Plastics represent the fastest-growing category of waste. Worldwide consumers use 500 billion plastic shopping bags and drink 154 billion litres of bottled water annually. The majority of these bags and bottles are made from polyethylene terepthalate (PET), a plastic derived from crude oil. Because PET takes over 1,000 years to degrade and leaks dangerous chemicals into the soil, many communities have instituted recycling programmes to reduce the amount of plastic destined for landfill. However, recycling plastic is not a perfect solution. Firstly, there are many different types of plastic, and sorting them makes recycling labour-intensive. Secondly, because the quality of plastic degrades with each reuse, recycled plastic has a low value. To reduce costs most of Europe’s plastic is shipped to China for recycling processing. The downside to this is that the transportation consumes large amounts of energy and working conditions in the Chinese processing factories are poor. While recycling plastic may salve the conscience of western consumers, reducing plastic proliferation is a better solution.