Well, the garbage we used to put in our yellow-lidded bins anyhow [see our protest at the end].

For years, we've all been deluded about our yellow-lidded bins. We earnestly recycled [some of us], thinking we were helping the planet. Turns out we've all been conned.

Greenpeace calls it the "recycling myth".

This Topics correspondent wrote several stories in the news pages about this matter last year. We learned that councils don't know where waste in our yellow-lidded bins ends up. Even waste insiders admit the waste can only be tracked so far.

Greenpeace says much of this toxic trash ends up in the Third World where it's dumped into rivers and the ocean, buried in dodgy landfills or burnt.

Even Prime Minister Scott Morrison has stated that only 12 per cent of the 103 kilograms of plastic waste generated per person in Australia each year is recycled.

China wised up to the situation in 2018, banning the West from dumping its trash there under its National Sword policy. The problem shifted to other countries, including some of the poorest places on Earth.

A peer-reviewed University of California study estimated that about 6300 million metric tonnes of plastic waste had been generated since large-scale plastic production began in 1950.

As of 2015, about 9 per cent of this had been recycled, 12 per cent was incinerated and 79 per cent was accumulated in landfills or the natural environment.

"If current production and waste management trends continue, roughly 12,000 million metric tonnes of plastic waste will be in landfills or in the natural environment by 2050," the study said.

Councils are backing worldwide efforts towards a circular economy. The aim is to reuse, repair, recycle and change the manufacturing and design process.

We couldn't help but notice that those recently promoting the circular economy in the Hunter were talking about the solutions without highlighting the problems. Strange that. Makes us wonder why.

Advocates for a circular economy face mighty opponents including Big Plastic, which happens to include Big Oil. Plastic is made with petrochemicals and that means fossil fuels. As you'd know, they're causing another fairly gigantic problem.

The powerful soft drink lobby is another decent-sized hurdle. In the US, this lobby is known as Big Soda.

Scientists have proven that plastic is polluting all corners of the Earth. It's in the ocean, air, rivers, rain and the food chain. It's inside the bodies of humans and animals.

Of course, local councils can't take this gigantic problem on their shoulders alone. But they could take some steps to break down those great walls of silence that the management and spin-doctor classes have spent years building to protect themselves from any real or imagined threat.

The councils didn't create the plastic problem, but they collect the garbage and pay companies with ratepayers' money to take it away for "recycling". These councils are probably worried about being left with big stockpiles of waste. They're probably worried about having to expand or build new landfills and having to raise waste costs.

As for consumers, ignorance is bliss. We buy the products that corporations flog to us, without having any idea how much pollution they cause when they're manufactured and discarded.

What's out of sight is out of mind. But this big dirty secret can't be hidden forever.

The polluters will have to pay, won't they? Imagine a world in which the corporations that create the products have to be responsible for their life cycle?

Protest is in the air at the moment. So Topics has decided to do a little protest of our own. We're not putting any waste in our yellow-lidded bin until councils can prove where it's going.

We'd rather our waste stay here than pollute the Third World, end up in the ocean or be burnt in some poor country where poverty-stricken people - including children - breathe in the toxic fumes.

We're not sure human intelligence can solve this problem. Perhaps artificial intelligence can. We could have our own version of the Terminator, terminating all the trash in the world. We'll need the robots and we'll need superheroes. Either that, or a time machine to travel to the past and stop the pollution from happening in the first place. Where's Marty McFly when you need him?

What do you call plastic that's wrapped in fabric? Kim Kardashian.

I was buying fish the other day and asked the cashier for a plastic bag. He said it was already inside.

Plastic straws. They suck.