Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'

The EU Packaging Directive seems to be getting more robust - I remember the first Directive was a bit weak and too open to national interpretation so it's good to see they seem to have introduced hard recycling targets and put a lot more emphasis on the need for producer responsibility schemes for packaging - https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=15958382...

Clean energy is already our most important goal from a "survival of the species" point of view.

But IMHO manufacturers should be on the hook for the lifecycle of their products. Either through taxes, or some kind of market-driven bidding mechanism, they should have financial penalties (or even rewards), based on product environmental impact.

The whole recycling movement seems to me to be a way for companies to palm off this responsibility onto the public, and then win 'green publicity' when they deign to make their products slightly more amenable to the (usually public-funded/volunteer/coerced/etc) recycling system.

You are being naive, even in the European Union which has a fairly contained level of corruption the Plastic and Petro-chemical lobby are incredibly strong.

Many countries wanted to introduce a single-use plastic ban, almost immediately a campaign came out saying they were trying to kill people at hospitals where many consumables are single-use plastic (Obviously medical supplies were exempt from the ban). The single-use plastic ban was so watered down that now the only thing that will be baned are things like plastic forks and plastic q-tips.

Another example is return deposits, many European countries have very succesful glass deposit schemes usually reusing the supermarket stores' infrastructure. The natural progression of this is to create large plastic bootle/container deposits. Again this will never happen because it obviously stops the current externalization of costs in the plastic business.

There are two main forces at play against Humanity on the plastic front of our Anthropogenic calamity:

- The consumer product manufacturers (think Unilever, Pepsico, Nestle, Kraft, etc.). Their interest in plastic containers is mostly due to the reduction in production cost and transport costs. They heavily lobby against bans and any cost increase for their production chain.

- The Petro-Chemical industry (Including Big Oil companies), many of these refining business know they are getting squeezed out of the fuel business as electrical vehicle adoption is bound to increase. The Plastic production is the last remaining golden goose in their portfolio. A circular economy where most of the plastic is recycled from previously used plastic would mean that the volumes and profits of these very financially successful business would evaporate.

Both these lobbies and others will continue to resist and undermine any attempt to curb our planetary and Humane destruction until they are stopped either by public pressure or insolvency.