[htmXlabs]

"PET bottles on the Dutch market averaging 44% recycled PET content in 2023". Also, many other products: Fleece jackets are made out of bottles. That's up-cycling, afaik. And lots of packaging materials (bags, shampoo bottles, etc). If it is economical depends on many factors, and can be different in each country. Landfill may be cheap in the US, but extremely expensive in European countries, because there's no un-used land.

but yes, what can't be recycled is epoxy (also a plastic).

[tda]

But nearly all plastic recycling companies in the Netherlands have gone bankrupt recently. Unfortunately it is usually best to just burn the plastic for energy.

For the case of PET bottles, recycling is possible if:

- products are made from a single sort of plastic with the intent of recycling - can be collected as a dedicated waste stream - are not contaminated in a way that is not easily cleaned - there are rules and regulations to offset the added costs

As all these conditions have to be met, one might as well use reusable bottles instead of recycling altogether, like we do with glass beer bottles. But then why were plastics used in the first place, as there is then hardly any advantage?