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Dear Dot,
So … plastics recycling seems to be a scam and news reports say that less than ten percent of all plastics have been recycled. What does that mean for me? Do I bother tossing that plastic dish soap bottle in the bin or just throw it away?
–Fred
Dear Dot,
In some office buildings, there are bins for recycling but then I see cleaning folks pouring the bins into the same larger bin. So are they lying that they are recycling? Or is something else going on? And how can I be sure?
–Elise
The Short Answer: As far back as 1986, a plastics trade association admitted that recycling couldn’t be considered a long-term solution to waste. Nonetheless, recycling became the darling of the “three Rs.” Yet, according to an analysis of what happened to all the plastic ever produced, just 9% was recycled. The rest? Languishing in landfills (79%) or incinerated (12%). So, yes, plastic recycling is a scam. But there’s nonetheless hope on the horizon and action we can take both at a systems level and to reduce our own consumption of single-use plastics.
Dear Fred and Elise,
Yours are questions that I’ve dreaded, though I’ve known they were as inevitable as a child asking if there’s really a tooth fairy. And so it falls on me to give it to you straight, even as I continue to toss yogurt tubs into my own recycling bin: You’re right, Fred. Recycling is (mostly) a scam.
What’s more, it’s always been a scam. We were lied to, Fred and Elise. We were cheated, we were, to put it in the vernacular, bamboozled.
(Your question, Elise, of whether or not a specific office tower is legitimately recycling or faux-cycling, isn’t one that I can answer. You, however, might want to channel your inner Erin Brockovich and ask for answers from the company that owns or manages the building where you’ve seen this, making it clear what you saw and that, surely, you’re not the only one who’s concerned.)
But let’s consider that the plastics industry, on the whole, has been pulling a fast one.
How has this far-flung flim-flam been orchestrated? And who can we blame for the hours of sorting our plastics that we’ll never get back?
Simple, my friends. The plastics industry. Which is the petroleum industry. One and the same. It has made bajillions selling us plastic and is happy to leave us with the cost of cleaning it up. And it's the false promise of recycling that has allowed that to happen. Here’s how:
When plastic exploded into our everyday lives and our consciousness decades ago — and we the people expressed concern at the accumulating waste and incineration of this miracle material — the plastics industry (which is the petroleum industry) assuaged our concerns (and our demands that we ban plastic) with promises that it could be recycled. A plastic bottle, for instance, could be turned into, umm, I dunno, a t-shirt or the sole of a shoe.
Plastic Wars, a CBC documentary cited experts noting that there was no economically viable way to recycle most plastics, which have ultimately ended up in a landfill — including plastic films, bags, and packaging. “Our own customers … they would flat out say, ‘It says it’s recyclable right on it,’” Coy Smith, former board member of the National Recycling Coalition, told the reporters. “And I’d be like, ‘I can tell you, I can’t give this away. There’s no one that would even take it if I paid them to take it.’” The recycling symbols, he says, were nothing more than greenwashing.
An article in the New Republic reports that, as far back as 1986, a plastics trade association admitted that recycling couldn’t be considered a long-term solution to the waste, that it was merely postponing the inevitable disposal issues.
Nonetheless, with chasing arrows adorning plastic products and promises of transformation into new plastic products, recycling became the darling of the “three Rs.” Why embrace the dispiriting austerity of reduce and reuse when you can buy new and then — ta-da! — recycle?
Now, of course, we’re learning that it (mostly) wasn’t recycled. According to an analysis of what happened to all the plastic ever produced, just 9% was recycled. The rest? Languishing in landfills (79%) or incinerated (12%).
And let’s take it a step further and acknowledge that, as that plastic is out there not being recycled, it is breaking down and releasing microscopic bits of plastic that get into our soil and air and water and ultimately into our bodies and those of humans and animals and birds and marine creatures all around us. We’ve, quite literally, been poisoned by plastic. Researchers are working around the clock on specific impacts but “We’re only beginning to see the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the health effects of microplastics,” said Dick Vethaak, an emeritus professor of ecotoxicology at VU University Amsterdam who started and co-leads the Dutch Momentum Consortium on Microplastics and Health.
Not mincing words, New Republic reporter Kate Aronoff writes, “we’re learning more about what the industry knew, and when. It should be a national scandal, replete with lawsuits and Capitol Hill hearings, that the companies responsible for the microplastics in our food, our tap water, our oceans, our bodies, even our placentas — truly everywhere — have cooked up one of the most successful, destructive lies in U.S. environmental history. Plastics are a plague, and the executives who produce them should be made into pariahs.” (For more on how to avoid microplastics, read Dot’s advice.)
But back to the big plastics swindle.
So … with recycling becoming our North Star, we all jumped on the recycling bandwagon, sifting and sorting and feeling virtuous. And it all would have been fine, except for one important thing. The only way plastics recycling was ever going to work was if that recycled plastic had value. And I guess it did, briefly. China was buying it, using the best of it, and burning the rest. But no more …
One of Dot’s favorites, a woman who produces the Substack Zero-Waste Chef, recently called upon her daughter, a recycling coordinator in Northern California, to answer some reader questions about recycling. “After the stuff is sorted, a baler machine crushes it into bales,” the daughter explained about the process. “If nobody wants to buy a bale and process it, it’s not going to be recycled. There’s a market for only certain types of materials so that is why a lot of plastic is not getting recycled. Sometimes it’s cheaper to just use virgin plastic.”
And therein lies our problem. Or … therein lies one of our problems. Another problem, growing by the day, is that, as countries shift away from oil and gas to renewables, those petroleum companies are finding themselves as nervous as cats about what they’re going to do with all those fossil fuels. After all, nobody gets rich from keeping them in the ground, right? The New Republic story notes that the plastics industry “faces uncertain prospects,” which, it goes on to say, “stands to make recycling even less practical than it already was, as recyclers already hungry to find buyers for the waste they collect now face a market where new plastics are a better bargain than recycled ones.”
Okay. So, to recap: Plastic permeates pretty much every aspect of our lives and planet, and, increasingly, our bodies. The simple solution dreamed up by the plastic producers — throw it into a magical bin that transforms it into new plastic products — turns out to be largely a mirage.
Which leaves us … where? Standing in front of a recycling bin holding a yogurt tub and wondering if we’re participating in a Kabuki theatre of environmentalism.
But really, where should that tub go?
It’s tricky. That’s because “plastic” encompasses a lot of different materials that need to be carefully — and expensively — separated before they can be recycled. And because too many of us engage in “wishcycling,” where we adopt a “toss it in and let them sort it out” mentality but that can mean, if more effort is required to ensure a load isn’t contaminated by a non-recyclable plastic, the whole bunch might be dumped.
There is, however, hope on the horizon, Fred and Elise. On March 2, 2022 in Nairobi, 175 countries gathered and endorsed a global plastics treaty that will be completed by the end of 2024 and that UNEP Executive Director Inger Anderson declared “marks a triumph by planet Earth over single-use plastics.” (Curious to know how the ubiquitous plastic shopping bag was born? Read more here.) You can sign a petition urging the U.S. to push for a stronger treaty and support the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act. (The Canadian government already tried to implement a single-use plastics ban, but it was overturned by the court in 2023.)
Until we have globally aligned regulations around plastics (something even the industry itself seems to be supporting), there are steps we individuals can take, starting with avoiding or minimizing single-use plastics in our own lives, and not engaging in wishcycling. Zero-Waste Chef’s daughter has plenty of other advice.
As for that yogurt tub or your plastic dish detergent bottle, Fred, follow those three Rs in order. First, consider how to reduce: Could you try making your own yogurt and eliminate the need for these troublesome tubs in the first place? Purchase liquids in cardboard cartons or visit refill stores? Second, is there a way to reuse it? Again with the refill stores! Or use it to grow seedlings! Avoid carting your lunch to work in old containers or sending guests home with leftovers, however, as they will shed microplastics (one more reason to choose glass storage containers). Then lastly, recycle: Toss it in the recycle bin as long as it’s a type of plastic accepted by your municipality. Maybe it will be part of that lucky 9% that finds new life as an outdoor patio chair.
Wearily,
Dot
