Plastic & Recycling
‘Recycling plastic is to saving the Earth what hammering a nail is to halting a falling skyscraper.’
Recycling plastic seems so important and many are doing it, so why are we still facing this plastic catastrophe?
‘Recycling plastic is not going to save us.’
Recycling is a struggle. All the effort people go through in order to make sure they recycle plastic properly, can it be doing more bad than good? This efforts are inadequate and distracts us from the real problem of why the building is collapsing in the first place. One of the biggest problems is that single-use plastics—the very idea of producing plastic items like grocery bags, which we use for just few seconds but can persist in the environment for half a millennium—is an incredibly reckless abuse of technology.
What is Recycling?
Plastic recycling is the act of taking the scrap or waste plastic in order to re-purpose these material into new products. Since the synthetic plastic is non-biodegradable, recycling is perceived to be a global effort to reduce the plastic thrown away, since approximately 8 million tons of waste plastic enters the Earth's ocean every year.
When comparing the recycling of metal or glass, which can be infinitive, plastic polymers on the other hand, can only be recycled few times because of its low density and low value. Once plastic is recycled, it becomes a low quality plastic which then cannot be recycled any more.
Plastic is the backbone of our society but oil reserves are decreasing and evidence points to its noxious effects on our health and the environment. Could intelligent recycling be the answer?
How is that possible?
When different types of plastics are melted together, they tend to phase-separate, like oil and water, and set in these layers. The phase boundaries cause structural weakness in the resulting material, meaning that polymer blends are useful in only limited applications. Many alternative such as "molecular stitches" or "macromolecular welding flux" have been proposed to overcome the difficulties associated with phase separation during recycling.
Big corporations – such as Coca-Cola, Unilever, Starbucks and Nestlé that continue to endlessly throwaway plastic bottles, cups, and straws – need to step up and show real accountability for the mess they’ve created. Drink companies produce over 500bn single-use plastic bottles annually; there is no way that we can recycle our way out of a problem of that scale.
"SoCal Connected" takes a look inside the state-of-the-art facility where billions of plastic bottles are churned on an annual basis. The process involves transforming old plastic bottles into PET pellets and flakes in order to produce new plastic bottles.
Why is it not being Recycled?
Not all plastics are created equal when it comes to recycling – some are more easily reused than others. Plastics under category 3, 5, 6 and 7 are hard to recycle and don’t have much value to the plastics industry the second time around. Since the don't have a lot of value and nobody want them they eventually end up in the landfill. Plastics with number 1, 2 and 4 are the most commonly-recycled plastics. But even with this plastic, the additives and colourants used to create the wide array of plastic products further diminish the recyclability of the material.
And as mentioned above, even the small amount that is actually being recycled, it becomes a low grade plastic that cannot be recycled anymore.
Furthermore, types of plastic, such as, Polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), which make the two-thirds of the world’s plastics, have different chemical structures and so cannot be repurposed together. Or, at least, there isn’t a technology yet to do it.
Most of the plastic products and packaging you you find on the market are mainly made from virgin plastic. It is important to know that aside from a few exceptions most plastic can never be used to make the same item again. Instead, the recycling process creates an inferior product, suitable to only a handful of uses. This is called downcycling. Furthermore, once a product made of recycled plastic comes to the end of its life, it cannot be recycled again and will end up in a landfill
Thousands of tons of plastic scrap collected for recycling from British households have been transported and dumped on sites across the world. We follow the trail of the UK's plastic waste through the country and around the world. Can Britain cope as the largest importer of our recycling shuts the door?
Sorting and processing difficulties
Plastic, most of it is incinerated or landfilled because of the massively complicated system of finding and sorting the different kinds. Plastics have overlapping densities over a very narrow range. There are more than 50 different types of plastics, making them more difficult to sort and reprocess than other recyclable materials. So, this lowers the chances of successfully recycling plastic.
Where is the plastic going?
While we now have a rough figure for the amount of plastic rubbish in the world’s oceans, we still know very little about where it all ends up.
Between 6,350 and 245,000 metric tons of plastic waste is estimated to float on the ocean’s surface, which raises the all-important question: where does the rest of it end up?
Solutions
As of 1 January 2018, China has banned imports of plastic waste, following its announcement to ban imports of 24 categories of recyclables and solid waste.
The ban was seen by many environmentalists as a win, because it is believed that it would not only clean up China, but also make other countries to better manage their own trash. Since then, different ideas have been proposed
For example the European Union is considering to put a tax on plastics usage, the UK is looking to divert some of its trash to Southeast Asia, and the United States asked China to lift its ban, according to media records.
Going green does not need to be a sacrifice, either for us as individuals or for businesses, governments and the economy.
Plastic is made from valuable petroleum and yet too much of it ends up littering our lands and oceans. But what if someone could convince the world to start viewing used plastic as a treasure?
Bigger than us
If the top five plastic-polluting countries – China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Sri Lanka – managed to achieve a 50% improvement in their waste management — for example by investing in waste management infrastructure, the total global amount of mismanaged waste would be reduced by around a quarter.
Higher-income countries have equal responsibility to reduce the amount of waste produced per person through measures such as plastic recycling and reuse, and by shifting some of the responsibility for plastic waste back onto the producers.
The 5 R’s
Refuse
Refusing will eliminate most of your trash.
Learn to say no! Refuse to produce wrapped in plastic! Say no to free stuff and bargains! Say no to disposables! Say no to synthetic clothes!
The more we accept all those things the more will inevitably end up in landfills, and the more demand we generate for those unsustainable things.
Easily disposable items of low quality are cheap and consumers buy them because they don't want to spend a lot of money. But cheap things are cheap for a reason. To cut the costs, they were produced using chemicals and materials from questionable sourcing.
Reduce
Take a look around your house? Can you spot some things that you never use. Some of them we haven’t even ever unpacked! Why? Because many people buy on impulse. We see something, in that specific moment we like it, we instantly buy it. However, the novelty and joy of having it wears out very quickly and then it’s just another item we have at home that doesn’t add any value to our life.
Reuse
Reuse something you already have instead of buying something. Replace needing a single use item, with something you can use over and over again. Both of these options will save you money as well.
Recycle
After you have refused, reduced, and reused there shouldn’t be much left to recycle. Still, make sure to separate your trash so that those resources can be reused instead of filling our landfills.
Rot
Don’t just throw your kitchen scraps away! Get a worm bin and let those little fellows turn your waste into high-quality fertilizer! It’s the most efficient and local form of recycling where the trash doesn’t even need to be transporte.
Lauren is an Environmental Studies graduate from NYU and former Sustainability Manager at the NYC Department of Environmental Protection, and the amount of trash that she has produced over the past three years can fit inside of a 16 oz. mason jar.
European Legislations
The European Union is developing a circular economy platform that contains a multi-part strategy to increase plastics recycling and control waste. It includes making all plastic packaging recyclable by 2030 and reducing leakage of plastic products into the environment. The United States is unlikely to adopt such sweeping policies at the national level. But for cities and states, especially those where support for environmental protection is strong, it could be a more attainable vision.
Once it's created, plastic (almost) never dies. While in 12th grade Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao went in search of a new bacteria to biodegrade plastic -- specifically by breaking down phthalates, a harmful plasticizer. They found an answer surprisingly close to home.
The future of food may involve recycling and a lot of mushrooms. The Fungi Mutarium system recycles plastic waste into an edible meal.
What do you do to use less plastic? By tagging us with #theconsciouschallenge you can share your ideas!
Want to contribute to our Ecological Footprint Bible? Submit us your scientific articles! Mail us at info@theconsciouschallenge.org
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