Even Greenpeace now admits the obvious: recycling doesn’t work

What a weird ass article. Starts off innocent enough talking about how it turns out recycling plastic isn't that effective, but ends up being a way to launder the author's frankly bizarre crank viewpoints.

  But why demonize plastic? Why ban products that are cheaper, sturdier, lighter, cleaner, healthier, and better for the environment? One reason: the plastic scare helps Greenpeace activists raise money and keep their jobs. Environmentalists need something to replace their failed recycling campaign.

  But there’s more to it than just financial self-interest. The best explanation I’ve come up with is that plastic bans are a revival of the sumptuary laws formerly imposed on the lower classes by monarchs, nobles, and clergy.

The dull reality is that even though recycling isn't effective, disposable plastic is bad, as it ends up in the oceans and kills wildlife and it takes forever to break down (if ever?). Obviously this would lead some people to be alarmed and to try to think of a way to limit this very real problem.

Everyone involved here in pushing for recycling is well intentioned if unfortunately apparently misguided, but it takes time and study for people to discover that proposed solutions are actually ineffective.

Where as re-using works perfectly, now if I could just find something to do with the 10 perfectly good phones in the draw that wont accept updates..

This more pessimistic then the reality. For example a woman in Africa figured out how to compress recycled plastic into bricks suitable for build houses. There are lots of people in this world that could benefit from this.

The real problem is not the technical and labor hurdles, but our application — doing things that actually work,, rather than politically expedient.