The Problem with Recycling, Part 1: How Can We Fix the Broken Plastic-Recycling System?

Plastic is a contemporary marvel that changed the world in the 20th century — a
low-cost, resilient, light-weight and flexible product that has actually made its method into
almost all elements of every day life. Plastic is discovered in vehicles, clothes, household
items, mobile phones, single-use product packaging, aircrafts and much, a lot more. To
date, people have actually produced more than 10 billion tonnes of
plastic.

For all the relatively remarkable advantages to plastic, its resilience and
benefit is showing to be a double-edged sword. It’s approximated that seven
billion tonnes of plastic ended up dumped or in
landfills in between 1950 and 2017.
Products that we might utilize for simply a couple of minutes — such as non reusable razors or
take-out food containers — can wind up in the environment for centuries.

Most of the plastic trash found in the ocean
today
has actually streamed there from land. Each year, 9 million tonnes of plastic
trash gets in the ocean.
Once in the ocean, plastic starts to break down into
microplastics
and ending up being exceptionally harder to eliminate with time. In the environment,
plastic and microplastics are a threat to biodiversity and
health,
eliminating vulnerable types and insidiously entering all food
chains.

Plastic contamination likewise produces enormous financial problems. Each year, the
ecological and social effect of plastic
waste
expenses us an approximated $2.2 trillion. In the United States, that burden often falls to
taxpayers,
who money state programs that intend to eliminate plastic waste from the environment.

To avoid plastic from contaminating the environment, the best bet is to recycle
and reuse
it —
decreasing the requirement for recently produced, “virgin” plastic and keeping existing
plastic in usage through a circular cycle of reuse.

Now, almost a century after the plastic boom started, evidence-based plastic
policy, market rewards and partnerships, brand-new innovations and other
developments
can help us increase plastic-recycling rates, lower the cost of including
recycled product into production, and bring back customer self-confidence that a
circular plastic economy is genuine and practical. Yet, we have a long method to go
to bring plastic circularity to scale.

Currently, in the United States, there’s no definitive
consensus
on just how much plastic recycling is really happening. In 2018, the
Environmental Protection Agency approximated only 8 percent of plastics end up
recycled.
In 2019, the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory
reported that just 5 percent of plastic was
recycled
— while 86 percent wound up in
garbage dumps
and the rest was burned for electrical energy (otherwise referred to as
waste-to-energy,
this can be essential for low-value plastic however ought to be seen just as a last
resort). Then in 2021, an independent
study
by Beyond Plastics and The Last Beach Cleanup discovered that as low as 5
to 6 percent of plastic waste in the United States is recycled.

Although there’s no single, one-size-fits-all option to increase
plastic-recycling rates, there are numerous essential locations of analytical that
might considerably enhance the practicality of recycling at scale. In this post, the
initially of a three-part series covering practical opportunities to develop a
plastic option, we go over among these essential services.

Tackling the complexity of plastic recycling

Why is the plastic-recycling system so broken? “Garbage in, garbage out” — a
saying that means the quality of output is determined by the quality of
input
— is sadly an adage that applies to the current state of plastic recycling.
Single-stream recycling was initially introduced (back in the 1990s) to make it
far simpler for consumers and businesses to divert recyclable
waste
from landfills to the proper municipal recovery facilities (MRFs) for sorting.

But dealing with single-stream recycling requires extensive manual labor and
highly sophisticated machinery, such as infrared scanners that can quickly
determine the chemical makeup of
materials.
Even then, the expensive and time-consuming process of sorting single-stream
recyclables still can’t overcome the challenges that contamination, broken
glass, wet paper and other issues pose for these systems. As a result, almost a
quarter of material sent to
MRFs
via single-stream recycling will end up in a landfill anyway.

Adding to the complexity for sorters and processors is the variety of
mixed-plastic products. For example, the plastic used to make a plastic bottle
(PET) is different from the plastic used to make that same bottle’s cap (often
HDPE or PP). While the technology exists to separate these different polymers at
scale, the question is whether your local recycler has the necessary equipment.
When this equipment doesn’t exist, putting HDPE or PP caps back onto a PET
bottle before placing them into a recycling bin is problematic. This issue isn’t
limited to plastic bottles and is magnified with more complicated products such
as clothing, electronics, or even children’s toys.

A patchwork of third-party waste-management firms and local government agencies
has further muddied the recycling picture, with recycling policies varying
wildly from state to state and town to town. That clamshell takeout container
might be OK to recycle in one town; but in the next city over, it might be
destined for landfill.

Despite this, the market for recycled plastics is on track to grow 25 percent
between 2021 and
2028,
expected to reach a valuation of more than $750 billion. To keep up with
increased consumer demand for recycled plastic products, we’ll need new
innovations in material composition and processing, and a shift in the domestic
market
that prioritizes proper sorting and the repurposing of recycled plastics. This
shift will also require new policies set by institutions and governments that
mandate that products be designed with recycling in mind and require a certain
percentage of recycled materials go into new products and construction,
incentivizing manufacturers and brands to adopt widespread use of recycled
plastic in goods.

In 2020, 37 states introduced 230 pieces of
legislation
targeting plastic pollution. According to the National Caucus of Environmental
Legislators, effective
measures
include bans on single-use
plastics,
laws to support the reuse of plastic bottles and food containers, laws requiring
manufacturers to use post-consumer recycled materials in new containers, the
development of state and local councils and task forces to develop recycling
recommendations and enforce solutions, and legislation that forces plastic
manufacturers and brands to be responsible for their own plastic waste.

As new policies take effect, consumers will also have to step up their recycling
savvy to help reduce the contamination that hinders today’s standards of
single-stream recycling. In San
Francisco,
the city mandates that residents and companies sort their refuse into three
streams: one for recyclables, another for compostables, and another destined for
landfills. Food vendors cannot use single-use plastics, all events must have
bins for recycling and composting, and stores and vendors must charge customers
for plastic bags. These policies help the city keep 80 percent of its waste from
going to landfills.

New recycling infrastructure is also needed, as the US is now grappling with
processing its own recycling rather than shipping it to
China,
to which the US had shipped its thrown-out plastic for decades. Until recently,
almost half of the world’s used plastic historically ended up in
China:
In 2018, China banned the import of plastics that don’t meet new, stricter
standards for quality. Since then, US MRFs, towns and cities have had to pay
more money
to have recyclables removed or have chosen to send their local streams of
plastic to landfill instead.

Despite the bleak state of plastic recycling today, stronger commitments from
brands, consumer demand and a growing portfolio of successful products
manufactured with recycled plastic are setting the stage for a more promising
tomorrow. Technological recycling
advances
can help scale and reduce the costs
involved,
be it through superior sorting technology or innovations in resin types and
post-consumer recycling quality improvements.

While many people’s idealistic vision of going “plastic free” is unlikely —
perhaps even impossible — to be achievable in the foreseeable future, shifting
to a more practical goal of saying “no” to new plastic will set the stage for a
circular plastics
economy
— utilizing existing plastic for a myriad of applications while preventing
plastic waste from polluting our world.

Parts two and three of this series will discuss how to increase the use of
recycled plastic materials in new products and how we can reduce confusion about
plastic recycling and boost consumer confidence.