1) It goes to landfills or gets burned. Depends on where you live.
2)It keeps getting used as a cheap disposable material but it creates an ecological nightmare for us all.
3) This depends on who you ask. To me, plastic recycling is a term i view as greenwashing. The process we use is closer to reusing the material, however, it breaks down a bit after each time we melt it down. Plastic does last a long time, but we use it for stupid things that only last a short time and recycling is simply not the solution to plastic waste. A solution would be to minimize usage of it and use some other material that is more eco-friendly.
4) This is a sick joke. I have never seen so many crappy spunbound plastic bags in my life. These replaced the normal plastic bags and now we have these other bags that use more plastic and are more likely to break off in tiny microplastics. But in terms of climate change? I'm not sure how plastic interacts with climate change other than the part where a rather large percentage of oil is used for the creation of plastics. If oil mining has a bad impact on climate change, then so does plastic. I've heard arguments that plastic uses less energy to recycle than metals or glass, but it depends on your energy source.
5) is there anything you think RMIT can do better with plastic waste, and what tools do you think will be needed?
I don't know what RMIT is. If it's your university, you need to educate and work on reducing and eliminating dumb plastic use.
6) Plastic bags were created to reduce deforestation. Use plastic in smarter ways, dont rely on plastic for everything, move away from disposable consumerism. There's many alternatives to plastic and I think because so much has been invested in plastic, change seems expensive but really, change often brings more and different opprotunities.
