For anybody who thinks about these things for longer than a couple of seconds, it's pretty much clear that recycling is something that should happen to scarce, valuable resources rather than cheap and readily available ones. This is because recycling itself uses resources, so you don't want to expend a load of time, money, effort and materials in order to get something that is not worth very much.
In the FT today, Pillita Clark notes that the collapse of oil prices has put plastic recyclers under a great deal of pressure, as container makers have started to prefer virgin material to recycled. Some companies in the trade have collapsed as a result. This is as it should be. The effort of collecting, sorting and then grinding up old plastic bottles is clearly too high when the product has a low value.
Moreover, according to Clark plastic bottles are relatively inert. This of course is a good thing, meaning that they are not much of a problem in landfill, so it looks very much as if there are no significant externalities that might lead us to the wrong result. (In fact, Clark presents the stability of the bottles as a problem - "[plastic] can take so long to decompose that it is a menace to the environment" - but I'm not sure she has thought it through: if they are not decomposing, they are not any kind of "menace".)
So, the market works its magic, seeking out and destroying the least-efficient ways of doing things, with the inevitable result that those whose ways and means have been made redundant scream for politicians to help them:
In the UK, the dilemma lower oil prices are posing for plastic recyclers has led to calls for more industry support.
Stuart Foster, chief executive officer Recoup, the industry support group, says surveys have shown consumers would support laws giving bottle manufacturers a responsibility to include recycled content in plastic milk bottles, even if that meant higher prices for consumers.
“The financial drivers need to exist for manufacturers to actually use recycled instead of virgin plastic in their products,” he adds.
There can be little doubt that the measures demanded will be implemented; either voluntarily or imposed upon us by the EU bureaucracy. Expect lots of money to be wasted on driving empty plastic bottles around the country and grinding them into pellets. Its the environment, see?