Top Reads, Listens & Follows of the week
The Recycling Fallacy
Takeaways:
Plastic is among the most diverse, useful, and ubiquitous materials in our lives. Almost everything we see around us, are touching, wearing, sitting on, etc. is plastic, but its reputation is one of being both an unsustainable and harmful material. As such, we’re on autopilot as we carefully sift our trash and take it out to the blue bins for it to disappear. The international symbol of recycling, the three green folded chasing arrows, make it all seem like a virtuous loop.
The reality is that only 5% of plastic is actually recycled, and the preponderance of it is burned or put in a landfill. Big Recycling disputes this number, saying that 8% of plastic is recycled.
A major moment for plastic recycling came in 2018, when China banned plastic imports because their processing facilities were overwhelmed and they couldn’t handle another environmental issue. Pre-ban, 95% of the plastics collected for recycling in the E.U. and 70% in the U.S. were sold and shipped to China. Without them, other countries with lax regulations like Indonesia, Turkey, India, Malaysia, and Vietnam have stepped into the void, but without the capacity that China formerly had.
The state of plastic waste in the U.S. now is that it is difficult to collect, ~impossible to sort, bad for the environment to process, and not economical to recycle. Many companies with recycling pledges have let them die out as they lobby against restrictions on single use plastics. For now, it’s not clear that the truth about recycling is bad in a way that will be directly impacting our lives, though research on microplastic pollution is disturbing, but it’s fascinating that something we all do on a daily basis and feel good about is of ~no impact. If you’re interested in this, check out Elizabeth Kolbert’s piece below.
Reads:
How Plastics Are Poisoning Us by Elizabeth Kolbert (here)
Alleged Private Equity Operational Improvements by Dan Rasmussen (here)
Civilization by Jared Dillian (here)
Rocks and Hard Places, looking forward for stocks and bonds (here)
Listens:
Special Situations in Private Markets with Jeremy Giffon (here)
Paul Podolsky talks Russia, China, and investing amid geopolitical uncertainty (here)
How Americans Watch Sports Is Changing (here)
Follow, Watch & Other great content:
Arnold on Netflix (trailer here)