Thanks for yet another interesting article; yes, recycling is perhaps not the best way to address an consumption & production cycle even in a circular economy. Reduce, reuse, and only as a last resort, recycle. For any material, with a recycling rate r < 1, virgin material of (1-r) x annual consumption needs to be produced every year; that can amount to quite a lot, too.

Should you be interested, the Reisner Lab in Cambridge (http://www-reisner.ch.cam.ac.uk/bio.html) is working on solar power conversion of plastics into feed-stock hydrocarbons. After a visit during the Cambridge Festival, I produced a short write-up: https://peter-wurmsdobler.medium.com/from-fossil-to-solar-powered-chemistry-in-a-circular-economy-79379694aa37