Plastics Shouldn’t Be Recycled, Environmentalist Says Amid Secret Plastics Stockpiling

California-based ecomodernist Michael Shellenberger has said that the collapse of Australia’s largest plastic bag recycling program was expected as plastics cannot be recycled and are often shipped to poor nations where it risks being dumped into the ocean.

It comes amid revelations that the REDcycle team was stockpiling instead of recycling millions of soft plastics—plastic that you can scrunch in your hand, including grocery bags, bubble wrapping, snack food wrappers, and squeeze pouches—posing a potential fire and environmental risk.

The company announced its plastic bag recycling program, used by major Australian supermarkets Woolworths and Coles, has been temporarily scrapped and will no longer be able to accept and process soft plastics from Nov. 9.

It attributed the closure to several “unforeseen challenges” including the growth of collection volumes by 350 percent since 2019, the pandemic, as well as a significant fire in a suburban Melbourne factory in June.

The company said it plans to continue to hold the current soft plastics in storage at “great personal expense” until it finds other processing solutions.

“The REDcycle team took the unwanted but necessary decision to hold the material in storage in the short term. Potential new opportunities are being presented every day; however, they will take time to operationalise,” the company said in a statement.

‘Simply Put Your Plastic in the Garbage. It Isn’t Being Recycled’

Shellenberger responded to the Australian recycling revelation on his Twitter.

“People think they should recycle plastic but they shouldn’t. Yes, do so with aluminium, tin, paper & glass. But plastic should be landfilled or incinerated,” Shellenberger wrote.

“Plastic meant for recycling is secretly stockpiled or sent to poor nations and ends up in the ocean.”

Woolworths and Coles have REDcycle bins in-store for customers to drop off soft plastic bags. (Jenny Evans/Getty Images)

Meanwhile, REDcycle encourages consumers to put their used household soft plastics in their home rubbish bins instead of recycling bins.

Melbourne-based REDcycle was launched ten years ago by mum Liz Kasell and has reported collecting more than 5.4 billion pieces of plastic that “will never end up in landfill, on our beaches or in our waterways.”