All the cost/energy benefits listed are exactly the type of short term business arguments that enabled companies like Coca-Cola to transition from glass bootles to producing 110 _billion_ PET bootles, every, single, year. [0]
There are a number of long-term costs not captured in these business decisions:
- The energy cost of recycling a PET bottle is much greater than producing a brand new one from crude oil. This creates the wrong kind of incentives for recycling
- Plastic degrades everytime it is recycled. Google plastic "downcycling". In an ideal circular economy old plastics would still have to be replaced with "new" crude oil plastic with additional energy and emissions costs.
- The cost of plastic collection and _sorting_ (which manufacturers aren't paying for)
- The environmental and disposal costs of unrecycled plastic, a PET bottle will take at least 450 years to fully decompose. [1]
- The Health costs of the calamity of micro-plastics contaminating our food supply and ground water. Simply google "plastic endocrine disruptors".
(I'm not making any claim here about whether endocrine disruptors in our environment are a problem or not. Maybe they are. But I don't like to be told "just Google X" because that can be used to support any nonsense nowadays. Just give me a good reference and I'll try to figure out whether it's credible.)
I’m with you with your conclusions but not only you are not responding to OPs point about the complexity of cost calculations, you are adding further data that is irrelevant. “This is what Coca-Cola said” is not a valid rebuttal.
If you really want to recycle you can. In Switzerland 80% of PET bottle are collected and recycled (without deposit). This is paid by manufacturers and distributors who have to collect and pay for the recycling. Current bottles are composed of 50% of recycled PET, and some manufacturer are starting to introduce 100% bottle. Of course, to reach that result you need laws, you cannot expect the free market to do it.
Do you have a source to backup that statement?
It is true that there are separate containers for PET in CH, problem the way I see it, is that people simply do not know which bottles are PET and throw in there all kinds of plastic. Sometimes, when I throw mine, I take 5 and watch what the others are throwing, essentially, if the bottle has this 3 arrows "recycle" sign, it goes in the PET basket, simple as that.
There are a number of long-term costs not captured in these business decisions:
- The energy cost of recycling a PET bottle is much greater than producing a brand new one from crude oil. This creates the wrong kind of incentives for recycling
- Plastic degrades everytime it is recycled. Google plastic "downcycling". In an ideal circular economy old plastics would still have to be replaced with "new" crude oil plastic with additional energy and emissions costs.
- The cost of plastic collection and _sorting_ (which manufacturers aren't paying for)
- The environmental and disposal costs of unrecycled plastic, a PET bottle will take at least 450 years to fully decompose. [1]
- The Health costs of the calamity of micro-plastics contaminating our food supply and ground water. Simply google "plastic endocrine disruptors".
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/02/coca-col...
[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/plast...