Who is King(Queen) Recycling?

King, Emperor, Admiral...who, from my dutch generation, does not know this? It was the slogan of Popla, a brand of toilet paper. Very catchy with the essence that it doesn't matter who or what you are, all people from all walks of life have to go to the toilet and preferably use Popla, because "they all know” the brand of course.

There are regular advertisements or news items on a company that proudly reports that it "completely" recycles or uses recycled material.
When I go to a trade fair or seminar, sustainability and recycling are always on the agenda, where all kinds of success stories (with or without a difficult path to get there) are usually shared with the interested public.
If you look on Linkedin, a large part of the vacancies are all kinds of fun positions in the field of development of green technologies.

What I also see is that there is quite a bit of discussion going on against each other. While one can produce “anything in any desired colour” from recycled material, the other counters this with all kinds of “impossibilities”. While one person is convinced of mechanical recycling of plastics, another sees chemical recycling as the only option.  And in between, or in addition to it, all kinds of systems to collect waste and reuse it for carpet, furniture, art or other beautiful applications.

People and companies seem to fall over each other to promote their own success and tell everyone else not to whine about all the problems but to just do it. The (journalistic and social) media also happily participate to show all kinds of companies that recycle so well... with half (and sometimes complete) untruths, all kinds of free advertising and the ordinary citizen is lulled into the idea that recycling and reuse is pretty much standard.

And then there are all kinds of experts and specialists, less visible in the media, who talk about material properties, who indicate that with every post-treatment a plastic has increasing inferior properties (downgrading) and that the reuse or recycling of plastics for food applications is not possible (yet).

I'm actually getting a bit tired of all those superlatives and which one is better... and just as well of all the gloom and what's so bad about it.
Can't it all coincide? There are so many different plastics, resins, metals and other materials; can’t it be that all those methods - and perhaps even more methods need to be developed? - are necessary to complete the whole picture? Do, as often happens, many roads lead to Rome? Can there be more nuance, interpretation, objectivity and also inventiveness in the discussion?

It is a fact that only 10% of all plastics, for example, are recycled. It is a fact that the vast majority of plastics waste is still burned or hidden under a grass mat, including a few sheep, with the VAM-Mountain in Emmen (Netherlands) as the ultimate imaginative example. The fact is that recycling and reusing plastics is not always straightforward and easy; it is often very difficult or even impossible with current technologies.

Perhaps we should broaden it, view it less political and, preferably, not about who receives the most subsidies. Let's stop navel-gazing at our own company or truth.
Embrace all recycling options and routes, because we still have decades of already produced plastics and waste that we can recycle and at the same time motivate society (especially in the rich west) to consume less and be more aware of the (limited) quantity of natural resources of our planet and the (frequently poor) conditions under which many products and devices are made.
This means that (EU) government policy facilitates that sustainability, recycling and reuse is profitable and, for example, discourages the import of cheap virgin polymer.

And this also includes the realisation that sustainability is of and for all of us and that the entire society, including the King-Emperor-Admiral, can benefit from the opportunities it offers, for citizens and companies, both financially and socially, for prosperity but also our well-being.