The short
- Scale: 420M tons of plastic waste generated in 2025 — up 11% YoY.
- Promise: Chemical recycling now claims 80–90% recovery potential.
- Reality: Only 9% globally makes it back to new products.
- India: PET-to-PET plant capacity hits 40k tons, still <3% of total flow.
- Emotion: The bottle you recycled last year might be smoke today.
The new math of circularity
| Polymer | Recycling Yield (%) | Actual Recovery (%) | Major Use |
|---|---|---|---|
| PET | 85 | 32 | Beverage bottles |
| HDPE | 70 | 21 | Detergent containers |
| LDPE | 60 | 12 | Plastic bags, film |
| PP | 65 | 18 | Food packaging |
| PS | 50 | 6 | Disposable cutlery |
Data: UNEP, IEA, India CPCB waste trackers (2025).
The chemical illusion
For decades, mechanical recycling ruled — sort, melt, reuse. But the dream of “infinite plastic” rests on chemical processes like depolymerization and pyrolysis. These break plastic down into monomers for reuse — but only if energy costs cooperate.
Current economics don’t. At $75/barrel crude, virgin plastic is still cheaper to make than recycled polymer. That’s why chemical recycling plants operate at half capacity — technology wins, margins don’t.
Why the circular dream keeps slipping
Because recycling was always a logistics problem disguised as chemistry. India collects 70% of PET but only recycles a third of it properly. The rest leaks into low-value reuse — bags, textiles, road filler — a one-way ticket out of the loop.
“You can’t have circularity without symmetry,” says an environmental economist. “If packaging keeps getting thinner, recovery math breaks.”
The emotional cost of plastic’s persistence
We want to believe in the blue bin. But that belief feeds a loop of guilt and convenience — the consumer psychology that keeps demand steady while conscience feels cleared.
As cities burn mixed waste to meet landfill mandates, the illusion persists: recycling isn’t failing, it’s performing optimism.
What’s changing
- India’s Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) audits go digital in 2026.
- Global FMCGs testing refill packaging for detergents, oil, and shampoo.
- Chemical recycling pilots tie output directly to polymer futures contracts.
The plastic we can’t kill might just teach us how honesty scales faster than chemistry.