In addition to reducing production, the report argues, the world must improve recycling systems, which alone could reduce plastic pollution by 20% by 2040. But recycling in its current form is problematic for a number of reasons. For one, the recycling rate in the United States is now only 5 percent of plastic waste. The United States and other developed nations have long sent millions and millions of pounds of plastic waste that cannot be recycled profitably to developing countries, where bottles, bags and wrappers are often burned in open pits or leak into the environment.
A central problem is that, over the years, plastic products have become much more complicated, and therefore much less recyclable: today, food bags can have layers of different polymers, or a product can be half plastic, half paper. “Agreeing and then imposing design rules that allow, for example, a limited number of polymers or a limited number of chemical additives that work well within the system, which already considerably improves the economics of recycling”, says Llorenç Milà i Canals, head of the secretariat of the Life Cycle Initiative at UNEP and main coordinator of the report. “That makes recycling much more cost-effective because it will take much less to get those materials back into the economy.”
However, even recycling done correctly has a huge environmental cost: a study published earlier this month found that a single facility could emit 3 million pounds of microplastic per year in its wastewater, which flows into the environment. The upside, at least, is that the facility would have released 6.5 million pounds of microplastic if it hadn’t installed filters, so at least there’s a way to mitigate that pollution. But these tiny particles they have now corrupted the entire planet, including a wide range of organisms. And generally speaking, since the production of plastics is increasing exponentially, Microplastic pollution is increasing in unison.
In that sense, then, recycling is making the problem of plastic pollution worse. “Plastic was not designed to be recycled, and recycling it only reintroduces toxic chemicals and microplastics into the environment and our bodies,” says Cohen. “He [UNEP] The report authors even go so far as to acknowledge that even if feasible, the circular economy for plastics would take decades to develop, and even in the best-case scenario, following the roadmap as outlined would lead to approximately 136 million metric tons of plastic. flowing into landfills, incinerators and the environment to cause pollution by the year 2040. That is a huge and unacceptable amount of plastic.”
Actually, recycling allows the plastics industry to continue producing all the plastic it wants, under the guise of sustainability. “If you had an overflowing bathtub, you wouldn’t just run to get the mop first, you’d turn off the faucet,” says Jacqueline Savitz, policy director at conservation nonprofit Oceana, who was not involved in the report. “Recycling is the mop.”
Another strategy highlighted in the new report is “extended producer responsibility,” in which manufacturers don’t just get things done and clean their hands. The plastics industry has long promoted recycling (although has learned that the current system does not work) because it makes you, the “careless” consumer, responsible for the contamination. Extended producer responsibility shifts the burden back to the industry, forcing producers to, for example, put systems in place to take bottles back and reuse them.
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