Exploring "The Great Recycling Con"

For a generation now, we’ve been told that plastics of all types can be recycled. As the story goes, this makes it totally OK to buy more and more things made from plastic because they’ll all get recycled…right? Turns out, that’s not really the way it works. Five of the seven designated types of plastics are hardly ever recycled.

According to one Environmental Protection Agency estimate, just 8.4% of plastics marked as recyclable are ever recycled. So who’s behind this plastic recycling shell game? Watch this short New York Times video to discover The Great Recycling Con — and see what you can do to generate less waste.