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Editorial: A hard habit to break

Greenpeace USA, the environmental warrior organization, has just about conceded defeat on the matter of recycling plastics.
A news release issued last month stated, “Most plastic simply cannot be recycled.” Greenpeace said, “U.S. households generated an estimated 51 million tons of plastic waste in 2021, only 2.4 million tons of which was recycled.” The group also stated that “Plastic recycling was estimated to have declined to about 5-6 percent in 2021.”
It’s not news that we are floating on an ocean of discarded single-use plastic materials. They degrade slowly if ever, and when they degrade, they find their way as microscopic bits into the waterways, the creatures of the world, and even ourselves.
But we can’t shake the habit. While recycling was minimal, Greenpeace reported “an overall increase of virgin plastic use back to 2018 levels” as it cited other studies which produced this calculation.
So what is the safest thing to do? For now, if plastic recycling is really ineffective, ...

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