WISHCYCLING: A Tour Of Tired Plastic Delusions

The plastic problem isn’t some quirky riddle we can sort away with a blue bin and a warm conscience. It’s a global avalanche—300 million tons a year—that doesn’t care about your “wishcycling” impulses or the smug arrows stamped on a yogurt cup. And yet, the myth persists: recycling will solve it all.

Let’s torch that fantasy.

The Mirage of the Blue Bin

Globally, only about 9% of plastic waste gets recycled. The rest? Half goes to landfills, a fifth goes up in flames, and nearly a quarter just bleeds into rivers, oceans, or backyard burn piles. That’s not a circular economy—that’s a busted carousel with one horse still standing.

But somewhere along the way, the chasing arrows got rebranded from resin codes into a kind of eco-absolution. Toss it in, whisper a prayer, and voilà—planet saved. Except that’s not how it works. The numbers on the bottom of your takeout clamshell don’t mean “recyclable.” They mean “this polymer exists.” If your city can’t process it, it’s just a plastic guilt totem headed straight for the dump.

Wishcycling and Other Modern Delusions

The blue-bin myth has morphed into an even nastier cousin: wishcycling. That’s when you pitch random crap—greasy pizza boxes, black plastic forks, chip bags—into the recycling bin, hoping some saintly machine will sort it out. Spoiler: it won’t. What actually happens is contamination skyrockets, processing costs climb, and whole bales of once-salvageable material get torched or buried.

And then there’s black plastic—our favorite “sleek” food packaging. Too bad carbon-black pigment eats up the infrared light used by sorters, which means the system can’t even see it. It’s not recycled, it’s rejected. Straight to landfill.

The Export Escape Hatch

For years, wealthy countries played hot potato, exporting their plastic sins offshore under the pretense of “recycling.” In reality, a lot of that waste just got dumped, burned, or turned into toxic runoff in someone else’s backyard. The Basel Convention finally threw a wrench in the game, tightening restrictions on plastic trade. But the illusion lingers—“out of sight, recycled in spirit.”

The Persistent Myth: Recycling Alone Will Save Us

Here’s the kicker: the recycling-as-savior myth is more than a feel-good lie—it’s a dangerous distraction. It tells consumers that personal bin behavior is the frontline of the war, when the real action is upstream:

• Design choices that avoid multi-layer Frankenstein packaging.

• Policy frameworks that make producers pay for the cleanup.

• Circular lifecycle planning that doesn’t just chase waste, but redesigns it out of existence.

Recycling should be part of the squad—yeah, we need it—but it’s not the quarterback. The game-changer is reducing single-use plastics at the source and making companies responsible for what they put into circulation.

Toward a Real Circular Future

A plastic circular lifecycle doesn’t look like your city’s sad blue bins. It looks like mono-material packaging built for recovery, extended producer responsibility laws, refill and reuse models that crush single-use demand, and global standards that prevent the export-and-forget trick. It’s design, policy, and accountability moving in lockstep—not just a faith-based recycling ritual.

Because if we keep selling recycling as the centerpiece, we’ll just keep spinning on that broken carousel while the plastic tide rises higher.

Source Links

OECD Global Plastics Outlook (2019 data)

• OECD summary page: “Global Plastics Outlook” (June 2022) OECD

• PDF report with the 2019 breakdown: “Global Plastics Outlook I” PDF (February 2022) OECD

U.S. EPA & Recycling Partnership reports on contamination and “wishcycling”

• Recycling Partnership 2023 Knowledge Report (discusses ~25 % contamination from wish-cycling and mis-sorting) The Recycling Partnership

• Urban Ecology Center article explaining wish-cycling impacts (contamination, cost) urbanecologycenter.org

• The Spruce Eats article “What Is Wishcycling? (And Why You Should Stop Doing It)” The Spruce Eats

Basel Convention plastic waste amendments

• Official Basel Convention page: “Plastic Waste Amendments — Overview” basel.int

• FAQs on Plastic Waste Amendments (scope and application) basel.int

• Canada government page explaining what the amendments control Government of Canada

• SustainableElectronics.org Q&A on the Basel amendments digging into prior-informed consent (PIC) provisions sustainableelectronics.org

Ellen MacArthur Foundation: New Plastics Economy

• Foundation's overview page for “The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the future of plastics” Ellen MacArthur Foundation

• PDF version of the core report (“The-New-Plastics-Economy-Rethinking-the-future-of-plastics.pdf”) content.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org

National Geographic & The Guardian coverage on black-plastic sortation failures

• National Geographic article: “Here's why everybody is currently avoiding black plastic...” National Geographic

• Guardian article: “Is black plastic really bad for you? Six things you should know” The Guardian

• BeyondPlastics fact sheet on black-plastic sorting failures beyondplastics.org

Greenpeace analysis on plastic exports and “downcycling”

• Greenpeace “Plastic Recycling Is A Dead-End Street” report (October 2022), highlighting US recycling decline and export issues Greenpeace

• Greenpeace “Myth of Single-use Plastic Recycling” overview page Greenpeace

• Greenpeace UK “Trashed: how the UK is still dumping plastic waste on…” report (on single-use reduction and export impacts) greenpeace.org.uk