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Starbucks does not recycle plastic cups it claims are ‘widely recyclable’, report says
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 21 May 2026
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I am curious how much petroleum products actually go into making the plastics vs how much energy it costs to recycle it. Is it possible we will see a boon in the recycle market if Oil prices get high enough?
its not about the energy.
its about the cost.
Lets preface this by saying that "plastics" is just a universal word that describes like half a dozen or more types of commonly used polymer materials.
These materials are generally made from waste byproducts from the oil and gas industry, so the oil and gas industry could literally give these byproducts away and it would still be cheaper for them than having to incur disposal costs. fresh plastic will always win on price, as long as petroleum exists (Which may not be as long as some people hope..but thats another discussion)
meanwhile recycling all these plastics require massive complicated machines (if such machines even exist), or hordes of human workers manually sorting the various types. Which already makes recycled plastic too expensive to be anything but a propaganda tool for companies to slap "MADE WITH RECYCLED MATERIALS!" on their label, usually with an asterisk somewhere that says they only used like 10% recycled materials, because again, the sorting, cleaning, processing is so expensive as to make the final pelletized product magnitudes more expensive than fresh raw plastic could ever hope to be.. so they only use enough recycled plastic to be able to slap that on their label in hopes of appealing to the environmentalist types.
Which is also why most recycled plastic ends up at the dump regardless, because if one person on the route is suspected of putting something they shouldnt in their bin, then the truck is sent to the dump where all the plastic is buried with the rest of the trash, because they dont want to deal with any sorting or processing. they just want to dump the truck into pelletizer and be done with it.
If you care about the environment, recycling isnt whats going to save it. getting rid of plastic and replacing it with something sustainable like glass and wood is what will save it.
Recycling plastic is still less cost than manufacturing virgin material. The sorting is effort, but the repelletinzing is not highly complex. As with anything for sale, for a company to stay in business their product has to cover costs and make profit. Recycled plastic is cheaper than new, sometimes not by a huge %/but enough that when oil prices rise the plastic part manufacturers reach out and order a lot more recycled material.
The plastic that is not easily converted back into consumer materials, is repelletized into fuel pellets. These are used in heating and incinerator systems in place of oil, coal and gas fuels. Its still just hydrocarbons at the end.
I am mostly just interested in clean, baled strapless shrink wrap industry.