't, and just ends up in a landfill or being directly dumped into nature.
Oil companies have known this for decades, and, as with other issues surrounding pollution ... they've promoted anything that makes an individual feel guilty when they know that even if all individuals followed the suggested course of action, it would have a negligible impact.
Oil companies have known this for decades,
fun fact: BP created the carbon footprint to turn the guilt onto the end consumers, and away from them.
But please put your plastic in the bin marked plastic.
https://recyclingcenternear.me/7-types-of-plastic-explained/
Which of the 7 different kinds of plastic go in which bins?
Are the labels on the plastic even correct? Do they even exist at all?
Does your local recycling / garbage take away service specify?
Does the processing center they are taken to actually bother to seperate them?
The answers to all those questions vary widely by different zipcodes.
Has any of your plastic waste touched food, or touched other plastic that has touched food?
If so, its probably considered contaminated and unrecycleable, and is just put into a landfill, as it would take a lot of time and effort to sanitize it.
I like how under the entry for PVC pipes, they used an image of what looks like terracotta pipes.
I have black and white PVC pipes in my shed, but no clay colored ones, lol.
Orange PVC pipes are used plenty in my neck of the woods. I see them regularly used for fire suppression system piping.
I worked at a public disposal area for a little while and can attest that at least my flyover state/zipcode does separate and sanitize plastic. Cardboard was the only thing that couldn't have touched oil (including pizza). We only accepted plastics #1 and #2, though, and part of my job included climbing into the dumpster and sorting through. I'd miss it if workers rights weren't simultaneously such shit* here
*autocorrect trying to sanitize my language too
From my understanding, this is basically the case for all recycling aside from aluminum and glass