4 Steps We Can Take To Solve The World’s Plastic Waste Problem

You may have seen the dire headlines about plastic lately…
Half of All Plastic That Has Ever Existed Was Made in the Past 13 Years
Handling plastic waste around the globe is a complex problem in a complex system. Until very recently, there haven’t been enough smart people working to come up with sustainable solutions. Despite the massive waste issues, plastic is an amazingly useful material that has become vital to human existence — it isn’t going away any time soon.
Here are few major entry points for any individual who wants to help solve this complex issue:
1. Raise awareness about the different types of plastics and how to recycle them. According to a 2014 EPA report, only 9.5% of all plastic is recycled*
Personal experiences with and knowledge of recycling varies by geographic area and/or by building type (commercial vs residential, apartment vs. single-family home, etc). In certain buildings or homes, occupants throw all of their trash into a single bin and someone else deals with sorting it all out. In other places, there are blue bins/bags designated for recycling — but even those only accept specific classifications of plastics. In other places, it is a free-for-all without any instruction for waste separation, and without any established protocols for separation and sorting at waste management facilities. Check out some recommendations on the types of plastics to avoid.
As it turns out, there are 7 different classifications of plastics. Some are easier than others to recycle. PET and HDPE are the most commonly recycled, and they’re used for things like water bottles and tuppeware containers. Other classifications of plastics can be recycled, but factors such as pigment and contamination make the process more difficult. Plastics that come into contact with food or are used in medical settings require a higher level of purity and are harder to re-use. You’ll find detailed information about the various types of plastics here: https://polymerinnovationblog.com/the-seven-classifications-of-recyclable-plastics-are-they-all-really-recycled/
* In 2014, 33.25 million tons of plastic waste were generated in the United States. Only 9.5% was recycled, while 15% was combusted and 75.5% went to landfills, according to the EPA’s 2014 Advancing Sustainable Materials Management Fact Sheet (published in November 2016)
2. Raise awareness about the process of plastic recycling
The process of sorting, classifying and cleaning plastic for recycling is resource-intensive. There have been recent advances in automation, machine learning and robotics, but innovation in the waste sorting world hasn’t yet been widely adopted. However, Athens Services (a waste management company) recently started doing some cool stuff, in partnership with Bulk Handling Systems: http://www.bulkhandlingsystems.com/athens-services-opens-state-art-mixed-waste-mrf
Even after nailing the sorting/classification/cleaning, the company or facility in possession of the recycled plastic needs to find a secondary market into which it can be sold. The recycled plastic is scrutinized for purity and if it meets specifications, is put on the market in competition with “virgin” plastic (mostly produced in China, using petroleum/oil, creating air pollution and emitting greenhouse gasses). When oil prices are high, recycled plastic has a good chance of competing on price with virgin plastic. But when oil prices are low (as they have been for the past few years), the recycled plastic doesn’t stack up as well to that sweet virgin plastic from China.
3. Work on “closing the loop”
Encourage and reward companies that make the tough choice and buy recycled plastic instead of virgin plastic. Without such incentives, price is almost always the main factor and virgin plastic often wins out. Kudos to Method Home and Envision Plastics for making this type of business deal http://methodhome.com/beyond-the-bottle/ocean-plastic/
If you’re a business leader and your company relies upon plastic to sustain the livelihood of employees and stakeholders, think of even more ways to expedite the process of innovation in plastic sustainability and recycling . The Closed Loop Fund has pooled money from corporate, multinational behemoths such as 3M, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Walmart. They invest the money in the form of low-interest loans to companies and zero-interest loans to cities. Its goal is to invest more than $500 million in US recycling projects by 2020.
4. Identify innovative solutions for used plastic that ends up in places it doesn’t belong
When plastic finds its way to a landfill, it opens the door for synthetic, harmful materials to contaminate biological ecosystems (including our food chain), often via the world’s oceans. In fact, the problem of plastic in the ocean is reaching catastrophic levels. It is being eaten by fish and entering our food chain. Scientists predict there could be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050. Luckily for all of us, a young, visionary leader named Boyan Slat has launched The Ocean Cleanup Project. Launched via crowd-funding, The Ocean Cleanup Project is using mind-blowingly simple technology to rid the world’s oceans of invasive plastic. get the plastic out of the oceans and then selling the recycled plastic into the supply chain. Boyan Slat is a visionary leader with a singular vision of ridding the world’s oceans of invasive plastic.
