Running head: RECYCLING PLASTIC 1

Recycling Plastic – a Toxic Impact to our Future

By Stephanie Pettee

04/11/2018
Running head: RECYCLING PLASTIC 2

Introduction

Recycling plastic has zero positive impact on the environment. For example,

when placing your plastic water bottle, grocery bag, laundry detergent bottle into the

recycling bin, it is not recycled in the way we commonly think it is. It’s simply putting it

into a labeled bin where it gets trucked to the nearby processing center, sorted, possibly

baled, shipped or trucked to a reclamation plant which is most likely hundreds or

thousands of miles away. Afterwards, it’s reclaimed into either the same or different

plastic before being distributed around the world as a final product. On Maui, the County

reports about 40% of “recycled” consumer goods goes directly to the landfill as

unrecyclable (Botkin, 2018). As we follow the life cycle of recycled plastic, we must take

into account its environmental impact as well as the health, safety and compensation of

those involved in the recycling process, to comprehensively determine if it is classified as

sustainable or not. According to the Bruntland Report for the World Commission on

Environment and Development (1987), “Sustainable development is development that

meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to

meet their own needs.”

Some studies show that recycling plastic into second-life products requires less

energy and resources, diverts waste from the landfill and has many applications. Others

believe the lifecycle of recycling plastic is inefficient, energy intensive and unsafe.

Through further inspection of both sides, it is shown the total energy cost required to

reprocess plastic has negative environmental and health impacts.

Arguments for Plastic Recycling as Unsustainable

The Environmental Cost of Recycling

The current process of recycling plastic is energy intensive and environmentally

costly. Before the beginning of 2018, approximately 80% of the world’s recycled plastics

were being shipped in containers to China for reprocessing. For our plastics to have

another life, fossil fuels are used during each of the stages - collection, sorting,

reclamation, manufacturing and distribution. According to The International Council on

Clean Transportation, the shipping green house gas (GHG) emissions are increasing due

to the growing demand for shipping and the production of new ships (Olmer, 2017).

Container ships along with bulk carriers, and oil tankers compose 55% of the CO2

emissions of all class of ships (Olmer, 2017)). They burn the unrefined, heavy fuels,

which results in higher pollutant rates. In one year, the amount of sulfur oxide produced

by the 15 biggest ships exceeds the amount produced by all the cars in the world

(Toepfer, 2016). There are very few regulations on ocean transportation, and large ships

are speeding up, becoming less efficient, and polluting more (Olmer, 2017).

With the turn of the New Year, China heavily reduced its allowance of imported

plastics from 3.9 million tons to 9,335 tons. That is 0.24% of last year (Staub, 2016)!

Now that China is no longer an option for many countries, they are scrambling to find

buyers for their recycled plastics. Other countries are allowing imports, but at a much

smaller scale. Shipping plastics around the world to be reprocessed is harmful to marine

life and the atmosphere protecting our beautiful planet.

According to the Report on Postconsumer PET Container Recycling Activity, in

2016, Americans consumed 6,172 million pounds of plastic bottles, which are made of

polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic, the most widely known member of plastic

resins. If you look at the bottom of a plastic water bottle you will see a number 1 in a
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triangle. Because these plastics are clear, they are the easiest to reclaim and the biggest

moneymakers for recyclers. Out of this available amount for recycling, only 992 million

pounds (16%) from US grounds was produced into reusable product. Another 246 million

pounds reclaimed was imported from other countries. That totals to 21% of our annual

consumed plastic. Because the recycling rate in the US is so poor, they import plastic to

reprocess it into Recycled PET flakes (rPET) and then export it again across the world to

buyers to make products. Then, once again, these products are exported to multiple

countries. How much fuel is being used to transport recycled plastic around for its second

life? That is the question no one asks when placing plastic into the recycling bin!

In the US, alone, we only have 21 reclamation plants in operation with a total

capacity of 2,080 million pounds of plastic (T, 2015). If everyone recycled in America,

about two thirds of it would need to be shipped to other countries to be reclaimed. We

simply don’t have the waste-management infrastructure to meet our needs within our own

borders. The complete process of recycling plastic is inefficient and costly to the

environment.

Recycling Requires More Effort Than We Know

Recycling, especially in the US, is not sustainable because individuals aren’t

doing it right, or not doing it at all. Recycling is a conscious decision and requires more

effort than tossing everything into one trashcan. Not everyone cares enough to make that

effort, resulting in a large percentage of recyclables being sent to the landfill. To be fair,

recycling can be complex; the demand for it is consistently changing and recycling rules

are different from county to county. There are 7 different recycling codes on plastics that

determine the material it’s made of. To be even more confusing, that recycling code
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doesn’t necessarily mean it’s recyclable. The 1’s and 2’s are worth the most and have the

best chance at multiple lifetimes of recycling, such as plastic water bottles, and the others

are less desirable but still reclaimable. These others, codes 3 through 7, are down cycled

to create products of lesser quality plastic, until they eventually see their death in a

landfill.

To make recycling easier on consumers, single stream bins were distributed for

people to combine all their recyclables together. This happened with very little education

about the do’s and don’ts. A huge problem with this has been plastics contaminated by

food, other plastics, or paper products getting mixed in with clean plastics rendering them

unrecyclable. A quarter of single stream recyclables get sent to the landfill (Beachler,

2018). Some plastics have mixed resins in them, but aren’t labeled as such, which also

contaminate other plastics. The proper separation of plastics is remarkably important. An

entire batch of 10,000 PET bottles can be spoiled by just one PVC bottle (U. & T., 2005).

It is a much more delicate system than we think.

This single stream system also puts more stress on the local processing plants

since the existing materials recovery facilities were not originally designed to efficiently

sort the diverse plastic packaging we use today. Technological advancements and market

price fluctuations of recycled goods and raw materials are consistently changing the items

that can and cannot be recycled. This makes for an extremely inefficient system resulting

in more trash in the landfills and oceans.

Of all the plastics waste ever created only 9% has been recycled (Parker, 2017).

The rest ends up in the landfills, incinerated, or worse, the ocean. The biggest landfill on

the planet is in the Pacific Ocean. 90% of the trash floating in the world’s oceans is
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plastic and it’s mistaken for food killing many seabirds and marine life every year. Plastic

has been found in the stomachs of 44% of all seabird species, 22% of cetacean species

and in all sea turtle species (Weyler, 2017). Even China’s table salt has trace amounts of

micro plastics in it (Everts, 2015). Sadly, a quarter of the ocean plastic was “recycled”. If

recycling is a sustainable practice, why does 8-12 million tons of plastic pollute the ocean

every year (Weyler, 2017)?

Plastic is Toxic

The toxicity of plastics makes them difficult to recycle. All 7 types of recyclable

plastics are toxic and most of them are in low demand for recycled material, resulting in

low recyclable rates. The resins that are more difficult to recycle include codes 3 through

7. Some of the reasons that make them difficult include: not enough applications or

buyers for their use, low quality, they are mixed with other resins that are hard to

separate, they get contaminated by other plastics and the low price of oil can render

recycled plastic more expensive.

PVC plastic, labeled with a 3, happens to be the most toxic and hazardous of them

all, and it is the most commonly used plastic resin in the world. Most recycling centers

will not accept them. Its entire lifecycle, from cradle to grave, imposes health and

environmental pollution problems (M., 2014). It has a bad reputation for contaminating

the recycling stream, and is difficult to recycle and reprocess on an industrial scale. Even

if PVC is recycled into other products, the process does not remove any toxins. Those

who handle it before, during, and after its recycling stage are exposed to carcinogens as

well as endocrine disrupters (M., 2014). This creates a dangerous work environment for

those who work in sorting and reclamation facilities.

The plastics labeled 4 are called Low Density Polyethylene, which are the most

widely used family of plastics in the world. Some examples of these include bags for

grocery, garbage, newspapers, frozen food, and dry cleaning. They are generally safer for

food and drink applications, but have been shown to leach endocrine disrupters when

exposed to UV light (M., 2014). They are also difficult to recycle and have very few

options to be down cycled into.

The lack of buyers for low quality or mixed plastics makes them undesirable to

recycle, and not very cost effective. At times when oils prices decrease, companies are

not incentivized to use recycled plastic.

Recycling is Dangerous to People

The entire process of recycling plastics is dangerous to people. In Wen’an China,

where there used to exist lush green land with fruit trees, lie the ghostly remains of what

was once a lively zone of industrial size recycling plants. Wen’an was the heart of the

international scrap-plastic market. Adam Minter, a journalist, and Josh Goldstein, a

professor who speaks Chinese, decided to investigate the processing of these plastic

recycling facilities before they were shut down. What they discovered was an

overwhelming amount of plastic waste, dirty streets, unsafe work environments, and an

increase in blood pressure problems within the local population. They curiously toured

one factory claiming to have better conditions than the others. What they witnessed was

an unregulated environment with no safety equipment, no respirators, no hard hats, no

gloves or steel-toed boots. Some employees were wearing sandals. But a Rolex shines

from the wrist of the factory owner. The price of that one Rolex could afford to keep his

employees safe from inhaling toxic plastic fumes. On the outskirts of town where a
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cemetery rests is where the businesses dump plastic cleaning fluid and unusable waste. If

you look closely you can see exposed human remains floating around the sea of

unregulated trash. The nearby towns are known to have increased rates and severities of

blood pressure problems. (Minter, 2013)

All plastics leach toxins that have a range of negative health effects

including but not limited to- endocrine disruption, asthma, neurological impairment,

altered immune function, increased risk to breast cancer, prostate cancer, infertility, skin

irritations, metabolic disorders and cardiovascular system damage (M,2014). The

employees that handle plastics in sorting facilities and reclamation plants all day are

exposed to the variety of toxic chemicals from plastics.

The downside to plastic recycling shows up in the toxicity of children’s toys.

Some plastics are made with flame-retardants and contaminate others when they are

disposed of together. Children’s toys are made from recycled plastics contaminated by

flame-retardants (I., 2017). This is the potential danger of single stream recycling.

Arguments For

Recycling Plastic Saves Greenhouse Gases

Recycling plastic is more environmentally friendly than creating new plastics.

Making a product from recycled resin requires less energy and emits less greenhouse

gases than the production of virgin resin. If you account for the entire lifecycle of the

production of recycled plastic, you see the energy required in the main areas: energy of

material resource, transportation energy, and process energy. The main reasons recycling

plastic is more sustainable are: it replaces virgin resin, which requires oil extraction, and

it diverts waste from the landfill. According to the Lifecycle Inventory Results for
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Production of Postconsumer PET and HDPE Resin, the amount of total energy to produce

virgin resin is 31.9MJ per 1000lbs of resin versus 18.4MJ for recycled PET flake and

19.7MJ for recycled HDPE pellets. The total pounds of CO2 emissions from the

production of 1000lbs of virgin resin are 2,746. Recycled PET emissions equal 36% less

(Kuczenski, 2011).

In 2012, recycling diverted 2.8 million tons of plastics from the landfills. That

amount of plastics diverted from the landfill was equivalent to taking 640,000 cars off the

road for the year, saving our environment from greenhouse gas emissions (US, EPA,

2015). According to the US EPA, the energy savings of each one-ton of recycled PET,

HDPE and mixed plastics equals approximately 21 million barrels of oil. Diversion from

landfill of these recycled plastics also resulted in 70-80% reduction in greenhouse gas

emissions.

The potential of recycled plastic products is high, but most products are only

made with 2 of the 7 types of resins. This leaves much of our plastic waste without a

demand or application for its reuse. Even though recycling plastic results in less energy

consumption and less greenhouse gas emission, the cost of recycled resin sometimes

cannot compete against the low cost of crude oil. The market price of recycled plastic

goes up and down in relation to crude oil prices. Another encumbrance of recycled plastic

is how much solid waste is created during its reclamation process. The solid waste per

1000lbs of recycled resin is more than double that of virgin resin. This is mostly because

some of the recycled plastic co-collected is contaminated, unusable and sent to the

landfills. Even water bottles made from recycled resin require packaging made from
Running head: RECYCLING PLASTIC 10

virgin resin to be distributed to stores, thus not properly representing the 100% recyclable

label.

Recycled Plastic Has Many Applications

Recycled plastic can be made into numerous functions and durable products that

replace limited natural resources, and last longer. One new exciting example is plastic

roads to replace conventional asphalt. Recycled plastic pellets replace most of the

material that’s extracted from oil, and are mixed with the usual rocks to create cheaper

and longer lasting plastic asphalt roads. MacRebar is a company that has already laid

down polymer-modified asphalt made form 100% recycled plastic. Because this kind of

asphalt has a longer lifespan, it reduces maintenance cost, fossil fuel usage, and

ultimately a reduction in carbon footprint (n,d., 2018).

An associate professor of civil engineering at the University of Texas at

Arlington, Dr. Sahadat Hossain, engineered a way to utilize recycled plastic water bottles

to repair roads for the cost of $200K compared to million of dollars. His solution was in

the form of 10-foot long pins made of recycled plastic that were drilled into sections of

roadway slope to prevent them from significant movement due to contractions and

swellings from weather changes (D., n.d.).

Global demand for plastic lumber has been on the rise due to its advantages over

traditional treated lumber. The US Army Corps of Engineers did a study on the plastic

composite lumber and concluded it is durable, stable, resilient, and resistant to termites,

rot, and mildew without chemical pressure treatment (Cirko, 2018). Unlike most recycled

plastic products, this composite lumber uses four different kinds of resin: LDPE, HDPE,

PS, and PVC, giving the more difficult to recycle resins another life. This type of lumber
Running head: RECYCLING PLASTIC 11

is compatible with traditional carpentry tools and has both inside and outdoor

applications. By recycling plastic into lumber and building as much as possible, we can

greatly decrease our need for deforestation and the plethora of negative environmental

impacts as a result.

However, even though manufacturing plastic lumber is a great way to recycle our

waste, it does not come without negative impact. PE’s and PVC’s emit harmful volatile

organic compounds during its manufacturing and remanufacturing stages. Plastic asphalt

roads are made from recycled plastic pellets, which are manufactured with only the

cleanest of resins. They neglect the plastics that need more demand for a second life.

Conclusion

The contribution of recycled plastic to current plastic consumption is small

compared to the potential, due to the limitations on recycling the variety of resins.

Recycling plastic has become a way to divert waste from landfills, but it has not shown to

be environmentally friendly nor economically efficient. If we reached our full potential

and recycled every plastic we consume, we wouldn’t have the infrastructure to meet those

needs. Building more reclamation centers to meet needs at a regional level could be a

solution, but they are costly, require land, result in air pollution, and require electricity. It

would lessen the miles it takes a bottle to travel, therefore less fuel burned in the

transportation phase, but will the plants use just as much fuel for electricity? These are

the trade-offs we make when trying to improve the system. Ultimately plastic is bad for

the environment whether it’s new resin or recycled resin. The process of recycling plastic

still requires new plastic packaging, which is inherently futile to the entire process.
Running head: RECYCLING PLASTIC 12

Because plastic is toxic, wherever it goes it is detrimental to those that handle it

and the land it sits on. Jobs in all stages of recycling can be toxic, dangerous, and

difficult. The real solution is to reduce, then reuse, and lastly, is recycle. Most people go

straight to recycling and feel like they are acting sustainably. Refusing to use plastic and

choosing products with a lifecycle inventory that embodies a lesser carbon footprint such

as compostable products are the kind of changes industries need to make. It should be

extremely obvious that recycling plastic is not having a positive impact on the

environment solely from the gyre of plastic the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean! Alas,

more plastic ends up there every year. Recycling plastics is a lot more complex than the

average consumer understands. The current process and infrastructure of recycling is

failing the environment and us.

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