I call it bullshit. PET used in plastic bottles can easily be depolymerized or even used as fuel. I live in a poor ex-USSR republic, and plastic recycling is a popular business; it were a scam no one would do that, as government neither mandate nor sponsor recycling.
I think when people call it a scam they are referring to the idea that it is marketed as a way that plastic can be green and good for the environment because it can be recycled. It may be profitable to be used as fuel but it is not green.
Another thing in the article is richer countries with higher environmental regulations just export to poor countries where the pollution is less regulated. Just exporting the problem to you. I have been to Kyrgyzstan most their electric is hydroelectric but in general it seemed their environmental regulations were lacking especially in the villages they just had heaps of waste, in the past it would be mostly comparable but lots of single use plastic means the waste is permanent.
I spent a long time responding to each pro and con assuming they got this list from somewhere or another companies promotional material. Every point was wrong in different ways, not understanding. I was giving detailed responses to each point explaining how they are wrong. Initially I thought the list was obtained from someone in marketing who did not understand, after a while I thought maybe this was AI and asked… they told me they just asked the pros and cons of the product/program to ChatGPT and was asking me to verify it it was correct or not before communicating to customers.
If they had just asked me the pros and cons I could have responded in a much shorter amount of time. ChatGPT basically DOSed me because the time taken to produce the text was nothing compared to the time it took me to respond.