Look before you leap: Are increased recycling efforts accelerating microplastic pollution?

To fight plastic pollution and reach net-zero ambitions, policy and industry set goals to increase the recycling of plastics and the recycled content in products. While this ideally reduces demand for virgin material, it also increases pressure on recyclers to find suitable endmarkets for the recyclate. This may lead to two effects: a multiplication of recycled content in applications already made of plastic and a substitution of non-plastic materials with cheap, low-quality recyclate.