Sustainability’s awkward moment
Hey Reader,
It pains me to say this, but we’re running out of plastic bottles.
No, I haven’t been hacked. And it’s not April Fool’s.
And before you come at me: yes, I know about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It’s real. It’s enormous. It is absolutely choking my beloved sea turtles.
And yet, in a country drowning in plastic, companies can’t find enough of it to recycle.
Americans throw away 60 million bottles a day. And somehow the math still isn’t mathing.
Welcome to Week 21.
Bottles with Benefits
In the late 2010s, sustainability was hitting a high note.
Even oil and gas companies ran ads showing how much they cared. Nothing says “trust us” like a drone shot of a windmill set to an acoustic guitar.
Using old stuff to make new stuff was cool. Adidas turned plastic bottles into sneakers, and IKEA reincarnated them as minimalist Scandinavian storage units with unpronounceable names.
One tiny Allen wrench and a step-by-step guide later, you were strutting around like Bob Vila had just solved climate change.
Brands knew a good thing when they saw it. Circularity logos on everything, like merit badges stitched onto a Patagonia vest. You didn’t need to buy less, just buy recycled.
Then everything changed.
Sourdough & Shrink Wrap
When the pandemic hit, you went from saving the planet to learning how to sew face masks on YouTube.
Locked inside with just your thoughts and your sourdough starters, the to-do list got very short: avoid people, don’t get sick, and make it to next week.
Grocery cart roulette was too scary, standing six feet apart in the cereal aisle, clutching a moist towelette and a prayer. So you let someone else deal with it.
Instacart. DoorDash. Amazon. The Big Three rewired daily life without a single reusable bag in sight.
Safety came wrapped in plastic bags and boxes stacked by the front door like a quarantine shrine.
Recycling dropped way down in priority, after learning Common Core math and perfecting your lighting so you didn’t have a double chin on Zoom.
Gas was more expensive. Redemption centers shut down. And that nickel deposit? Hadn’t budged since the ’80s, when Coke cost fifty cents.
So when things reopened, people didn’t snap back. They kept the shortcuts.
That 2020 “we’re all in this together” Kumbayah faded into YOLO. The acronymic antithesis of sustainability.
Just as companies were finding new ways to reuse plastic, bottle returns dwindled.
A shortage was born.
Circular Logic
Lawmakers saw the gap and tried to close it.
California required beverage companies to use recycled content: 25% by 2025. 50% by 2030.
That guaranteed demand, but it did nothing for supply.
Companies redesigned bottles to use more of the same type of plastic—just recycled—instead of fixing the real problem: collection. Even with the mandate, the actual amount of recycled plastic collected fell 4% in 2024.
So big brands moved fast.
Large beverage companies locked up recycled plastic years in advance, securing contracts smaller companies couldn’t match.
Meanwhile, you saw “made with recycled materials” and felt justified in consuming more. That’s the neat trick with sustainability branding—it makes you think the problem is handled so you can relax.
Bin There, Shipped That
If everyone wants recycled plastic so badly, why isn’t someone digging it out of landfills?
Because companies need it clean, sorted, and predictable.
There are thousands of types of plastics. You can’t just toss them together and melt them down. Yogurt cups don’t breed with lawn furniture to make water bottles.
Once plastic gets crushed in with last week’s takeout and dirty diapers, it stops being valuable and starts being an expensive problem nobody wants to solve.
So they don’t. They just make it go “away.”
For decades, “away” meant China. Nearly half the world’s plastic waste flowed there until 2018, when China looked at the contaminated mess that was piling up and said hard pass.
They rolled out a policy called National Sword—which pretty much tells you how they felt about being the world’s trash can.
If a shipment wasn’t clean and actually recyclable, they wouldn’t take it.
Overnight, entire shipments were rejected.
Let’s face it: if it had real value, you would’ve kept it. Not spent a fortune sending it halfway across the world on boats burning diesel.
When China closed its doors, you found new officials willing to look the other way.
What happened next? Stayed tuned.
Rinse & Repeat
This isn’t a personal indictment. You didn’t design global waste markets or invent resin codes that looked misleadingly like recycling symbols.
You followed the instructions. There was a bin, an official-looking logo, and a truck that came every Thursday. It all seemed handled. But, now you know.
So here’s what you can actually do:
Stop contaminating the stream. Rinse your containers. No greasy pizza boxes. It’s like a food allergy at a potluck. One peanut butter cookie in the tray and now nobody gets dessert.
Know your numbers. Most places only want #1 and #2. Even if yours takes #5, many end up in landfills anyway. Can’t blame you for having trust issues.
Find specialized drop-offs. Many grocery stores take plastic bags and film separately—the stuff that jams sorting machines.
Some of you are reading this while trying to remember if you fed the dog. Others are ready to build a sorting station with labeled bins and a laminated cheat sheet.
Start where you are and commit to doing it just 10% better.
Progress, not perfection.
Mother Nature
Next week: What happened in Malaysia will make you rethink that blue bin.
📣 Know someone who treats the recycling triangle like it’s sacred? Forward this sermon.
