Eco-friendly myths busted, from tote bags to paper straws and electric cars

You’ve been told to ditch plastic, drive electric and shop sustainably to help save the planet.But some familiar “green” promises don’t live up to what they claim.That does not mean every eco-friendly option is a con.

But sustainable and ethical labels aren’t always a  guarantee the product is better for the planet.Here are six misleading environmental myths:Much of the plastic put into recycling bins never gets a second life, according to a 2024 report from the Center for Climate Integrity.It claims plastic producers promoted recycling for decades despite knowing its technical and economic limitations.Different plastics require sorting processing and can degrade in quality, while even cheaper new plastic undermines the market for recycled material, the report said.And if a different material is detected within a batch of waste plastic, the whole thing goes to landfill.However, recycling still has major benefits for other materials.

Recycling aluminum, for example, uses 95 per cent less energy than producing it from raw ore.An electric car’s environmental footprint starts long before it hits the road — and doesn’t disappear when you plug it in.While electric vehicles (EVs) have no tailpipe emissions, mining the minerals to build its battery and generating electricity to charge results in pollution, according to MIT.An electric car can produce about 80% more carbon emissions than building a similar gas-powered car, largely due to mining and processing its battery materials, the institute claims.“We shouldn’t claim victory that with this switch to electric cars, problem solved, we are going to have zero emissions,” Sergey Paltsev, Deputy Director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change previously said.Charging an electric car can also create carbon pollution if it relies on power from non-renewable sources such as coal or natural gas.More than 60% of the electricity generated for the wholesale grid in the US comes ...