Why We Can't Recycle Our Way Out of the Plastic Apocalypse

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ABOUT: Rebecca Watson is the founder of the Skepchick Network, a collection of sites focused on science and critical thinking. She has written for outlets such as Slate, Popular Science, and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. She's also the host of Quiz-o-tron, a rowdy, live quiz show that pits scientists against comedians. Asteroid 153289 Rebeccawatson is named after her (her real name being 153289).

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[chstoney]

What angers me the most about this whole issue is that whatever I do, it has no consequence. I cannot avoid buying tons of plastic-packaged goods because the alternatives are either more difficult to obtain or downright non-existent. I was able to reduce single-use plastic bags to nearly zero, but weight-wise, those are just a tiny portion of single-use plastic in our household. We are re-using plastic cups etc. for other purposes before discarding them, but that has limits too. So every two weeks I cart a huge load of plastic to the recycling bin with the knowledge that most of it ends up in a landfill anyway and I feel hopeless because the only alternative to that is to starve. Buying only non-plastic packaged eco-friendly produced goods is a privilege for the rich and I am most definitively not one of those.

[sunyavadin]

"At least they're doing something"
DOING SOMETHING CAN BE WORSE THAN DOING NOTHING, IF WHAT YOU DO IS BAD

[marktownend]

When I was a kid during the 1970s in the UK, we used to have reusable glass bottles for milk, and most bottled beverages in stores and bars. They often had a small deposit payable on the bottles to encourage return. These were almost all phased out in favour of single use cans and plastic over the following decades. For milk, home delivery gradually died out along with the glass bottles. Many mainland European nations kept the glass bottle system going long enough to make it into todays more ecologically led era and some are backed up by legal requirements. I recently watched a TV documentary about this as implemented in Denmark where all breweries comply with a standard container design that can be washed, refilled with beer and relabelled at any company's bottling plant, often up to 20 or 30 times before the bottle is too worn or damaged and must be melted down for recycling.

[podpoe]

i think its also interesting to note that a lot of the push to recycle was started by the big companies that produce the waste as a way to deflect criticism and bla.e onto the consumer for not recycling rather then them as the producers.

[johnklaus]

The old catchphrase is well stated: Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. And those things are listed in order of importance. The best way to reduce waste is to not buy the thing in the first place. Too bad we've built a socio-economic system rooted in consumption. Dang it!

[scaredyfish]

I get very depressed about plastic, because cutting it out of your life is so nearly impossible. If I had the energy, I could make a wholesome sandwich for lunch and take it to work in a lovely beeswax wrapper, but I’m so ground down I end up buying something wrapped in single-use plastic and then feeling guilty about it.

This is why everything is interconnected, and things like the green new deal, which explicitly link climate justice to economic justice are so crucial.

[fg]

It must be mentally very challenging to step forward and declare: "I thought it'd be easy, then I got taught by experts about all the intricate details my initial idead didn't factor in. So here I stand and telling you I'm shutting my operation down. Thank you all for all the effort you brought in."

I would gladly buy my cherry tomatoes wrapped in paper, same goes for pepper, salad, clementines etc. I also don't need some stupid sticker on my apples or peas or a small sticky band around my bananas telling me "BIO" or "Chikitas". I don't fucking care. Especially with bananas as there is only one kind of banana today. But for some reason I can't at my grocery store. Everything is somehow prepackaged and I have to buy this stuff.

[randynovick]

When I was a kid, back in the lonely 70s - there really wasn't much in the form of plastic at the grocery store, though you could smoke cigarettes at the deli counter. Most beverage containers were steel and aluminum and clear wrappings were cellulose. Can we just take beverages back to glass and steel, as a start, maybe?

[thebugscome]

I worked on dispersing information on proper plastic disposal for businesses and private individuals for a city, and was I surprised how little anything is even supposed to go into recycling.

[Briaaanz]

Third parties say it doesn't work? Well, easily fixed! Oil companies can hire fourth parties that say otherwise. Checkmate

[T.E.S.S.]

My aorta is made of PET! 10/10 my favourite plastic, absolutely will not be recycled.

[Srfingfreak]

PET is recyclable but only 1-2 times before you have to add a bunch of chemicals to it or just burn it for energy. There is no thermoplastic out there that can be cycled more than 3-5 times even including loading it up with additional softeners - the polymers just get too broken up.

Many PET items also have a laminate on them for oxygen/moisture barrier properties, which makes them entirely unrecyclable except for in the most crude products (pressed plastic 'lumber, ' asphalt filler, etc.)

Burning waste for energy and doing onsite carbon capture, in my opinion, is probably the best way to deal with disposable plastics.

We are fortunate that bioplastics and biodegradable barrier films are starting to become more economical.

[adoredpariah]

At my new place I spent the first 2 months or so separating my plastics and glass for the purpose of recycling and watched curiously on the pickup day... Only to find the garbage truck just dumped the special recycle bin in the same garbage truck hole as the regular trash. Going to the local tip isn't much better in this regard either. Living in Australia obviously our trash output is significantly lower overall but it's still more than a little disheartening to know how little it matters to the powers that be right now... And how deep they are in the pockets of the various resource sectors... As small as we are on the global population scale we certainly seem to go above and beyond in the polluting category.

[GrantSR]

There is truly only one solution to the plastic and pollution problem: Gather it up into multi-ton piles. Compress it down into solid blocks. Take it up to low-Earth orbit. Then, drop it onto the houses of corporate exec's while they sleep.

[harrynac]

We pay a deposit on PET and glass bottles and return them. At least chances that they'll end up in the water are smaller. For fruit and vegetables you can bring your own nets and reuse them. Still, the amount of plastic I have to throw away is kind of embarrassing. Ironically for me most come from prefab meat substitutes.

[StarkRG]

A significant part of the problem is that virgin plastic (brand new, not recycled) is extremely cheap because it's a byproduct of the fossil fuel industry (for the record, gasoline was a byproduct of making kerosene and oil companies tried for decades to find a use for it, first selling it as a cleaning product). If plastic was the primary product, such as if we stopped using fossil fuels, it would be so ridiculously expensive that nobody would use it unless absolutely necessary (like IV bags, which are vastly superior to the glass IV bottles they used to use). It would make recycling what we already have significantly more economically viable, not to mention providing a motivation to research cheaper and more efficient recycling processes. In short, if we kill fossil fuels, we get less plastic waste as a bonus.

[scottthomas]

Years ago, a small town near here shredded plastic bottles and used them as filler for various road repairs, and construction projects.. This was just a small town, with a homemade shredder. Didn't have to grade the plastic at all.
The recycle pickup guy at work said more or less what you did...very little, other than metals, gets recycled.

[smgzbear]

One of the issues that bothers me the most in this topic is microplastics and its effects on our health, the ocean, agriculture, and so on, its a cascading shit-icane.

[hydrophobicbathtowel]

I always feel bad when I buy clothing. I live where it gets very cold for half the year. Cotton is a poor insulator and doesn't moderate moisture from sweat very well, so I won't buy cotton. Wool is great, but a wool sweater will cost nearly $100.00 on the low end and it will require much more care to clean and repair and store. Polar fleece though is very cheap nowadays and costs less than 1/4 the price of wool in most cases. It's easy to clean and repair. Readily available. It's comparable to wool in warmth and and moisture regulation. I still much prefer a wool sweater, but I work in a warehouse that is very dirty and there are loose bits of wood and metal sticking out all over so on the few occasions I have bought a thrifted wool sweater to wear at work it is quickly destroyed from getting snagged/torn and being over washed. I've made a compromise by wearing wool at home and polar fleece at work, but every time I do a load of laundry I know all those polar fleece fibers are going out with the dirty water and becoming microplastics. The warehouse is unheated and I need that fleece to stay warm and dry. I've tried cotton and cotton blends and ended up being intolerably cold. Extremities going numb kinda cold. I'm probably lucky I never lost a toe or finger. I want to reduce my plastic clothing waste. I only replace garments when necessary and visit thrift shops prior to shopping for brand new items.

[victhiaingrahm]

Remember! Polystyrene (PS 6) is recyclable into napalm!