> That doesn't mean that recycling has "backfired".
I believe it strongly has. Compare the amount of non-recyclable single use plastic consumption these days vs the 1980s and you’ll be shocked. Consumers got a strong messaging that they can consume this guilt-free and so all society shifted this direction.
Entirely this. Plastic recycling has done more to increase the use of plastic than anything else. By design, it turns out.
Before plastic recycling came around, we were well on our way to eliminating most one-time use of plastics. Now, we use more than ever before in history.
Recycling is the greatest marketing success in history. The only goal to trick the public and naive governments into thinking plastic was a renewable low-pullution resource. Material recovery was never a goal.
It's like the cigarette industry trying to promote "low tar" cigarettes, but far, far more successful.
You're implying a causative link between the visibility of consumer recycling and the prevalence of plastics, but I don't see that there is one. Is there more plastic packaging now because consumers demand it, or because producers can reduce product damage at low cost to themselves? If we want to reduce single use packaging we have to put economic/regulatory pressure on producers.
There is a strong correlation. It's not that consumers are demanding it, it's that consumers stopped rejecting it.
> If we want to reduce single use packaging we have to put economic/regulatory pressure on producers.
We were, and it was working! Then the plastics industry started up their bogus "recycling" efforts in order to change that trend. It worked incredibly well.
I believe it strongly has. Compare the amount of non-recyclable single use plastic consumption these days vs the 1980s and you’ll be shocked. Consumers got a strong messaging that they can consume this guilt-free and so all society shifted this direction.