The Circular Economy is a movement to get designers to create packaging and products that can be easily recycled or reused. Extended Producer Responsibility is a concept under consideration in Europe and elsewhere that would make companies responsible for the disposal of their consumer packaging, with penalties for non-recyclable items. This would push brands into the circular economy. Most of the unrecycled plastic processed by Suez Recycling & Recovery UK is black plastic,(3) used for meat and microwave meals, and packaging made from combinations of plastic and other materials, like aluminum-lined crisp packets. “They are technically recyclable but there's not really a market for them,” says company spokesman Ben Johnson. “We'd like manufacturers to effectively use more simple constructions, to use more ubiquitous constructions, to use types of plastics that do have healthy recycling markets,” Johnson says at a recycling center in western England. “They'll work well in plants like this and we'll be able to keep them in a kind of circular use.”

Recycling and Microplastics: In one of the many paradoxes of plastic, reusable plastic bottles, which reduce waste and save energy, were found to contain more microplastic than single-use disposable bottles, in a study(4) by researcher Darena Schymanski in Münster, Germany. PET plastic bottles are routinely recycled into fibers and spun into polyester textiles including bedding(5) and clothes.(6) But that bedspread of recycled plastic will become a source of microplastic pollution when it’s washed.