Recycling is nothing new, neither is the green movement, nor the effort to reduce pollution, but the preservation of the world has been something understood by humanity long ago. Our culture is finally realizing we need to pay attention and readdress this developing problem.
Plastic is one of the leading substances people choose to single out because it is not biodegradable, thus it is an easy target. The thing is it can be recycled, reprocessed, and redistributed. Plastic water bottles—when recycled—are melted back down to a semi-liquid state, hardened into pellets, then used in injection molders for new polymer products.
This process of refining recycled plastic for injection plastic molding is still new to the world of plastic, and every recycled plastic varies from batch to batch. The strength of the plastic (hardness/softness), the color, the melt flow, and the contaminant levels all differ leading to problems in the reused plastics quality. Yet, overtime and with the development of more effective recycling processes these minor difficulties will be weeded out.
As this change and betterment of the recycling process occurs, there will be less of a need to produce new plastics when we can simply reuse the old.