Valentina Fernandez, Physical Sciences, Summer 2021
Figure 1: A pile of plastic bottles and miscellaneous en route to a plastic recycling facility.
Image source: Wikimedia Commons
Have you ever wondered how much of your plastic actually gets recycled? We’ve grown up constantly hearing the phrase “reuse, reduce, recycle.” Whether at school, home, or church, recycling has been ingrained in most of our memories as “the” solution to waste management. But how much do we really know about recycling plastics? Once you sort out your recyclables into bins, where do they go?
In the United States, formal recycling programs began in the 1970s as part of the greater environmental movement of the decade. Fast forward five decades, and recycling programs in our country seem to be ubiquitous and with good reason – according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the United States produces over 267 million tons of solid waste every year (Krosofsky, 2021). In 1960, Americans generated 2.68 pounds of garbage per day; by 2017, this metric had increased to 4.51 pounds of garbage per day, per person (Cho, 2020). However, out of the 267 million tons of garbage we produce, only about 94.2 million tons, or about 35%, of it, is recycled (Krosofsky, 2021). To make matters worse, only about 9% of discarded plastics are recycled, leaving the remaining 91% sitting in a landfill and breaking down into microplastics, which are arguably even more dangerous than plastic itself, since their small size allows them to invade many ecosystems without even being noticed (Krosofsky, 2021). In addition, the plastic that is recycled is downcycled, which means that after each round, the plastic becomes less and less useful. Ultimately, the downcycled plastic becomes so fragile that it can no longer be recycled and is futile for most uses.
In an attempt to learn more about her recycling efforts, Lilly Geisler, from Muncie, Indiana, left CNN a voicemail asking: “How much of my recycling actually gets recycled?” CNN reporter John Sutter decided to travel to Lilly’s town to find out the answer to her question. Lilly goes through a lot of trouble to recycle plastic. First, she emails the city’s recycling department, gets coupons in the mail, goes to a store to exchange the coupons for blue bags, fills up the blue bags with plastic, and then drives across town to drop off her plastic recyclables at the proper site (Sutter). According to Sutter’s investigation, although Muncie’s Sanitary District accepts all types of plastic, many of those plastics end up in a landfill because there is “no market” for them (Sutter). What does this mean?
Because there are many different types of plastics, there is a classification system that determines how recyclable that plastic is. The table below gives an overview of the various types of plastic that are commonly found in household items.
In the case of Lilly and her recycling efforts, her local recycling plant ends up disposing of all her plastic except for Types 1 and 2. Such dire results make people like Lilly wonder: is it worth it?
Clearly, there are flaws limiting the impact recycling programs could have in local communities across the country.
Figure 2: Graph depicting the quantity of plastic produced globally since 1950 every year.
Image source: Wikimedia Commons
This is not only a national problem, but also a global one. When the CNN investigator asked Muncie’s Sanitary District why they don’t recycle all types of plastic, their response credited this inefficiency to the “lack of a market” for the recyclable items. Up until 2018, the United States depended on China to dispose of its recyclables. In 2016 alone, the United States exported 16 million tons of plastic, paper, and metals to China, with 30% of it ending up as landfill polluting China’s countryside and oceans (Franklin-Wallis, 2019). About 20-70% of the plastic intended for recycling overseas would be contaminated on the way there and ultimately discarded (Cho, 2020). In 2018, China reacted and issued the National Sword Policy, which severely tightened regulations on the purity standards of recyclable materials (Cho, 2020). This new policy limited the entry of materials into China and forced the United States to find another country to send their garbage to. The US diverted to Vietnam, Malaysa, and Thailand, but it was only a matter of time until these countries reacted in the very same way China had two years prior (Cho, 2020).
Today, the United States relies on Cambodia, Bangladesh, and Ghana (among other countries) to dispose of their “recyclable” materials, likely because of the relaxed environmental laws and the cheap labor these nations offer the US (Cho, 2020). However, following China’s implementation of the National Sword Policy, the market for recyclables diminished to the point where recycling overseas was barely profitable (Cho, 2020). So, when Muncie’s Sanitation District states that there is no market for Lilly’s non-Type1/2 recyclables, they mean that there’s no market overseas, and for most cities it’s not profitable enough to recycle them locally. To make matters worse, virgin plastic is cheaper than recyclable plastic, so most companies don’t have a huge incentive to use recyclable plastic in their products. Of course, there are exceptions to this… On a more optimistic note, cities like San Francisco, which have banned Styrofoam and plastic bags at retail checkouts, incentivize businesses to reduce their waste by rewarding or penalizing them accordingly (Parker, 2020). San Francisco also has a city-wide recycling and composting program; they accept all types of plastics (regardless of the number), and send items to other recycling plants outside the city for those plastics that are typically harder to recycle (i.e., Type 5 plastics).
For future steps, it would be incredibly efficient for a federal recycling program to be implemented in the US, instead of relaying recycling responsibilities into the hands of 20,000+ American communities and local governments, each of which make their own individual decisions on whether to recycle and if so, what to recycle. While local governments ultimately oversee all recycling programs, having a federal program would require local governments to commit to this issue. In addition, a federal recycling program would facilitate finding common ground among all stakeholders, which would further maximize the efficacy of the program. For now, check in with your local communities to learn more about what is actually recycled (which isn’t always everything they accept in a recycling bin), be mindful of your own waste, and inform those around you.
References
Cho, R. (2020, March 13). Recycling in the U.S. Is Broken. How Do We Fix It? State of the Planet. https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/03/13/fix-recycling-america/
Franklin-Wallis, O. (2019, August 17). “Plastic recycling is a myth”: What really happens to your rubbish? The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/17/plastic-recycling-myth-what-really-happens-your-rubbish
GAIA. (2019). DISCARDED: Communities on the Frontlines of the Global Plastic Crisis. https://wastetradestories.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Discarded-Report-April-22.pdf
Hopewell, J., Dvorak, R., & Kosior, E. (2009). Plastics recycling: Challenges and opportunities. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364(1526), 2115–2126. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2008.0311
Krosofsky, A. (2021, March 16). What Percentage of Recycling Actually Gets Recycled? Green Matters. https://www.greenmatters.com/p/what-percent-recycling-actually-gets-recycled
Parker, T. (2020, March 23). How the world’s best cities for waste management recycle rubbish. NS Packaging. https://www.nspackaging.com/analysis/worlds-best-waste-management-cities/
Sutter, J. (n.d.). Indiana woman asked where her recycling goes. See what CNN discovered—CNN Video. Retrieved August 25, 2021, from https://www.cnn.com/videos/opinions/2021/08/13/how-much-recycling-gets-recycled-sutter-me-orig.cnn