Critics call out plastics industry over "fraud of plastic recycling"
CBSN
Jan Dell is a former chemical engineer who has spent years telling an inconvenient truth about plastics. "So many people, they see the recyclable label, and they put it in the recycle bin," she said. "But the vast majority of plastics are not recycled."
About 48 million tons of plastic waste is generated in the U.S. each year; only 5 to 6 percent of it is actually recycled, according to the Department of Energy. The rest ends up in landfills or is burned.
Dell founded a non-profit, The Last Beach Cleanup, to fight plastic pollution. Inside her garage in Southern California is all sorts of plastic with those little arrows on it that make us think they can be recycled. But, she said, "You're being lied to."
After launching more than 100 small payloads from California on Tuesday and two commercial moon landers from Florida early Wednesday, both atop Falcon 9 rockets, SpaceX readied a huge Super Heavy-Starship for a ground-shaking launch from the Texas Gulf Coast to kick off the program's seventh test flight.