Reduce. Reuse. Recycle?
On Earth Day 1970, Americans shifted their focus to taking action against the mass pollution of the world. The introduction of recycling plastics and tin cans in mainstream American culture and into households all over the country created the basis of modern-day recycling. In the last 50 years, we have not seen any revolutionary changes in the way we recycle nor the infrastructure to handle the amount of waste and recycling we create as a country. People have only continued to pollute the earth since the 70s, but programs have not grown to support the increase in plastic usage. Plastic bottles are recyclable, so why are they still the number one polluter of oceans? According to the World Economic Forum, only 14% of plastic packaging in the world is collected for recycling. Certainly, a large portion of developing countries do not have the infrastructure to recycle the same way we do in America, but developed countries are also the largest consumer of plastics, and we do have the infrastructure to recycle our waste, so what is stopping us?
All citizens of the world must understand the harm that plastic waste does to our oceans. The Pacific Garbage Patch, made up of human litter, currently covers 7.7 million square million miles of the Pacific Ocean. Much of this marine debris is made up of plastic bottles that the force of the ocean fragments but will never biodegrade and only get broken into smaller pieces. These plastic fragments create more treacherous conditions for marine animals. The potential to ingest or choke on these plastic pieces increases significantly for wildlife around the Pacific Garbage Patch. A whopping 70% of these microplastics sink to the ocean floor, creating a kind of underwater landfill. Floating trash creates a shade for plankton and algae that are vital to marine ecosystems. These organisms cannot get the sunlight needed to grow, therefore large populations die off, leaving larger marine animals without a food source. The Ocean Clean Up Project estimates that about 5 trillion pieces of plastic pollute the oceans today which are only further broken down into microplastics that directly harm 800 different marine species, and countless indirectly. This amounts to about 150 million tons of plastic waste.
Plastic is recyclable, so why do humans continue to pollute the ocean with materials that can be repurposed? Many Americans simply lack the knowledge of what can be recycled and how to dispose of those materials properly. If we cannot separate the recyclables from non-recyclables or even put them in the correct bin to be recycled, how can we expect the plastic pollution problem to get better? In a survey by Covanta and OnePoll of 2,000 were Americans asked about their recycling habits and it is evident how the simple lack of knowledge hinders the effectiveness of recycling programs. The results show that 62% of participants worry that they don’t know enough about recycling practices, but this concern about lack of knowledge unfortunately does not lead to people educating themselves about what can be recycled. While 82% reported that they want to be more environmentally friendly, only 31% said that they always recycle an item if they know it is recyclable. Others cited lack of access to recycling bins or lack of time to sort their trash. Participants also pointed to the high cost of environmentally friendly products as a barrier to a more earth conscious lifestyle. These results suggest that people care about the environment, but find recycling too time consuming, complicated, expensive or do not have basic access to the proper bins.
The survey continues to show that 68% of participants identified non-recyclable used plastic utensils as recyclable. These kinds of mistakes can lead to the contamination of good recyclables that often have to be thrown out. ECO Plastics reports that the increase of non-recyclable items mixed in with recyclables can lead to the whole batch being thrown out. The monetary and labor cost of separating the batches is far too high to yield little to no actual recyclable material for recycling plants to adopt and still be efficient. Plastic bottles specifically are one of the most valuable plastic products because they can be easily broken down and reused. Unfortunately, ECO Plastics cites that over 300,000 tons of plastic bottles still end up in landfills each year. When a recycling plant receives a mixed bag of recycling it goes through many inspections where items are removed. The problem is that there are many different kinds of recycling and not everything can be recycled together. Workers labor over batches of waste trying to meticulously pick out all the different recyclable materials. This specific plant only has a 45% diversion rate, meaning that 55% of materials that come through the plant do not get recycled and end up in landfills.
These low numbers coming from recycling plants show inefficiencies in the infrastructure of recycling processes, but also the inconsistency of types of materials in one product. For example, plastic bottles and plastic caps are recyclable, but they are different types of plastic, so they must be recycled separately. It is actually recommended that consumers throw away the caps to their bottles while recycling the bottle part to be the most effective in their recycling system. Most local recycling plants do not have the capacity to remove all the bottle caps, so they end up throwing the whole thing away. When bottles are recycled with the cap still on, it requires workers to remove the cap in order to recycle both items and sometimes when the cap is left on, the bottle explodes earlier in the process due to the pressure of the waste transportation process. Some recycling facilities do accept both plastic products but require them to be batched and separated. This creates a problem given many Americans, should they have a recycling bin, only have one and do not even have the opportunity nor motivation to separate their recycling, nor the infrastructure to collect separated waste.
The general lack of knowledge possessed by Americans combined with the shortcomings of recycling programs all over the U.S. has led to tons of unnecessary plastic waste in our oceans. Many local communities simply don’t have the resources to properly sort and recycle all the materials they collect. This coupled with people throwing non-recyclables or contaminated materials in the recycling bin creates too much work for small recycling plants to feasibly accomplish. When receiving funding, these plants typically are not as prioritized as other infrastructure projects such as police and fire stations, sanitation systems and road safety projects, which are all imperative to the functioning of a community. It is clear that our current recycling efforts are not enough to reduce our plastic waste that ends up in the oceans.
To alleviate the amount of plastic waste we produce, recycling programs should be widened and receive better funding and staffing to allow effective recycling of all the contaminated materials that are thrown away. This would require more funding from local communities in order to expand recycling plants and the hiring of more employees to sort materials or buying machines that help sort materials. Generally, people are not willing to pay that much more in taxes to support an already ineffective process.
Some have suggested government stipends to those who recycle properly to encourage better practices among residents. People responded positively when offered the opportunity, but an increase in recycling requires more money to fund recycling programs as well as stipends. These costs combined put too large of a financial burden on local governments, and without an actual improvement in the efficiency of the recycling process, this will still not solve the problem.
It may not be realistic to totally reform the recycling system in the U.S., so some scientists suggest finding replacements to the traditional single-use plastic bottle. Chemists at Stanford University are working on a method to recycle existing plastic bottles using a compound naturally found in corn. Not only does this allow plastic bottles to be recycled and reused, it does it without leaving the carbon footprint that is associated with breaking down a traditional plastic bottle.
Finally, as a society, we could become less dependent on plastic bottles. This of course requires altering human behavior and habits. People are reluctant to change, especially when the problem is not prevalent in their daily lives and they will not directly see the benefits or feel the effect. The average American does not think about the Pacific Garbage Patch often, if they even know what it is. Hopefully offering education about the effects of our bad consumption habits can spark systematic change, but the issue of recycling expands far beyond plastic bottles and the garbage patch — it targets the overarching theme of human reluctance to change their behaviors in pursuit of preserving our planet.
A dramatic alteration in our recycling process or a mass movement away from single-use plastic is imperative to saving the world. Reducing plastic waste in order to protect our oceans and marine ecosystems needs to be brought to the forefront of our minds. If we don’t change soon, hundreds of species may become endangered and even extinct. If we continue to pollute at the current rate, it is reasonable to believe that plastic garbage will grow to alter marine ecosystems past the point of no return.
Works Cited
“Covanta Survey: ‘Americans Don’t Know How to Recycle.’” Waste360, Apr. 2019, p. N.PAG. EBSCOhost,search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,uid&db=eih&AN=136019766&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Dear EarthTalk: Everyone Knows we should Recycle Metal, Glass and Plastic Cans and Bottles, but what about all the Lids, Tops and Caps? I See People Recycling Plastic Bottles, for Example, with their Caps on, but I’ve always been Told to Throw them Out. is that Wrong? — Stefanie Gandolfi, Oakland, CA. English ed. Ed.
Jacobo, Julia. “World Ocean Day 2019: Ocean Plastics Problem Isn’t Going Away, but Here’s What You Can Do to Help.” ABC News, ABC News Network, 8 June 2019, abcnews.go.com/Technology/world-ocean-day-2019-oceans-plastics-problem/story?id=63324490.
National Geographic Society. “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” National Geographic Society, 9 Oct. 2012, www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/great-pacific-garbage-patch/.
Plastic in the Ocean. Prod. CNN Newsource Sales. 2017. Alexander Street Database. Web.
Recycle Your Trash. Dir. Myra Dziama. Prod. Candice Batista. TMW Media Group, 2017. Alexander Street Database. Web.
Short, Jonathan. “It’s Time We Focus on Quality as Well as Quantity.” Local Authority Waste & Recycling, vol. 22, no. 9, Sept. 2014, p. 24. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,uid&db=8gh&AN=97922348&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Stringer, Heather. “A Better Bottle.” Discover, vol. 37, no. 7, Sept. 2016, p. 14. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,uid&db=gft&AN=116771183&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Wang, Z., Huo, J. & Duan, Y. The impact of government incentives and penalties on willingness to recycle plastic waste: An evolutionary game theory perspective. Front. Environ. Sci. Eng. 14, 29 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-019-1208-2
Waxman, Olivia B. “America Recycles Day 2016: A Brief History of Recycling.” Time, Time, 15 Nov. 2016, time.com/4568234/history-origins-recycling/.
