It really is. Recycling is essentially ecologically worthless. We have to do things like buy less plastic and demand alternatives to plastic as in paper shopping bags or reusable shopping bags. Paper isn’t ecologically perfect by any means, but the pulp and paper industry is to some extent sustainable and is far less damaging to the earth than the plastics industry.

The big problem, though, is our reliance on cheap, disposable consumer goods made possible by plastic. We’re reliant on them in huge ways, and doing something about it would require sacrifice. (I say as I clack away on my $400.00 dirt cheap, wonderfully good laptop made almost entirely of plastic.)