The plastic waste crisis is an opportunity for the US to get serious about recycling at home
- Written by Kate O'Neill, Associate Professor, Global Environmental Politics, University of California, Berkeley
A global plastic waste crisis is building, with major implications for health and the environment. Under its so-called “National Sword” policy, China has sharply reduced imports of foreign scrap materials[1]. As a result, piles of plastic waste are building up in ports and recycling facilities across the United States.
In response, support is growing nationally and worldwide[2] for banning or restricting single-use consumer plastics, such as straws[3] and grocery bags[4]. These efforts are also spurred by chilling findings about how micro-plastics travel through oceans and waterways and up the food chain[5].
I have studied global trade in hazardous wastes[6] for many years and am currently completing a book on the global politics of waste. In my view, today’s unprecedented level of public concern is an opportunity to innovate. There is growing interest in improving plastic recycling in the United States. This means getting consumers to clean and sort recyclables, investing in better technologies for sorting and reusing waste plastics, and creating incentives for producers to buy and use recycled plastic.
Critiques of recycling are not new[7], and critiques of recycling plastic are many[8], but I still believe it makes sense to expand, not abandon, the system. This will require large-scale investment and, in the long term, implementing upstream policies, including product bans.
Easy to use, hard to destroy
Plastics make products lighter, cheaper, easier to assemble and more disposable. They also generate waste, both at the start of their life cycles – the petrochemicals industry is a major source of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions – and after disposal.
The biggest domestic use[9] by far for plastic resin is packaging (34 percent in 2017), followed by consumer and institutional goods (20 percent) and construction (17 percent). Many products’ useful lives can be measured in minutes. Others, especially engineered and industrial plastics, have a longer life – up to 35 years for building and construction products.
After disposal, plastic products take anywhere from five to 600 years[10] to break down. Many degrade into micro-plastic fragments that effectively last forever. Rather like J.R.R. Tolkien’s One Ring[11], plastics can be permanently destroyed only through incineration at extremely high temperatures.
Why the United States recycles so little plastic
Less than 10 percent[12] of discarded plastics entered the recycling stream in the United States in 2015, compared with 39.1 percent[13] in the European Union and 22 percent[14] in China. Another 15 percent of U.S. plastic waste is burned in waste-to-energy facilities. The remaining 75 percent goes to landfills. These figures do not include any dumping or illegal disposal.
References
- ^ sharply reduced imports of foreign scrap materials (theconversation.com)
- ^ nationally and worldwide (wedocs.unep.org)
- ^ straws (money.cnn.com)
- ^ grocery bags (www-statista-com.libproxy.berkeley.edu)
- ^ up the food chain (doi.org)
- ^ studied global trade in hazardous wastes (scholar.google.com)
- ^ new (www.nytimes.com)
- ^ many (www.no-burn.org)
- ^ biggest domestic use (plastics.americanchemistry.com)
- ^ five to 600 years (www.des.nh.gov)
- ^ One Ring (en.wikipedia.org)
- ^ Less than 10 percent (www.epa.gov)
- ^ 39.1 percent (www.plasticseurope.org)
- ^ 22 percent (www.recyclingtoday.com)
- ^ CC BY-ND (creativecommons.org)
- ^ journey (www.theatlantic.com)
- ^ can backfire (www.rachellaudan.com)
- ^ single-stream recycling systems (www.thebalancesmb.com)
- ^ 633 materials recycling facilities (www.infrastructurereportcard.org)
- ^ around half (www.theatlantic.com)
- ^ processing rates have slowed (www.wastedive.com)
- ^ suspending curbside pickup (www.wastedive.com)
- ^ 50 states (www.wastedive.com)
- ^ USEPA (www.epa.gov)
- ^ producers (www.americanchemistry.com)
- ^ recyclers (www.isri.org)
- ^ Coca-Cola (www.coca-colacompany.com)
- ^ colleges and universities (serc.berkeley.edu)
- ^ foundations (www.closedlooppartners.com)
- ^ international organizations (www.unenvironment.org)
- ^ advocacy groups (www.no-burn.org)
- ^ state governments (www.calrecycle.ca.gov)
- ^ Sweden (sweden.se)
- ^ declined (www-statista-com.libproxy.berkeley.edu)
- ^ heavily criticized (theconversation.com)
- ^ Hefty EnergyBag Program (www.hefty.com)
- ^ Renewlogy (www.renewlogy.com)
- ^ focusing on single-use products (wedocs.unep.org)
- ^ plastic straw (www.nationalgeographic.com)
- ^ bag bans (www.cbsnews.com)
- ^ 0.03 percent (www.bloomberg.com)
- ^ push back (www.salon.com)
- ^ McDonald’s (www.salon.com)
- ^ forbidding plastic bag restrictions (www.bizjournals.com)
- ^ better waste management on land (www.wastedive.com)
- ^ preventing BPA leaching from discarded products (phys.org)
- ^ polyvinyl chloride (www.vinylplus.eu)
- ^ recycling of 3D printer waste (news.berkeley.edu)
- ^ virgin-quality plastic (purecycletech.com)
- ^ circular economy platform (ec.europa.eu)
Authors: Kate O'Neill, Associate Professor, Global Environmental Politics, University of California, Berkeley