[supernova87a]

The plastics and chemicals industries -- as a chemistry professor used to put it -- are but a pimple on the butt of the petroleum fuels industry.

They are a tiny portion of what's getting produced every day. And as long as petroleum keeps getting pumped out of the ground for dirt cheap and getting burned, plastics will be an inevitable byproduct.

It just costs pretty much $0 to make new plastic from that stream of petroleum, versus recycling which takes human effort, more equipment, logistics, etc.

Until we tax petroleum coming out of the ground for all the later problems it causes us, I too am disappointed but resigned to having recycling being a further waste of resources.

[Areading314]

There are 2 separate externalities with different costs:

* CO2 emissions through burning fossil fuel

* plastic garbage with 1000 year lifetimes being littered around the planet

While we should absolutely be addressing both, you have to target these 2 problems separately

Edit: To clarify what I'd propose would be a tax on fossil fuel production, and then an additional, much higher tax on production of things like plastic bags