If you believe the information videos put out by the recycling industry, plastic recycling is a neatly organized process: Plastic waste arrives in tidy bundles at sparkling clean factories where smiling workers deftly put it through a high-tech recycling process, producing gemstone-like plastic pellets ready to be shipped off to join what the industry euphemistically refers to as the circular economy. Hayat takes a rest from shredding plastic waste to call his mother in Afghanistan at the plastic recycling factory where he lives and works in the Cebeci industrial district of Istanbul. Plastic recycling companies in wealthy countries like the Netherlands simply can’t compete against cheap recycled plastics from countries like Turkey, even virgin plastic from China.