Numerous studies note that less than 10 percent of all plastic is recycled across the globe. There are several economic reasons for this. Creating new plastic products directly refined from petrochemicals is cheaper and involves fewer steps in the production process than using recycled plastic as feedstock. Also, many plastic products are materially complex, that is, they can contain several different types of plastic which are more costly and difficult to separate from one another. Studies go on to mention that plastic producing companies create products that are designed to look attractive on shelves rather than for ease of recycling after the product is used; they argue that a fundamental shift toward designing plastic materials for end-of-life recovery is needed to increase the plastic recycling rate.
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