The Less than Stellar World of Recycling
The 6 Rs of Recycling!
Recycling: it’s the answer to all of our waste problems...right? Chances are you’ve seen the triangular arrows with numbers on plastic containers, or maybe your curbside recycling bin is larger, or you’ve seen recycling bins on some public sidewalks. While the push for recycling in recent decades has been rampant, the industry of recycling has had major struggles with the resale market (or lack thereof), consumer behavior, and where to go next.
Believe it or not, there was a time in the not-so-distant past when everything was reusable. Because resources were scarce clothes were mended instead of tossed out, items were reused instead of replaced, and repaired instead of bought new. During World War II, plastic was mass produced for the war effort and eventually redirected to the public. Through strategic marketing, the plastic industry influenced public perception surrounding the ease, cleanliness, and sense of affluence that disposable products provided. This surge of cheap plastics and single-use products into the market required the infrastructure of the recycling industry to expand quickly.
Today, billions of dollars from the plastic industry are being funneled into creating more plastic as well as into maintaining plastic’s place in consumer’s lives. Plastic is durable, convenient, and cheap. What is the true cost of cheap?
In January 2018, the National Sword policy changed everything for recycling companies in the US and across the globe. The basic gist of the National Sword policy is that China no longer accepts our recyclables unless they have a very low amount of contamination. Much of the waste they were receiving was too dirty, contaminated, or hazardous. This left the US and other G7 countries to find new outlets for their recyclables, leading to exporting scrap to Vietnam, Malaysia, India, Taiwan, and other nations that lack adequate infrastructure to handle the influx of these global exports. These countries do not want the contaminated plastic and scrap that China has begun to refuse. The Philippines and Malaysia have even sent back containers of contaminated plastics to the countries from which they were shipped.
Much of wealthy countries' current ability to recycle depends on developing nations and low income communities ability to absorb it. The US does not have many domestic markets for processing and reselling plastics and scrap, so we send it to other places who have some infrastructure to break the materials down for new products and resell. However, the quantity of waste we send overseas is so enormous that it is difficult to track if the materials actually get recycled. There have been reports of waste being illegally dumped in areas of Southeast Asia where it stays there to rot.
Without viable markets to send our waste to along with our inability to process it ourselves, it piles up. Many companies in the US have resorted to sending recyclables to landfill due to increasingly fewer options of how to handle it. The difficulties of recycling come from many different factors, including high contamination rates, mixed materials, lack of infrastructure to process, careless consumer behavior, and the sheer quantity of items.
The recent increased costs and lack of viable markets for recyclables have even caused some companies to shut down. RePlanet, one of California’s largest recycling drop off centers, shut down all of the 200+ locations in the summer of 2019 due to “increased business costs and falling prices of recycled aluminum and PET plastic.” This is one of many stories about higher costs that have led to many recycling collection or materials recovery facilities to close or decrease the types of materials they will accept.
To make matters more challenging, there is no universal recycling system, so what is and is not accepted varies from city to city. Some cities in the US don’t have easily accessible recycling programs or have very limited recycling capabilities, leaving many commonly recycled items, such as glass or plastic bottles and plastic containers, left to go to landfill. Cities with advanced recycling programs have introduced single-stream systems, instead of the dual stream, where everything goes into one bin and is sorted later. Convenient, right? Well, this often leads to “wish cycling,” a practice where consumers put items into the recycling bin with hopes that it will be recycled or sorted by someone down the line. This can lead to more contamination, slower recycling production, and higher costs for the waste management company. According to an article by Mother Jones, Waste Management spends $100 million a year to deal with contamination alone.
When waste management companies haven’t shut operations but face increased costs, this usually results in customer rates going up. These rates can be for curbside pickup service or for contaminated bins. Some cities, like Atlanta, GA, have been piloting “bin audits” where a team from the waste management company does random checks of peoples’ curbside bins. If there is a high level of contamination, they will leave your bin uncollected or will charge a fine.
The environmental costs of our recycling system will be detrimental in the long run. With decreased resale markets leading to more waste going to landfill, this means landfills are filling up faster, taking up more land, and contaminating waterways.
Some of the recyclable material finds its way to the ocean and other waterways. Whether it’s by illegal dumping, litter in the streets/sidewalks/beaches traveling through storm drains, or wind blowing trash and debris into water, it creates a huge problem for marine life. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is old news but still growing in size, and we’ve all seen the horrible photos of sea creatures with plastic straws or plastic rings from aluminum cans in/around their bodies. Microplastics - tiny bits of plastic that break down from larger plastics due to sun exposure - are becoming incredibly difficult to manage. Sea animals, land animals, and birds are eating various sized plastics and dying from ingesting the foreign objects. Humans end up eating animals and fish that have ingested microplastics, the long term effects of which are still unknown.
Our dependence on plastics perpetuates our dependence on fossil fuels. Plastic’s most basic ingredient is crude petroleum. About 4% of the world's oil is used for plastic feedstocks and 8% is used to manufacture plastic. Additionally, chemicals are added to plastics and are breathed in or ingested daily by humans causing health problems, including reproductive issues. High exposure to these chemicals, such as bisphenol A (BPA), can also lead to an increased rate of heart disease and diabetes.
What do we, as consumers, do about all of this? It can feel like a huge burden to always be thinking, “what is this item made out of?” or “where will this go when I’m done with it?”, or observing the lack of plastic packaging alternatives when it comes to our favorite products. The apathetic approach never made anything better; we do have the power to take action to lessen this colossal problem that affects everyone.
The “3 R’s of recycling” are a bit outdated and not holistic enough to meet our current needs. They’ve recently expanded to include many more R’s: Rethink or Reinvent, Refuse, Reduce, Reuse/Repair/Repurpose, Refill or Recreate, Recycle & Replace. These R’s start upstream and end with the last resort options of recycling and replacing. Most of these R’s require a level of preplanning, thoughtfulness, and creativity, but are not difficult to follow once you incorporate them as a natural part of your routine. These R’s can be applied to everything in our lives, from the grocery store, to cleaning and hygiene products, to our workplaces, and beyond.
You can learn your local waste management collection rules, at home and at work (they may be different!) by visiting their website. You can put up clearly visible signage above waste bins to help other people easily and quickly sort waste into the correct one. If you need help understanding what goes in which bin, what to do with e-waste or hazardous waste, and how to stop large corporations from continuing to create more plastic and hard to recycle materials, there are numerous waste industry resources available. Getting involved with organizations like Break Free From Plastic, Surfrider Foundation, or Trash Pirates, will allow you to connect with other people who care about these problems and take direct action together. Getting involved with groups to create or support legislation working to reduce plastics or single-use items can go far. That’s what folks in Berkeley, CA did to get restaurants to impose a tax on disposable to-go ware.
No matter what price we pay for our waste - whether economic, environmental, social - we all have a responsibility to generate less of it. This requires a shift in our mentality, away from convenience and disposability, towards thoughtfulness and care for how we use resources. We are all affected by one another’s choices.