With electromobility being one of the main pillars of a net zero world, of course the adequate recycling of old batteries is essential. So far the main challenge was to sell electric cars at all. Not many years ago the whol car industry was openly making fun of Tesla for its vision. Now that Tesla has proven that ist actually is possible to produce great, sexy electric car that people actrually want to buy, the second step (recycling the batteries) is getting more important. Just like with electric cars 20 years ago, it is clear that it's absolutely possible to recycle those batteries to create a closed-loop battery supply. All we need is companies who are willing enough to invest a bit of money to perfect the technology and make the process more economical. The claim of pro fossil fueled cars people, that car batteries would make an environmental mess and therefore we must all continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere and drive petrol cars is simply nonsense.
While we need to try to avoid waste in general, most of us can't live without producing waste yet. As long that's the case we at least ought to make the best of it and for example burn the waste in a "waste plant" where the energy from the combustion process can be used as heat (to heat houses) or be turned into electricity. There's barely any smoke coming out of the power plant as the pollutants from the incineration are filtered out. It is hard to find numbers but the power plant is probably not polluting more than an average highway. Which is why you may find those modern waste plants within residential areas in cities with no negative effect on people's haelth living next to it. In Copenhagen they built Amager Bakke that is combining leisure with utility as it has a ski slope (Copenhill) on top of it. When we throw away plastic and we burn that waste in such a power plant there is still CO2 emitting. But at least we can use that plastic waste one more time and generate heat and electricity. Instead of putting the waste on a dump and potentially pollute the ground and the air with toxins. And at Amager Bakke they are planning to absorb back 500'000 tonnes of CO2 with carbon capture technology. In a net zero society we may replace plastic with organic material that does not come from crude oil. And we still wopuld want to burn those materials in such waste plants.
I often wondered - since there are recyclable materials like PET already - why companies don't use exclusively recyclable materials already. Probably the reason is just the absence of laws and financial reasons. Companies usually don't have to come up for the cost that waste is causing to the environment. Only for its production. Like a plastic bag (production cost maybe 1 Cent) that ends up in the sea, ultimately poisoning or killing fish that will end up costing us humans much motre money than 1 Cent. Either because fish is getting rare and therefore less affordable or fish is getting poisoned by microplastics that will end up making us humans sick and our medical bills more expensive.
Long story short; One of my favourite drinks is the Emmi's (cold) Café Latte. The downside: A bad conscience for the unnecessary thick oneway plastic wrapping. In Switzerland (and other countries) we have already a good recycling-system for bottles made of PET. Or tin cans, paper, cardboard, glass. Milk for example is usually being sold in a recyclable plastic wrapping. Coke either in recyclable cans or recyclable PET or glass. So there's no excuse for successful companies not to use recyclable packaging.
That's why I was glad when I noticed the change of another (Swiss) product that I often buy; Ovo. They finally started to sell their chocolate milk in recyclable PET-bottles. And apparently, Emmi has just started to sell their coffee in the same kind of bottle too. By the way: Switzerland is pretty good in PET recycling, as around 90% of recyclable PET is already being recyclet here. But then again countries like France or Belgium have adopted stricter EU-rules so the Switzerland based company is forced to adapt so they can sell their products in those countries. The European Union is a good instrument when it comes to climate protection. Because when it decides something all member countries must adapt the rule. And in the case of Switzerland, the EU market is way too important for Swiss companies so they will follow automatically to be able to sell their products in the EU. Same impact when big countries like the USA, Russia or China are imposing new laws to tackle global warming and protect nature.
Around 80% of plastic waste in the ocean comes from rivers (that all end up in the sea in the end). Therefore Dutch start-up "The Great Bubble Barrier" created exactly that. A barrier made of bubbles that lies diagonally on the ground of a river and that keeps all kinds of plastic waste from passing. Because the barrier is diagonally, the stream of the river will push the plastic pieces to the side of the river and into a container. 86% of plastic parts can be caught like this. The genius thing about that system: Ships can still pass the barrier as it is just made of bubbles. And the barrier does not have any bad influence on the ecosystem.