“There’s a myth with plastic recycling that if the quality is good enough the plastics can be recycled back into plastic bottles,” says Natalie Fée, the founder of City to Sea, a UK-based environmental charity.

“But as it goes through the system, it becomes lower- and lower-grade plastic. It's down-cycled into things like drain pipes or sometimes fleece clothing. But those items can't be recycled afterwards.”

It is therefore difficult to make the case that recycled plastic is a sustainable material, said Graham Forbes, Global Plastics Campaign leader at Greenpeace USA, in a statement this week."