- jbirmingham1
What happens when you recycle?
“What Happens to All That Plastic?”
Only plastics within 2 of the 7 “recyclable” codes are actually recyclable — polyethylene terephthalate (PET — used in synthetic fibers and water bottles) and high density polyethylene (HDPE — used in jugs and caps)
By discarding plastic in landfills, it is an environmental hazard and an enormous waste of resources that could be used to produce heat, fuel, or electricity
Studies done by the Earth Institute’s Earth Engineering Center showed that the amount of energy within the millions of tons of plastic in United States landfills is equal to 48 million tons of coal or 180 million barrels of oil. If this plastic were converted into liquid fuel, it could make 5.7 billion gallons of gasoline, which would fuel 8.9 million cars per year
Plastics can be used to produce crude oil through pyrolysis, a process under high heat that does not use oxygen
Burning plastics in waste-to-energy facilities would recover the energy used to produce plastics and reduce greenhouse gas emissions because there would be less methane-producing landfills
“The Violent Afterlife of a Recycled Plastic Bottle”
In general, plastic is sold, shipped, melted, resold, and shipped again
Recycled plastics that are collected curbside and sent to a recycling plant, where it is sorted to be recovered or discarded
CEO of TerraCycle, a recycling company, Tom Szaky stated “‘Typically, 50% of what you put in your recycling bin is never recycled. It’s sorted and thrown out.’”
This occurs because people put non recyclable items in their bins or do not clean their recyclables properly
Single-use plastic bottles, made of PET, are easy to resell
Only a few facilities recycle used plastic bottles in the US
We need government-mandated bottle deposits under federal law for each state
Bottles are washed in hot, soapy liquid so that their labels and caps fall away. Then they are grounded up into little pieces, washed, dried, and heated again to get rid of contaminants. These pieces will be sent to manufacturers of carpets, polyester fabric, etc.
In order to make a new bottle, those pieces need to be cleaned and tested to meet food-grade standards. Then they are melted, shaped into tiny pellets, and sold once again to manufacturers. At those manufacturers, the pellets are melted again, injected into molds, stretched, and blown into plastic bottles.
There are not enough plastic bottles that go through the recycling system in order to sustain true recycling on a greater level.
Other counties place an extended producer responsibility (EPR) on manufacturers of single-use plastics
Ex: Green Dot in Germany
There is a law in 50 countries that requires packaging companies to pay for the environmental cost of their packaging
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