I read that this morning, too.
I wasn't shocked. I was surprised, although I shouldn't have been.
The classic guidance applies: "reduce, reuse, recycle,
in that order."
For anyone who doesn't want plastic waste simply turning into garbage, the conclusion to draw from the NPR article is that large-scale plastic recycling is not likely to become profitable, any time soon, so long as it's competing with new plastic and an oil industry which enjoys all kinds of direct and indirect subsidies.
We can still recycle some meaningful portion of waste plastic, but we should not expect doing so to become substantially easier or cheaper any time soon, under the rules and systems which shape the current market. The path to less waste plastic is changes to our systems, including use of less disposable plastic in the first place.
Bottom line: waste plastic,
like COVID-19, like climate change, like multiple other problems, are collective-action problems despite a prevailing culture which has insisted for decades (even when fully, explicitly knowing better) that laissez-faire and you're-on-your-own are the only game in town.
