When you throw your trash into a recycling bin, you believe it’s actually getting recycled and transformed back into more plastic items, but often it’s not.
Globally, only 10-15% of plastic is currently getting recycled. That means 85-90% of it is either in landfills or littered throughout the environment. The World Economic Forum estimates that as much as 30% of plastic leaks out of the collection system and is unaccounted for. This means it’s scattered in the streets, in your local waterway or in the ocean. So basically the idea that the plastic that we are putting in the recycling bin is all getting recycled is a fantasy.
Shedding some light on recycling might dispel the myths and help you make better decisions:
Myth number 1: Your single-use plastic water bottle goes off to be shredded, melted, ground up into tiny plastic pellets and these good-as-new plastic pellets are re-made into other useful items.
Unfortunately, this is not true.
While it is true that your plastic water bottle is one of the few types of plastic that can be recycled, the quality of the plastic is generally down-cycled into a lower quality, lesser value plastic.
This means two things. First, unlike metal, which can be melted down and reused endlessly, plastic can – at most – only be recycled once. For example, your water bottle doesn’t get turned back into a new water bottle. Instead, it might become something like a non-recyclable carpet or a non-recyclable poly-cotton fabric such as fleece. So plastics usually only get recycled once or twice and can’t ever be recycled again.
Second, because the quality of recycled plastic is lower, virgin plastic pellets have to be added to the recycled pellets to create the next new plastic thing. Food grade containers have a limit to how much recycled plastic they are made of because of contaminants.
Therefore, there will always be more virgin plastic mixed in with the recycling. So if you want to stop this endless flow of plastic into our environment, then use another material such as metal. Carry a metal water bottle with you and a metal lunch box. If you feel like having a soda, then get the can, not the bottle.
Myth number 2: Throwing any of your bright orange, purple or blue containers of laundry detergent and shampoo into the recycling will get sent off to get recycled
But did you know they most likely they won’t be recycled?
This is because intense or dark-colored plastics are difficult if not impossible, to reuse. It’s like mixing paint, the darker the paint is, the more difficult it is to change it to a new color. Black plastics are particularly hard to recycle because machines trying to detect the plastic cannot see it. Unilever, however, has created a black ink that can be detected.
Therefore, often, only white or natural plastic is of high enough value to bother putting it through the recycling process. Instead of being recycled, your bright, colorful plastic might sit bundled up at your local recycling center for a few days before being sent off to the landfill.
So the next time you go shopping, keep this in mind. If you have to use plastic, choose items in white or clear containers. If you forget to bring your reusable coffee cup, pick the white-colored to-go lid because black plastic is the most difficult color of them all to recycle.
Myth number 3: Single-use plates and utensils labeled “biodegradable” are a sustainable alternative.
Well, no. The term “biodegradable” is a misrepresentation.
Many of those “biodegradable” plates and utensils sold as sustainable alternatives to single-use plastic are not exactly compostable or recyclable. The idea behind bio-plastic products is that they’re supposed to break down easily. But actually, they only break down in a very high heat industrial composting facility. For us, regular people with backyard compost bins, these plates and utensils will not quickly decompose.
If these products end up in a lake, river or ocean, they are pretty much the same as other plastics. Furthermore, if you do put products such as these with labeled ‘biodegradable’ or ‘compostable’ into the recycle bin, they will not be recycled because they’re not recyclable.
Recyclable commodities are part of a complex global market that is influenced by impurities in the products and market demand. While corporations are responsible for designing these single-use products, all of us are paying for these “conveniences” environmentally. This disposable, single-use lifestyle is unsustainable, but as consumers, we have the power to make better choices about our purchases.
