{"id":18827,"date":"2025-04-14T09:13:20","date_gmt":"2025-04-14T09:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/18827\/"},"modified":"2025-04-14T09:13:20","modified_gmt":"2025-04-14T09:13:20","slug":"should-we-give-up-on-recycling-plastic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/18827\/","title":{"rendered":"Should we give up on recycling plastic?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"Image\" alt=\"\" width=\"1350\" height=\"901\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/SEI_247022325.jpg\"   loading=\"eager\" fetchpriority=\"high\" data-image-context=\"Article\" data-image-id=\"2476130\" data-caption=\"A plastic collection facility in Indonesia\" data-credit=\"JUNI KRISWANTO\/AFP via Getty Images\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"ArticleImageCaption__Title\">A plastic collection facility in Indonesia<\/p>\n<p class=\"ArticleImageCaption__Credit\">JUNI KRISWANTO\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>In 2022, the world discarded around 268 million tonnes of plastic waste, but just 14 per cent of that \u2013 around 38 million tonnes \u2013 was recycled, according to a new analysis. The rest was either burned or, more likely, dumped in landfill.<\/p>\n<p>Despite growing concern over <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/2449545-how-much-should-we-worry-about-the-health-effects-of-microplastics\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the public health and environmental impacts of plastic pollution<\/a>, the global recycling rate for this material has remained largely stagnant for years. Is it time to admit defeat for plastics recycling?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A plastic collection facility in Indonesia JUNI KRISWANTO\/AFP via Getty Images In 2022, the world discarded around 268&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[728,12447,10688,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-18827","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-plastic","10":"tag-recycling","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114335554230622273","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}