Recycling: The Inadequate Solution
March 19, 2020
When checking out at the grocery store, it is important to remember that you are not only committing to a week’s supply of food, you are also committing to all the plastic packaging that comes in. Although you may be so hungry that you think you will starve, that plastic packaging will likely accumulate on our planet and outlive you in a landfill. It is no secret that plastic pollution is an issue: between the 1950s and 2017, production reached more than 8.3 billion metric tons, and current trends show no signs of slowing (advances.sciencemag.org). Currently, plastic waste can be landfilled, incinerated, or recycled. Recycling seems to be the better of these options, but can it solve this issue? Unfortunately, recycling cannot truly address the plastic problem.
Although recycling cannot be considered the overall solution to this plastic accumulation, it is a step in the right direction. Recycling lessens the amount of plastic sent to landfills and incinerators, prevents pollution by reducing the need to create new plastic, and saves energy (www.epa.gov). However, plastic production has skyrocketed, and plastic products have become a part of almost every aspect of people’s lives. It is true that “…in the United States, plastic recycling has remained steady at 9% since 2012,” but the rest has been sent to landfills, incinerated, or lost to the environment (advances.sciencemag.org). The stark difference in production versus recycling rates puts recycling in a position where it cannot possibly fix current plastic accumulation. Instead of focusing on the symptoms of this issue—the end-of-life plan for this massive amount of plastic waste—we need to focus on reducing plastic in the first place.
Perhaps the first on the list of recycling’s shortcomings is that it is at the complete whim of the under-informed consumer. Well-meaning people will purchase their plastic packaged products, chunk the leftover plastic waste into their recycling bins, and go about their day comfortable in the fact that they have done their part for the environment. These “aspirational recyclers” assume that all plastic is recyclable; however, recycling centers usually only accept two of the seven types of plastics for recycling (www.chemicalsafetyfacts.org). A lack of standardized rules for what can and cannot be recycled also creates issues. According to the Consumer Brands Association, “[t]housands of counties and municipalities across the country set their own recycling rules,” which makes deciding whether or not a recycling center accepts your yogurt containers that much more difficult. Most centers have different rules regarding food contamination, accepted materials, and sorting instructions that can mislead consumers.
As anyone who has recycled knows, the signage and information at recycling centers can be confusing and lead to incorrect sorting and contamination. Three different issues contribute to contamination: food residue, improper sorting of recyclables, or completely “non-recyclable items like Styrofoam” being mixed in with recyclable materials (consumerbrandsassociation.org). These incorrectly sorted plastics may be overlooked at recycling plants, creating tainted batches of recycled plastics. Contamination due to food residue is another issue because many consumers are not aware that recyclable materials must be cleaned out before they are recycled. This contamination as a whole can “generate secondary plastics of limited or low technical and economic value” that must be sold at lower prices (advances.sciencemag.org). Recycling creates an inferior product to new plastic, which raises the question as to whether recycling is beneficial at all.
Not only may these recycled plastics be contaminated with other materials, the actual quality of recycled polymer chains is inferior to that of virgin material. Plastic has “material properties that can limit the number of times that products can be recycled” (advances.sciencemag.org). This means that even if plastic is recycled and made into a new product, it will probably not be recycled again and will end up in a landfill at the end of its use. Plastics are made up of polymer chains “and each time it is recycled the chain gets shorter, resulting in a lower quality plastic” (www.counterpunch.org). This negatively affects the durability of the plastic and limits what it can be reused for in the first place. This lower quality plastic is generally not worth the costs associated with recycling, making it difficult for recycled plastics to replace higher-quality, new material.
To make matters worse, China has banned imported plastic waste for recycling. Between 1992 and 2017, China imported 45 percent of all plastic waste for recycling; however, in 2017, China banned the import of non-industrial plastic waste (advances.sciencemag.org). Now, all the plastic recycled by the general public cannot be exported to China. This “green fence” policy has caused recycling plastic to be vastly unprofitable: “Deltona used to receive $39,000 in rebates for sale of its recyclables, but since China’s ‘green fence’ policy, the cost of recycling nearly doubled and the rebates disappeared” (www.counterpunch.org). With recycled plastic already having lesser quality to new plastic due to contamination and material limits, the harsh reality is that recycling is just not worth the cost for the relatively small amount of good it can achieve.
Recycling cannot possibly solve the plastic problem. Instead, we need to work towards a more sustainable future in which we do not rely so heavily on single-use plastic products. We all know the familiar maxim of “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,” but we seem to forget what it truly means. We need to reduce our usage of plastics before we reuse what we have, reuse what we already have before we recycle, and only recycle as a last defense against plastic waste. All too often we get caught up living our fast-paced lives and use recycling as a crutch to allow for our wasteful and negligent habits. As consumers, we have the power to make a massive impact on plastic accumulation, and it all starts with the decision that our planet is worth far more than the convenience of a plastic water bottle.
The information in this article was obtained from the following websites:
advances.sciencemag.org
consumerbrandsassociation.org
www.chemicalsafetyfacts.org
www.counterpunch.org
www.epa.gov
All photos are from Google Images