The Myth of Recycling
When we think of the word ‘recycling’ we think ‘sustainable’, ‘reusable’, and good for the environment. What if your recycling actually ends up polluting the ocean and atmosphere?
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a zone of floating plastic debris, trapped by ocean currents. The patch is double the size of the state of Texas, and is increasing rapidly. This is very dangerous because over time the plastic breaks down into tiny microplastics, which end up contaminating the water, which means that marine animals - and eventually humans when they eat anything from the ocean - get harmed. Shockingly, little of the plastic that ends up in the great pacific garbage patch comes from a ‘general waste’ bin: It comes from the plastic that is meant to be ‘recycled’.
The plastic that you put in the ‘Recycling’ bin is probably going in the ocean and here’s why:
There is actually little demand for recycled plastic. Recycled plastic is typically contaminated with many different types of plastic and other rubbish, and that makes it expensive to process into a useful new material. New plastic (which comes from crude oil) is cheap, clean, and easy to buy. The result is that recycled plastic ends up piling up with nowhere to go, and so developed nations like England find some other country who will take it for a fee. Those other countries might be China, Indonesia, Poland, or the Philippines. The plastic is loaded on ships and barges and floated out to sea, on their way to be “recycled”. Sadly, these countries don’t have the resources to handle all of the plastic that is sent to them, so they end up dumping much of it into rivers which eventually lead to the ocean, or they burn it which releases carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the air.
What can we do about this? Let’s take a moment to understand landfills, and why they may not be as bad as we thought…
Modern landfill technology makes sure that anything that goes into the landfill does not get into the ocean or the air. They are sealed at the bottom to prevent pollution from reaching the groundwater. They are capped off with a material such as clay or bentonite to keep any gases from escaping into the environment. Usually landfill sites are turned into parks or golf courses and most of the material decomposes, doing no harm, after 50-100 years. There are even new technologies that might enable us to reduce typical decomposition time to just a few years. When plastic gets sent to the landfill, it gets buried and over a very long time it decomposes. It doesn’t hurt the environment when it’s underground.
So, until you know without a doubt that your recycling is actually being recycled (which is unlikely) it’s probably better for everyone if we stop using the recycling bins for plastic. Put your plastic bottle or wrapper into the general waste bin, and from there let’s hope it gets to the landfills, where it will be buried forever, and never wreak havoc in our oceans, rivers or air again. (Better yet, don’t buy that plastic container in the first place if you don’t need it!)
