Why Do We Keep Making Plastic If It Pollutes?

A Five-Year-Old's Question and the Uncomfortable Answer

Based on the intervention of Nathalie Gontard, Research Director at INRAE,

Les P'tits Bateaux, France Inter - 22 November 2025

In brief: On Saturday 22 November 2025, a five-year-old boy named Abel asked on French national radio the question that most adults no longer dare to voice. Nathalie Gontard world-renowned packaging scientist and Research Director at INRAE answered with rare scientific clarity: no, plastic recycling is not the solution. Most of the time, it is downcycling. And the textile industry is at the heart of the problem.

1. Abel's question and the scientific answer

Abel is five years old. And he asked a question that deserves to be taken very seriously: if plastic is polluting the planet, why do we keep making and using it? It was on the French radio programme Les P'tits Bateaux (France Inter, 22 November 2025) that Nathalie Gontard had the opportunity to answer simply, but without softening the truth.

Nathalie Gontard is no ordinary activist. She has been Research Director at INRAE since 2011, was awarded the Chevalier rank of the Legion of Honour (2022), has received two Stars of Europe prizes, and is the author of the landmark essay Plastique, le grand emballement (Stock, 2020, co-authored with Helene Seingier). She has spent more than thirty years understanding what plastic genuinely does to our planet and to our bodies.

Her answer to Abel distils decades of research into a single, uncomfortable truth: we keep making plastic because we have been led to believe that it can be recycled indefinitely. It cannot.

2. Plastic recycling? More often: downcycling

Here is the central scientific fact that Nathalie Gontard defends consistently across her publications and public interventions: three quarters of plastics cannot be repeatedly recycled.

The term she uses and which should become standard in every public debate is downcycling. Unlike genuine closed-loop recycling, in which a material recovers its original properties and use, downcycling transforms a material into something less valuable, less functional, less durable. And with each cycle, the degradation deepens until the point of no return.

"The plastic from your fast-food tray whether or not it is recycled into a garden chair or a sports bag — will inevitably swell the enormous reservoir of tiny particles capable of poisoning our bodies, and above all those of generations to come." - Nathalie Gontard

This is not a question of intention. It is a chemical and physical reality: plastic fragments. Whether or not it is recycled, it ends up as micro- and nano-particles in soil, water, air and in our own bodies. In 2022, Nathalie Gontard and her team published a paper in Nature Sustainability arguing for the recognition of plastic's long-term impacts a dimension entirely absent from the standard lifecycle assessment methods used across industry.

3. Textiles: the industry that exposes the circular illusion

In the textile industry, the plastic recycling narrative has taken a particularly seductive form: the recycled PET bottle turned into a garment. Fleece jackets, sportswear, bags, millions of products proudly carry the label 'made from recycled bottles'. Brands communicate their commitment; consumers feel reassured.

But what happens next? These synthetic fibres made from recycled plastic cannot, in the vast majority of cases, be recycled again into equivalent fibres. They are downcycled into insulation, padding, low-grade building materials, before ultimately ending up in landfill or incineration. The loop is not closed. It has simply been extended by one or two steps.

This reality is amplified by three structural problems specific to the textile sector:

• Most garments are made from blended fibres (polyester + cotton, polyamide + elastane...) that current technology cannot separate cleanly for quality recycling.

• Finishing treatments, dyes, coatings, water-repellent agents, contaminate the fibres and block their reintegration into a quality recycling circuit.

• In France, of the 289,393 tonnes of textiles collected in 2024, only 32% were sorted for valorisation — and that valorisation largely amounts to downcycling, not circular recycling.

4. The real solution: reduce, not just recycle

Nathalie Gontard's central message, the one she repeats tirelessly, from scientific journals to a children's radio programme is deeply uncomfortable for industry: recycling cannot be the primary solution. The only structural answer to the plastic crisis is the reduction of consumption to what is strictly necessary.

Her team at INRAE is developing the concept of a 'plastic footprint', an indicator that, like the carbon footprint, would make it possible to measure and limit our dependence on this material. She also develops biodegradable packaging made from plant-based materials, to offer genuine alternatives wherever plastic is non-essential.

For the textile industry, this means rethinking the design of products from the outset: choosing natural or mono-component recyclable materials, avoiding inseparable blends, designing for durability and end-of-life, not just for short-term price and performance.

5. What ITBA brings: proof, not promises

In the face of this scientific reality, the International Textile Biomass Alliance (ITBA-AIBT) has made a clear strategic choice: to reject greenwashing, support actors who make circularity a verifiable reality — and certify their practices.

The FiberForever™ programme is built precisely to meet this challenge. Its five certifications — FF Circu™, FF Trade™, FF Source™, FF Build™ and FF Report™ — cover the entire textile value chain, from material sourcing to end-of-life valorisation. They distinguish authentic circularity from downcycling disguised as recycling.

In a European regulatory environment demanding tangible evidence (EU Sustainable Textiles Strategy, ESRS reporting), certification is no longer an optional advantage. It is becoming a business necessity.

🌿 Is your organisation committed to genuinely circular textile practices?

Complete our free 3-minute pre-qualification at itba-aibt.org/certification and join the growing community of textile industry players turning their commitments into verifiable proof.

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Primary source: Nathalie Gontard, Research Director INRAE — interview on Les P'tits Bateaux, France Inter, 22 November 2025.

Reference book: Nathalie Gontard & Helene Seingier, Plastique, le grand emballement, Editions Stock, 2020.

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