Plastic’s unique properties are vital for a sustainable future, but its excessive global use signifies consumer society’s wastefulness, often found in short-lived products. Plastic development has overlooked recycling needs, resulting in low material recycling due to a wide array of plastic types with varying additives, leading to recycling challenges. Research focused on thermoplastics aims to reduce their diverse variants, increasing performance, and specific properties. This approach, including colored plastics, offers several advantages, such as improved logistics, higher recyclable plastic volumes, and increased recycling value, yielding environmental and economic benefits. A study involving 63 individuals in Sweden’s plastics industry revealed that reducing thermoplastics would benefit recyclers by providing larger volumes of consistent, high-quality recycled plastics at lower costs. This would enhance recycling quality, collection, and sorting. To achieve this, producers and consumers must accept the quality of recycled thermoplastics, supplemented by new laws and standards to unlock the environmental and economic potential of reducing thermoplastic variants within the plastics industry.