Why recycling plastic isn't - and never can be - the answer
Just before I begin, I’d like to put it on the record that I am no apologist for Boris Johnson.
But there was one occasion when he did get it right: and in one of life’s sweet ironies, he was promptly castigated and ridiculed for talking a load of rubbish, on the one occasion when he wasn’t.
I am referring to the time when, at COP26 in London in 2021, Mr Johnson pointed out – to a room full of children, as it happened – that recycling plastics does not work. It doesn’t begin to address plastic pollution, he said, and we can’t just recycle our way out of the problem. Here’s the BBC’s account of the event.
The Recycling Association immediately accused him of ‘losing the plastic plot’; it was widely thought that he was plain wrong. He wasn’t. For once, he was speaking the truth - the trouble is people don’t really want to hear it.
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