More Recycling Won’t Solve Plastic Pollution

Many residents in Minot want to see citywide recycling, but before we invest big in the facilities and equipment, perhaps we should ask — what problem is it we’re trying to solve? One answer we’d expect to hear is we need to reduce the amount of plastic entering the environment. If that’s the case, then Matt Wilkins writing at Scientific American has a different proposal for dealing with the problem — end the availability of single-use plastic products. They are used for an average of 12-minutes, they persist in the environment for half a millennia.