Placing your plastic bottles into the recycling bin might offer a sense of personal satisfaction, or alleviate your concerns regarding your climate footprint. However, plastic recycling will not resolve the plastic pollution crisis—and it’s essential we cease pretending otherwise.
Less than 6% of in the United States is actually recycled. This figure often surprises individuals, partly because it presents a difficult truth to confront. We all desire an effortless solution that can seamlessly erase the plastic residue of consumerism. Furthermore, we’ve been led to believe that marine turtles would no longer choke on our plastic refuse if we diligently deposited it into the recycling bin.
That deception was intentional. Powerful fossil fuel and chemical corporations—the primary sources of this contamination—recognized as early as the 1970s that plastic recycling would never be capable of managing the world’s plastic refuse. During that period, consumers and policymakers were becoming aware of the severe environmental ramifications of single-use, disposable plastics, and companies found themselves under pressure. To prevent their products from being restricted by new legislation, companies collaborated to disseminate information about plastic recycling across our society. In the 1990s, television advertisements promoting recycling felt as commonplace as Beanie Babies.
Industry misleading practices persist today. For instance, when you deposit your used plastic shopping bags into designated drop-off bins, that packaging frequently still ends up in a landfill. And the triangular that everyone associates with recyclability routinely appears on plastic products that are not actually recyclable.
Plastic, derived from fossil fuels, was not conceived for circularity. Approximately chemicals can be discovered in , many of which are intentionally incorporated during the production process to endow plastic with attributes such as flexibility, strength, color, and resistance to sunlight. Diverse plastic products contain varied combinations of these chemicals, and these differing plastic types must all undergo separate sorting and recycling processes.
Moreover, plastic—unlike glass and aluminum—degrades in quality when it undergoes recycling. A glass bottle or aluminum can may be reprocessed into another glass bottle or aluminum can repeatedly. Conversely, a plastic bottle can only be recycled into another plastic bottle a limited number of times before it transforms into a lower-value material like, which typically in a landfill or incinerator, contaminating our atmosphere, ground, and water sources. In this manner, recycling does not perpetually deter plastic waste from entering the environment—it merely postpones it.
Currently, from to , state attorneys general are initiating legal actions against plastic producers such as PepsiCo and ExxonMobil, not solely for their pollution but also for their assertions regarding recyclability.
While the plastics industry was misleading the public, it was simultaneously rapidly escalating plastic production. The outcome: Plastic waste in the United States from 13.6 billion pounds in 1980 to 71.4 billion pounds in 2018—a staggering 263% surge.
In under a century, companies saturated the planet with so much plastic that it has infiltrated every global region, even the most unforeseen locales: , the , secluded , precipitation in our , and, potentially most concerningly, .
—the minute plastic fragments continually detaching from plastic goods—have been identified within , encompassing the , , , , , and .
Researchers and medical professionals are issuing findings regarding the impact of plastic consumption on our bodies. Of the 16,000 chemicals identified in plastic earlier, are recognized as detrimental to human health or the environment. Plastic and its constituent chemicals are linked with , , and similar issues.
A published earlier this year in The Lancet determined that plastic accounts for a minimum of $1.5 trillion annually in global health-related harms. Those detriments commence at the very genesis of , when fossil fuels are sourced from the Earth, and persist through each successive phase of its journey from store shelves, to recycling centers, to its inevitable disposal.
So, what can be done? If we cannot resolve this predicament through recycling, and the environmental and human health detriments of plastic commence from its genesis anyway, what steps can be taken to mitigate the plastic pollution crisis?
First, companies need to curtail excessive plastic manufacturing and transition to closed-loop and refillable models. Should reducing packaging or employing reusable alternatives prove unfeasible, companies should, at minimum, pivot to materials like paper, cardboard, glass, or metal. These are capable of being produced from recycled content and genuinely reprocessed. Corporations will not voluntarily adopt these changes, consequently, policymakers—the elected representatives entrusted with our welfare—must mandate their compliance.
This approach alone guarantees that human well-being takes precedence over plastic.