And in contrast, plastic sucks 100% for recycling. Remelting it for recycling results in polymer degradation. Going so far as to be basically useless for some cases. We tried a bunch of high quality recycled materials - for instance ground up and repelletized lego bricks. Bumpers from cars. All abs, all possible to be broken by hand when extruded. New pellets never had that and could basically withstand everything we threw at them. What people usually do is mix like 5% of recycled into the new stuff.

The cost of plastic is so cheap, that I could have ordered a metric tonne, use up 50kgs out of that, throw the remaining 950kg out and still turn a healthy profit. It always surprised me why someone would make something out of shitty plastic, when the good stuff is barely more expensive. It also surprises me why people bother with recycling it for the exact same reason. The drawbacks are huge for maybe 5 - 10% difference in cost.

Except aluminium cans nowadays have a plastic lining that make recycling them harder.