Recycling plastic is a non-solution to a much bigger problem: over-consumption of plastics.
The only way I see forward is for governments to implement policies that discourage use of plastics by consumers and manufacturers. Some places have done this with plastic bags, but need to do it for plastic single-use bottles, etc.
- They are often quite economically produced, and only require a small amount of plastic.
- They are likely reused, often as trash can liners.
- As long as we bury them in appropriate landfills, then the carbon in the bag goes back into the ground. (See other comments on the myth of landfill space running out.)
- Manufacturing cloth tote bags has a carbon footprint 20,000 times higher than a plastic bag. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/style/cotton-totes-climat...
- Furthermore, cloth tote bags hold bacteria and are unhygienic for carrying groceries. Washing the bags cost electricity/water and probably not carbon neutral either.
It's also not about how much plastic is used to create the plastic bags, it's how much environmental pollution is created from the bags.
Indeed, I don't know anyone who doesn't reuse the free plastic bags they get from stores, even if it's only a single reuse.
The other thing to note is that plastic bags are naturally waterproof. You can even wash (more like rinse) them if you so desire, but they also don't tend to attract dirt, unlike the woven types.
I wish they had a propane tank model instead: I buy reusable bag credits. At the checkout, my items are bagged from a supply of clean reusable bags, and that number is deducted from my credits (if I need more, I can instantly buy them). When I return to the store, I bring my bags back to the bag return where the bags will be laundered in bulk in commercial machines.
Organic cotton bags have some kind of footprint 20,000 times higher than a plastic bag.
For climate impact specifically, you have to reuse a cotton bag 52 times. And an organic cotton bag 149 times. The really big numbers are based on things like ozone impact and fertilizer runoff, which are worth considering but should be taken in comparison with daily life and not just plastic bags.
Source? My impression was that china was buying the recycling from us[1]. Sure, some of that was not recycleable and ended up getting burned/landfilled/dumped in a river, but they weren't intending on just landfilling it.
At this point, there is pretty much only one material that is actually recycled, because it is easy and profitable to do so: aluminum. We should eb enouraging manufacturers to adopt either aluminum or cardboard for all their packaging (the latter is not recyclable in practice, but at least is sequesters carbon). By encourage, I mean ban plastic packaging outright or impose draconian taxes on it.
Diabetus.