COVID vs Cleaner Plastic

A recent article in the WSJ highlights how COVID has setback the effort to make a "cleaner" plastic bottle. To begin with, the article describes the current state of affairs: "despite being easily recyclable, less than a third of PET bottles sold are collected for recycling in the U.S. and 4% are used to make new drinks bottles". Folks, that is a terrible statistic. We should be able to do better than 33%. But COVID has caused many communities to cancel curbside recycling and due to the fact that oil is cheaper, it is less espensive to make a new bottle than one from recycled plastic. Companies have still set goals to have a greater percentage of their bottles made from recycled material, but most of those have been set back by at least a year. For now, the solution is the same as before - carry your own reusable bottle with your favorite drink.