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Kicking our dirty crude oil habit, if that ever happens, might just help us do something about plastic waste as well.

The so-called developed world is still utterly terrible at recycling anything that doesn't have a decent value compared to its raw or virgin equivalent.

Yes the world recycles, but not nearly as much as we could, or should.

Metals used in bulk we're not too bad with. Steel for instance, still found in most car bodies and many other vehicle parts, as well as various infrastructure which we need for driving like bridges and tunnels, gets recycled quite a bit because the scrap has a reasonable value.

Metals and minerals used in much smaller amounts, like tech hardware, we're not so great with, but the impetus to get cheaper raw materials is reasonably likely to take care of that eventually, as it does for steel.

Plastics however, are used prolifically and yet they aren't recycled very often, for various reasons, but one of those reasons is it's simply cheaper to make new plastic than to recycle old plastic, no matter how recyclable the plastic actually is.

Plastics are made from various polymers, and those polymers can come from different raw materials. One of the main sources of these raw materials currently is crude oil.

There are lots of plastics all around you as you drive, from various pieces of interior and hidden brackets, to parts like the battery casing and various caps and covers. Then there's your phone, probably some of your clothing, many other personal items which do not last forever, and then all sorts of packaging for your drinks and snacks on the road too (just say no to single-use plastic).

The wear from your street tyres is also a form of microplastic waste, and microplastics are an epic problem for many living organisms. You even have some microplastics inside your cells right now, and we still don't know exactly what harm they are causing to living things, including us, but it certainly can't be good.

It has been argued that the plastics industry successfully shifted the blame for the environmental problems that plastics cause onto the consumer, making it our fault for not putting them in the recycling. But at the same time, many packaging manufacturers continue producing silly quantities of virgin plastic and disregarding recycled plastic as a raw material because virgin plastic is cheaper.

Various governments around the world have also failed to compel corporations to actually use recycled plastic in any meaningful quantity, thereby allowing another 400 million tonnes of plastic to be produced worldwide per year. Think how light plastic is, and then try to comprehend the space which 400 million tonnes will occupy, then realise that we're making more each year, not less.

I would argue though, that a reduction in demand for crude oil fuels should also, long-term, mean a reduction in crude oil production (extraction) to match. That should mean less leftover hydrocarbons from them to turn into virgin plastics, in turn making other raw materials more attractive. Ideally, the material that we want to become the most attractive is used plastic from recycling.

Also, and a bit strangely, auto manufacturers seem to do better than many other industries when it comes to actually using recycled plastic. Or at least using less from fossil fuel sources anyway.

Toyota for instance, reported in 2018 that 20 per cent of all of the plastics used in their vehicle production efforts are made from either recycled plastics or plant-derived plastics.

Meanwhile drinks manufacturers happily point out that their bottles are completely recyclable, and Australia has various incentives for at least drink packaging to get collected. However, these manufacturers still don't appear to use much in the way of recycled material themselves either.

Now, I acknowledge that this might all just be wishful thinking on my part, and it would also mean plastic manufacture costing a little more, but in any cost-driven system it really needs to if the governments of the world's manufacturers aren't going to mandate a minimum use of old plastic as raw material in new goods and new packaging.

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