Earth911 Podcast: Plastic Banks’ David Katz on Incentivizing and Upgrading Plastic Recycling

Earth911 Podcast: Plastic Banks’ David Katz on Incentivizing and Upgrading Plastic Recycling

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Join us for an impassioned dialog in regards to the potential for recycling progress with David Katz, founding father of Plastic Bank. He joined us earlier this year and returns to share an replace in regards to the firm’s progress. Plastic Bank is a social enterprise that companions with client merchandise corporations to create incentive packages in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa that assist forestall plastics from reaching waterways, seas, and the ocean. The firm has partnerships with SC Johnson, Henkel, and others. It pays people in rising economies to gather plastic and switch it in at greater than 600 department places. The collected plastic is recycled to make Social Plastic® feedstock, a uncooked materials for making new plastic merchandise.

David additionally discusses the recent Greenpeace report that argues plastic recycling, together with new molecular recycling technologies, doesn’t work — it’s an overstatement in our opinion, however the system undoubtedly needs an upgrade.

David Katz, founder and CEO of Plastic Bank
David Katz, founder and CEO of Plastic Bank, is our visitor on Sustainability in Your Ear.

David’s evaluation of Greenpeace’s conclusion: “Shame on them. It’s one factor to say it doesn’t work. It’s one other to say, ‘Let’s make it higher.’” So what can we do? He advocates decreasing the usage of plastic total, standardizing any needed single-use plastic on recyclable supplies, and that manufacturers and society discover a method to compensate individuals to gather and recycle the plastic we do use. Making the recycling system work could require incentives — however solely 10 states have bottle payments that present small funds for returning plastic bottles. We speak about what could be discovered from Plastic Bank’s work in rising economies. Besides decreasing our consumption of single-use plastic packaging, new laws or non-public assist is required to show the nook.

You can study extra about Plastic Bank and subscribe to support collection programs that hold plastic out of waterways and oceans at plasticbank.com.