Single-use soft plastics, such as sachets and crisp packets, are produced on a massive scale but are nearly impossible to recycle. Nevertheless, they are exported across the world for waste management. The sorting process for soft plastic waste is difficult and requires that workers identify and separate over seven different types of plastics, often by burning them and smelling the fumes produced. To be recycled, the sorted plastic must then be cut into fine pieces, washed, a

Here in the UK, 9.25 million tonnes of plastic waste leaves our dockyards and heads to developing countries. Why do we ship it off? Because the UK government wants to offload the responsibility of processing our plastic waste. However, this comes at the significant detriment of importing countries’ economies, environments, and health. For three decades, China imported over 70% of the world’s plastic waste, but that all changed in 2018. In the eight years since China banned th

When Britain's recycling targets are met on paper, it is worth asking: where does the plastic actually go? The answer is increasingly overseas. Chemical recycling, as we explored in the previous piece in this series, has failed to provide the domestic processing solution the industry promised. That failure has a direct consequence: plastic that cannot be recycled at home gets shipped abroad instead. In 2024 alone, the UK exported 598 million kilos of plastic waste, an increas

While clothes made of recycled plastic may sound like a good idea, they can cause environmental harm at multiple levels. First, recycled polyester used to produce textiles comes mostly from plastic bottles rather than from textile waste. This means that recyclable plastic bottles get downcycled into clothes, which cannot be further recycled and instead end in landfill or incinerators. The second problem is the greenwashing of plastic-made garments by the fashion industry. Cur