Here are the details: Dow Inc, one of the worlds biggest plastics makers, backed a program that in 2018 began taking plastic waste from residents in Boise, Idaho and trucking it more than 300 miles (483 kilometers) across the state line to Salt Lake City, Utah. Plastics have long been stamped with the numbers 1 to 7 inside the familiar chasing arrows logo to help traditional recyclers separate the waste before processing it. More Reuters investigations and long-form narratives, Got a confidential news tip? Renewlogy said it supplied no data to Sustainable Solutions. Recycling facilities don't accept most of these hard-to-recycle plastics because they are difficult to sort and release hazardous chemicals during the recycling process. They came up with the brilliantly deceptive concept of recycling, thinking that if Americans believed there was a solution to the growing plastics problem, they would ignore the truth. It offers a variety of household products from manufacturers including P&G, Unilever, Nestl and Coca-Cola in reusable packaging. GivingTuesday is November 29th GivingTuesday is almost here! Hes looking for plastic bottles first, Smith says. Agilyx, an advanced recycling firm backed by Virgin Group and its billionaire founder Richard Branson, in 2018 announced a deal to convert plastic waste to jet fuel for Delta Air Lines Inc. Press releases issued by the companies at the time outlined the plan: By 2020, a new plant near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania would supply up to 2,500 barrels a day of synthetic crude oil derived from plastics to a nearby refinery owned by Delta. Lightweight plastic packaging does not mean that less plastic is used in the process; in fact, more lightweight packages are produced. Germany has been named the recycling champion. As a customer, you have the unique ability to drive change and hold Target accountable for their misleading labeling. The film follows a family working in the countrys recycling industry, where humans pick through vast dunes of western waste, shredding and melting salvageable plastic into pellets that can be sold to manufacturers. No personalised information is collected. Only recycle plastics with No. Recycling rates in the west are stalling and packaging use is set to soar in developing countries, where recycling rates are low. Plastic recycling rates are declining even as production shoots up, according to a Greenpeace USA report out Monday that blasted industry claims of creating an efficient, circular economy as "fiction." The items are available online or through exclusive retailers. Many advanced recycling projects have emerged in recent years in response to a global explosion of plastic waste. For recyclers such as Smith, National Sword was a huge blow. Thats when China, once the top buyer of the worlds used plastic, banned these imports because its recyclers were overwhelmed. A spokesperson for Virgin Group and Richard Branson declined comment and referred questions to Agilyx. These islands receive a steady flow of plastic as improperly discarded trash on land ends up in a water source and, eventually, the ocean. The only downside is that the prices can be a little high. The ACC says these technologies are game-changers because they could potentially process all types of plastic, eliminating expensive sorting and cleaning. It is as if we have remembered that the old environmental slogan Reduce, re-use, recycle wasnt only catchy, but listed in order of preference. In May, the Malaysian government began turning back container ships, citing public health concerns. In the Video Op-Ed above, we debunk a recycling myth that has lulled us into guilt . But, all of a sudden, the industry is under intense scrutiny. But with plastic, it is not that simple. At the time, they couldnt, Griffiths says. Asked about the status of the company, Coates said opponents of chemical recycling were trying to damage the industry by pushing conspiracy theories about the technology. This article was amended on 6 June 2022. The findings provide yet more proof that. 'Plastic recycling is a myth': what really happens to your rubbish? Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, Everything you own will one day become property of the 250bn global waste industry. Composite: Guardian Design Team. Agilyx and Delta gave no time frame for the project to restart. It all sounded good. . Construction on the facility never started. This mainly applies to anything except clean #1 or #2 plastic products. The price of cardboard has probably halved in the last 12 months, he says. Coda moves, expands capacity in New . The market value of all has declined since their debuts. In the past two years, Reuters has learned, three separate advanced recycling projects backed by other major companies in the Netherlands, Indonesia and the United States have been dropped or indefinitely delayed because they were not commercially viable. The environmental activist organization now claims that businesses have crafted a "recycling myth," as it turns out the most cost-and-energy efficient options are using virgin plastics.. For decades, recycling has been championed by businesses and environmental groups alike as a critical way to reduce the amount of . Ocean plastic is even finding its way into the human food chain. Plastic recycling rates are . They were basically shut down, Vila Trejo said. We dont mind spending a little bit more to support the things that you believe in, but on some things, like pasta, its prohibitive.. At best, the sachets end up in landfill. Most of those endeavors are agreements between small advanced recycling firms and big oil and chemicals companies or consumer brands, including ExxonMobil Corp, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Procter & Gamble Co (P&G). That works out to about. The specific recycling bins may have certain rules about the types of plastics it can recycle. Recycling aluminium, say, is straightforward, profitable and environmentally sound: making a can from recycled aluminium reduces its carbon footprint by up to 95%. They said they could turn any old plastic back into a monomer. There was no equipment in there.. We look for the familiar triangle arrows, then pop the waste in the recycling bin so it can be reused. Hefty EnergyBag said in an emailed response to questions that it continues to work with companies to help advance technologies that enable other end uses for the collected plastics. It declined to answer questions about Renewlogys operations, as did Dow spokesperson Kyle Bandlow. In reality, a mere 9% of recyclable plastic is recycled, and the better part of this recycled plastic is of inferior quality.The technique used for recycling plastic involves, for the time being, downcycling. Rhm buys Sabic's forms business, adding Lexan to its Plexiglas, Acrylite brands. The impetus is coming from two sets of players: big oil and chemical companies that make the petrochemicals used to manufacture plastic, and global consumer brands that use huge amounts of the material in packaging. According to the World Bank, 1.3kg of municipal solid waste is produced per person, per day just above the European average of 1.1kg. Of the r Only about 5% of the 51 million tons of plastic waste produced by American households in 2021 was recycled domestically, according to a new study conducted by the environmental nonprofit . The study, published on the Hefty EnergyBag programs websitelast year, found that in Boises case, pyrolysis fared worst among the three in terms of its overall global warming potential. China prohibited 24 types of waste from entering the country, found guilty of attempting to ship used nappies, sanitary towels and clothing, a US-made, artificially intelligent sorting machine, zero-waste shops that require you to bring your own containers. A study by Greenpeace USA found that of the 51 million tons of plastic waste generated by US households in 2021, only 2.4 million tons were recycled, about five percent. In the US, that figure is 25.8%. Plastic packaging has actually done an incredible service for the world, because it has reduced the amount of glass, metal and paper that we were using, he says. Phone 202-328-8842 Fax 202-328-8757 Email sojourners@sojo.net The trouble started when, in the late 70s, we began trying to recycle household waste, says Geyer. Boise first sent plastic waste to Renewlogy in June 2018, followed by at least five more truckloads in the following months, minutes of meetings of Boises Public Works Commission show. Renewlogy said the plant continues to operate. But the technology has yet to live up to its backers' lofty claims, a Reuters review of 30 projects found. No. Most of us think that recycling our plastic waste is a step towards saving the environment, but this . The properties that make plastic so useful and durable also make it nearly impossible to recycle. In fact, the robot has created a new human job to maintain it: this is done by Danielle, whom the crew refer to as Maxs mum. He ended up partnering with the researchers to launch a company that could do this. The ACC this month called on Congress to develop a national strategy to reduce plastic waste, including rapid scaling of advanced recycling. It will be new cardboard boxes within the fortnight and someone elses rubbish soon after. Hefty EnergyBag has forged similar arrangements with cement makers in Nebraska and Georgia, according to the environmental study of the program commissioned by Reynolds. But the city has no place else to put its plastic garbage, so its sticking with the Hefty EnergyBag program, Boises McCullough said. By combining Loop with shopping at local zero-waste stores, Hills has helped her family radically reduce its reliance on single-use packaging. When the latter banned imports of 24 kinds of waste, including plastic from the U.S., more plastic ended up in U.S. landfills, the news report said. Smith is not alone in putting his faith in technology. He directed further questions to Bakaya before telling Reuters to leave the premises. We produce 200 to 300 tonnes a day, says Jamie Smith, Green Recyclings general manager, above the din. In March 2019, Enerkem, a Montreal-based advanced recycler, announced that Anglo-Dutch oil giant Royal Dutch Shell Plc had joined a consortium of equity partners in a waste-to-chemicals recycling project to be based in Rotterdam, which they claimed was the first of its kind in Europe. The suggestion, however, that the issue of plastic pollution can be solved through recycling is a myth. The cup is constructed of paper, lined with a thin-coat of plastic, and topped with a sturdy plastic lid. Since the first major environmental movement of the modern United States in the 1960s, recycling has become a household name, with specific bins designated for plastics and paper distributed by the township to every residential home, school building, and office. On the other hand, No. Of this, it is estimated that 75%, or 26,970 tonnes of plastic is found in landfills. All are still operating on a modest scale or have closed down, and more than half are years behind schedule on previously announced commercial plans, according to the Reuters review. Despite the widespread use of recycling symbols and marketing aimed at convincing us that it is okay to use throwaway plastic, only plastic #1 and #2 bottles and jugs meet the minimum legal standard to be labeled recyclable. The projects failure, detailed for the first time by Reuters, shows the enormous obstacles confronting advanced recycling, a set of reprocessing technologies that the plastics industry is touting as an environmental savior and sees as key to its own continued growth amid mounting global pressure to curb the use of plastic. Of the more than 50 million tons of discarded plastic in America in 2021, only about 5% of it is recycled. For example, plastic litter is not separated during collection in The Netherlands. Not always. Their labels are misleading, and often incorrect. Countries need to deal with their own plastic waste. You have to wonder, is it a coincidence that the largest of the five plastic islands is in the Pacific? BASF said it now believes such an endeavor is viable. If you look at plastics, the picture is even bleaker. 9% of all the plastic is recycled, and consumers can only look at their city or waste haulers website to see if an item is collected. But its hard and its become a lot harder.. However, the Reuters review found some advanced recycling companies struggling with the same obstacles that have bedeviled traditional recyclers for decades: the expense of collecting, sorting and cleaning plastic trash, and creating end products that can compete on price and quality with fossil fuels or virgin plastic. There is cause for optimism: in December 2018, the UK government published a comprehensive new waste strategy, partly in response to National Sword. There is the green dot (two green arrows embracing), which indicates that the producer has contributed to a European recycling scheme. People drinking This allows us to recognise you as a previous visitor/user. With consumers and the government outraged at the plastics crisis, the waste industry is scrambling to solve the problem. In theory, plastic can be recycled. Bales of plastic waste piled up at advanced recycling firm Renewlogy in Salt Lake City, Utah on May 18, 2021. The business is all about turning straw into gold, says Smith, referencing Rumpelstiltskin. Visit Greenpeace Fund, a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) charitable entity created to increase public awareness and understanding of environmental issues through research, the media and educational programs. While virtually all plastics can be recycled, many arent because the process is expensive, complicated and the resulting product is of lower quality than what you put in. Until recently, some of the western worlds plastic waste was exported to China to be recycled. Renewlogy added that it continues to operate its plant as a testing facility to develop new plastic recycling technologies. Our numbers are vastly different from those used in the report, Renewlogy said in response to Reuters questions. A narrower analysis, looking just at the final recycling process and its contribution to global warming, found that pyrolysis scored better than landfilling but was worse than burning plastic in a cement kiln. You sort your recycling, leave it to be collected and then what? . The process of recycling is, for the time being, downcycling, which results in an undiminished use of new or virgin plastic. This means two things. This was contaminated with all sorts of undesirables: non-recyclable materials, food waste, oils and liquids that rot and spoil the bales. The result is Loop, which launched trials in France and the US this spring and will arrive in Britain this winter. The idea found its way to Griffiths, a former management consultant, by accident, after a mistake in a Warwick University press release. Most significantly, plastic pollution will not be solved by recycling because it doesn't stop the continual flow of new virgin-material plastic disposable goods every day that enter our environment like a giant oil spill. He ended up partnering with the researchers to launch a company that could do this. The myth created around plastic recycling has been one of simplicity. That is what needs to change. No. And yet the UK is a successful recycling nation: 45.7% of all household waste is classed as recycled (although that number indicates only that it is sent for recycling, not where it ends up.) The research urged consumers to exercise caution . A quick review of the main facts: . Everything you own will one day become the property of this, the waste industry, a 250bn global enterprise determined to extract every last penny of value from what remains. Bakaya garnered a string of accolades, including making Fortunes 40 under 40: Ones to Watch list in 2013. Joe Giudice, assistant public works director at the City of Phoenix, confirmed the facility was due to start being set up in August. Down in the yard, a haulage truck is being loaded with 35 bales of sorted cardboard. The number inside the recycling arrows refer to the type of plastic used to make the item. At the beginning of 2019, 30 of the worlds top industrial companies formed a partnership, the Alliance to end Plastic Waste(AEPW). It starts with materials recovery facilities (MRFs) such as this one, which sort waste into its constituent parts. Plastic must have a recycling rate of 30% to reach that standard; no plastic has ever been recycled and reused close to that rate. An inspector from the Salt Lake City Fire Prevention Bureau, Jose Vila Trejo, visited the recycling facility on Feb. 12, according to his inspection report. In many places a waste management system exists that claims to dispose, incinerate or recycle collected plastic waste. Self-regulation and greenwashing are two strategies widely used by the plastic industry to avoid taking actions against plastic production. At the same time, the packaging industry flooded our homes with cheap plastic: tubs, films, bottles, individually shrink-wrapped vegetables. Consumer goods companies like Unilever use billions of single-serve sachets to sell laundry detergent, instant coffee and other basics, mostly in poor countries. First, unlike metal, which can be melted down and reused over and over and over again,. In an emailed response to Reuters questions, Unilever said the project had faced some disruption due to Covid-19 but that the pilot plant was still operating. Greenpeace has found a new way to attack capitalism and popular industries. It compared the environmental impact of recycling plastic waste through a heating process known as pyrolysis the approach Renewlogy used to two traditional ways of handling it: burning it in cement kilns or putting it in a landfill. Intrigued, Griffiths got in touch. As of July, 14 U.S. states had passed these kinds of laws. Allan Griff, consulting chemical engineer, columnist for PlasticsToday, and self-professed realist . I think theres a lot of creative accounting going on to push the numbers up, Geyer says. Tom Szaky wants to apply the milkman model to almost everything you buy. Every donation made to Oceana strengthens our ability to save the oceans and feed the world and with you by our side we know we can restore our oceans. This is why most developed countries have colour-coded bins: to keep the end product as pure as possible. Some takeaways according to the report: The current 2021 U.S. plastic recycling rate is estimated to be between 5 to 6%. Bakaya grew up in Australia after her father emigrated there from India, she told business podcast Upside in 2020. No. The film follows a family working in the country's recycling industry, where humans pick through vast dunes of western waste, shredding and melting salvageable plastic into pellets that can be. At a time when demand for transport fuel is under pressure from government vehicle-efficiency mandates and the rise of electric cars, the oil industry is doubling down on plastics. Westminster council sent 82% of all household waste including that put in recycling bins for incineration in 2017/18. Proctor & Gamble, which makes Head & Shoulders, was keen to know what was next, so Szaky pitched something far more ambitious. Its going to be recycled in China! I hate to break it to everyone, but these places are routinely dumping massive amounts of [that] plastic and burning it on open fires.. In addition to consuming large amounts of energy, pyrolysis can generate toxic waste, such as dioxins, said Hideshige Takada, a geochemist and professor at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology who has studied pollutants in waste for decades. We dont call it waste; we call it materials, says Green Recyclings Smith, back in Maldon. Shell declined further comment. Last year, it spent $14 million lobbying members of Congress on various issues, the most the organization has ever spent, according to OpenSecrets.org, a non-profit initiative that tracks money in U.S. politics. Renewlogy did not respond to questions about Bates assertions. The Recycling Myth Big Oil's solution for plastic waste littered with failure Bales of plastic waste piled up at advanced recycling firm Renewlogy in Salt Lake City, Utah on May 18, 2021.. Recycling is as old as thrift. Its urging U.S. lawmakers instead to ease regulations on and provide incentives to advanced recycling companies. In the UK, recycling is largely a success story, and the alternatives burning our waste or burying it are worse. If National Sword has shown us anything, it is that recycling while needed simply isnt enough to solve our waste crisis. This is in no way recycling, said Lee Bell, advisor to the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN), a global network of public interest groups working to eliminate toxic pollutants. Food, and anything else, is burned or sent to landfill. REUTERS/George Frey, Plastic waste piled up at Renewlogy. Renewlogys technology, company founder Priyanka Bakaya told local media at the time, would heat plastic in a special oxygen-starved chamber, transforming the trash into diesel fuel. Now we send unwanted plastic to Mexico, where environmentalists say poor waste water treatment at recycling plants is flushing microplastics into streams. "More plastic is being produced, and an even smaller. From there, it will go well, that is when it gets complicated. Of the 8.3bn tonnes of virgin plastic produced worldwide, only 9% has been recycled, according to a 2017 Science Advances paper entitled Production, Use And Fate Of All Plastics Ever Made. A new chemical process can break down a variety of plastics into usable propane a possible solution to our inability to effectively recycle many types of plastic. The milkman model is about more than just the bottle: it makes us think about what we consume and what we throw away. There are labels that say Widely Recycled (acceptable by 75% of local councils) and Check Local Recycling (between 20% and 75% of councils). This consent helps website owners to understand how visitors interact with websites by collecting and reporting. Until her two-year term ended in December, Renewlogys Bakaya was the chair of the ACCs advanced recycling unit. But still the rubbish flows. Along the belt, human workers pick and channel what is valuable (bottles, cardboard, aluminium cans) into sorting chutes. Now is your chance to use your power to drive change. During theformationof thisalliance,these companies agreed to invest1 billion dollars in combattingplastic pollution. Reynolds did not respond to requests for comment. Functional technology enables a website to remember information that changes the way the website behaves or looks, like your preferred language or the region that you are in. The Japanese were recycling paper in the 11th century; medieval blacksmiths made armour from scrap metal. Some scientists challenge the assertion that melting unsorted plastic made from a variety of chemicals is good for the environment. On the one hand,these industry giantsact as if plastic pollution can be combatted by recycling. 6s and 7s are plastic foam food containers and mixed plastic that are simply too costly to process. The company said much of the junk belonged to other firms that it declined to name. She became a prominent figure in advanced recycling, promoting her technology on media forums such as National Geographic and the BBC. It said the facility had not shut down and that there was equipment at the site. As in China, the waste is often burned or abandoned, eventually finding its way into rivers and oceans. These packets are nearly impossible to recycle, and have become a major source of pollution in places like Africa and Southeast Asia. Concerned about profits, oil and plastics executives gathered secretly to devise a strategy to confuse consumers. Green Recycling is tucked away at the end of an industrial estate, surrounded by sound-deflecting metal boards. Some of that happens in the UK, but much of it about half of all paper and cardboard, and two-thirds of plastics will be loaded on to container ships to be sent to Europe or Asia for recycling. Unilever did not respond to questions about this claim. What consumers cant check on, is whether that plastic item goes from the sortation facility to landfill, to incineration, or is exported instead of being recycled. This figure provides evidence of a functional recycling ecosystem for plastics. This would mean that the vast majority of plastic waste in the country is mismanaged, ending up in dumpsites, burned or left to contaminate the natural environment. Green Recycling is a commercial MRF: it takes waste from schools, colleges and local businesses. The line at Green Recycling handles up to 12 tonnes of waste an hour. Sachets are used to dispense a vast array of products, including fast-food ketchup, shampoo and toothpaste. . Were seeing a significant rise in boxes, thanks to Amazon. By the end of the line, the torrent has become a trickle. Americans first began complaining about plastic in earnest in the 1970s, as Earth Day celebrations grew in popularity. Renewlogy said it would be starting very small and would be validating each step before scaling up.. These types of studies will really push the chemical recyclers to think about their operations, said Tad Radzinski, president of Sustainable Solutions Corporation, the consultancy which conducted the study. Recycling steel and tin cans saves 60 to 74 percent; recycling paper saves about 60 percent; and recycling plastic and glass saves about one-third of the energy compared to making those. She attended Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), graduating from the latter in 2011. The greatest trick companies ever played was making us think we could recycle their products. At least four high-profile projects have been dropped or indefinitely delayed over the last two years because they werent commercially viable. Since Blue Planet II brought the plastic crisis to our attention, a dying trade is having a resurgence in Britain: the milkman. The Rotterdam project was supposed to convert waste from the equivalent of more than 700,000 homes, Enerkem said in a March 2019 press release. 1s and No. Ultimately, the widespread belief that plastic can be recycled is a form of wishcycling. Advanced recycling projects have mushroomed globally, especially since 2018. In a June email to Reuters, he described the project as on hold and said we remain optimistic about its prospects. Perhaps there is an alternative. One of the hardest hit has been PureCycle, a Florida-headquartered advanced recycling startup that went public this year through a special purchase acquisition company. Thailand and India have announced bans on the import of foreign plastic waste. Over the last few years, multinational companies set goals for plastic waste management derived by single-use packaging. But that counted U.S. exported material as recycled when it was largely burned or dumped. Branson tweeted on Nov. 25, 2018: This is a major step forward in the search for a cost effective low carbon aviation fuel.. No. Boise officials said theyve been transparent with the public about the handling of their plastic waste. It said in October 2019 it invested 20 million euros in Quantafuel, a Norway-based plastic-to-fuel company listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange. Loop is a not a product company; its a waste management company, says Szaky. The idea found its way to Griffiths, a former management consultant, by accident, after a mistake in a Warwick University press release. In reality, only 9% of all plastic in use worldwide is recycled, and the majority of this recycled plastic is of inferior quality. Although the sachets could be recycled in small amounts, the people said, it was too expensive to collect, sort and clean enough of these packets to scale up the project without incurring large losses. Myth #2: All plastic items marked with the chasing recycling arrows are recyclable. But the true purpose of those triangles has been misunderstood by the general public ever since their invention in the 1980s. The other 91% has ended up in landfills or incinerated or . Humans will pick between 20 and 40, on a good day. A camera system identifies the waste rolling by, displaying a detailed breakdown on a nearby screen. In Seattle and on campus, recycle by size and shape. This project marks the first truly commercial-scale facility that will advance the new plastics economy, Agilyxs CEO at the time, Joe Vaillancourt, said in the release. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it does not have any data to show that substitution of plastic waste for coal makes a significant difference in air emissions.. Recycling plastic results in a poorer quality compound, so most plastics are "downcycled" into a product that cannot be further recycled such as clothing, park benches, and plastic "lumber." Because a "downcycled" item cannot be recycled, plastic eventually ends up in a landfill or the environment. The flow of rubbish has shifted to other Asian countries, but they, too, are beginning to implement restrictions or are closing their borders to foreign plastic waste. A contaminated item may contain food scraps or other substances, meaning that the plastic is not clean, and therefore, cannot be recycled. The trouble started when, in the late 70s, we began trying to recycle household waste, says Geyer. Its a small deposit, 3 [per container]. Recycling steel and tin cans saves 60 to 74 percent , recycling paper saves about 60 percent, and recycling plastic and glass saves about one-third of the energy compared with making those. To see the Greenpeace report that explains how many plastics cannot be recycled, click here. The common Starbucks cup is an illustration of why recycling is too expensive to work. Renewlogy is among a crop of advanced recycling startups using heat or chemicals to turn plastic waste into new products. Target is selling you products that are labeled as recyclable, but in fact, are not. At best, the sachets end up in landfill. The American Chemistry Council (ACC), an industry group whose membership is dominated by plastics makers, says polluter-pays measures would hurt the economy. Or, if pressed, to recycle only No. It ended its first day of trading on March 18 with shares up 13% to $33, giving it a market capitalization of around $3.8 billion. The truth is, plastic recycling has been broken since it began. ecycling is as old as thrift. According to its website, PureCycle uses a ground-breaking recycling process developed by P&G, maker of Gillette razors and Head & Shoulders shampoo, to turn a particular type of waste plastic, polypropylene, back into resin. Back in Idaho, Anne Baxter Terribilini, a resident of Meridian, a Boise suburb, said she initially was eager to participate in the Hefty EnergyBag program, but was disillusioned to learn that her plastic waste now ends up in a cement kiln. The governors office in Utah said it gave a total of $200,000 in grants in 2016 and 2017, while Salt Lake Citys Department of Economic Development provided $350,000 in loans in 2015 to PK Clean, according to Peter Makowski, acting director of business development for the department. REUTERS/George Frey, Bales of plastic waste piled up at Renewlogy. The Interior Department said Wednesday, June 8, 2022, it will phase out single-use plastic products on national parks and other public lands over the next decade, targeting a leading source of U.S. plastic waste such as food and beverage containers, straws and bags. Given the paucity of plastic recycling in this country, and the comparative environmental risks associated with sending it abroad, perhaps the smarter approach, until a real solution emerges, is to just not use the stuff. Their labels are misleading, and often incorrect. Under its National Sword policy, China prohibited 24 types of waste from entering the country, arguing that what was coming in was too contaminated. That works out to about 300 pounds of plastic per person ending up in landfills and. Unilever, which makes Dove soap and Hellmanns mayonnaise, said publicly it began operating a pilot plant in Indonesia in 2018. Pyrolysis has been tried before on plastic. Since National Sword, sorting has become even more crucial, as overseas markets demand higher-quality material. 10/12/2018. The boom is also being fueled by investors looking for the next hot green-tech industry. Among its proposals: a tax on plastic packaging containing less than 30% recycled material; a simplified labelling system; and means to force companies to take responsibility for the plastic packaging they produce. Of the more than 50 million tons of discarded plastic in America in 2021, only about 5% of it is recycled. Renewlogy said it left the program because plastic waste being sent from Boise was too contaminated to recycle. Greenpeace is asking Target to review their labeling, remove any false or deceptive labels from their products, and publicly commit to phasing out single-use plastic throughout their stores. That measure estimated the greenhouse gas emissions of the whole process, from manufacturing the garbage bags and transporting the waste to the energy used in the recycling process. The Japanese were recycling paper in the 11th century; medieval blacksmiths made armour from scrap metal. The company told Reuters it has been burning Boises plastic since March 2020 as a replacement for coal. Enter advanced recycling. Pressure is also building for polluter-pays laws that would shift the cost of waste collection from taxpayers to the companies that make and use plastic. Yet such is the torrent of humanitys refuse that these efforts may not be enough. Big Plastic invested heavily in persuasion campaigns designed to sell recycling as a viable way to repurpose used plastic despite knowing that the process might never catch on as long as it was cheaper to make new plastic than it was to recycle it. They dont want to be the worlds dumping ground, quite rightly, Smith says, as we walk along the Green Recycling line. Plastic waste and recycling myths. Campaigns based on consumer behaviour are flourishing to fight against plastic waste pollution. In 2017, TerraCycle worked with Head & Shoulders on a shampoo bottle made from recycled ocean plastics. When I participated in recycling awareness initiatives during my school days, I believed I was doing something good for the environment. Mixed plastics, such as this, must be physically sorted in order to be recycled. A few months later, residents of Boise and its suburbs began stuffing their yogurt containers, cereal-box liners and other plastic waste into special orange garbage bags, which were then trucked more than 300 miles (483 kilometers) away, across the state line to Salt Lake City, Utah. Asked whether Renewlogys plant was the one it examined, Sustainable Solutions said it could not name the plant because of a non-disclosure agreement with that facility. At worst, they end up as litter in the streets, the waterways and the oceans, Unilever said in its 2017 CreaSolv announcement. It is tempting to see plastic piled up in Malaysian landfills and assume recycling is a waste of time, but that isnt true. Let's be clear about what plastics are actually recyclable. The carbon-reduction benefits are also less clear. For those people, Pepsi's success in reaching its goal of having 10-per- cent recycled PET content in bottles should be proof that the bottle-to-bottle cycle is active. The policy shift was partly attributed to the impact of a documentary, Plastic China, which went viral before censors erased it from Chinas internet. Since then, a shocking new Greenpeace report has revealed that most types of single-use plastic cannot be recycled in the United States. While it may be technically true that many types of plastic can indeed be recycled, the process is far too expensive for it to happen in any economically viable way. Renewlogy said it shares the Salt Lake City premises with other companies that work on pyrolysis of wood and other waste, and that much of the junk Reuters saw on the back lot belonged to other firms that it declined to name. The back lot contained dozens of bales of plastic waste dotted with faded orange recycling bags stacked next to rusty oil drums and a wheelbarrow full of glass jars containing a murky liquid. If China doesnt take plastic, we cant sell it. Still, that waste has to go somewhere. Pyrolysis can generate toxic waste, such as dioxins.. It is filthy, polluting work and badly paid. But they are gone in a moment. Household recycling requires sorting at a vast scale. This was contaminated with all sorts of undesirables: non-recyclable materials, food waste, oils and liquids that rot and spoil the bales. About halfway, four women in hi-vis and caps pull out large chunks of cardboard and plastic films, which machines struggle with. 2. 3s are deemed too toxic to even try to recycle outside of a lab. More than 90% gets dumped or incinerated because theres no cheap way to repurpose it, according to a landmark 2017 study published in the journal Science Advances. Customers pay a small deposit, and the used containers are eventually collected by a courier or dropped off in store (Walgreens in the US, Tesco in the UK), washed, and sent back to the producer to be refilled. Learn how you can help hold retailers accountable. Even the deliveries come in a specially designed insulated bag, to cut down on cardboard. We want our waste hidden. Plastic recycling does not work and will never work. You can get involved right now. (Incineration, while often criticised for being polluting and an inefficient source of energy, is today preferred to landfill, which emits methane and can leach toxic chemicals.) The only plastic recycling that is happening in Asia at scale is PET/HDPE recycling in major urban areascommonly referred to as "rPET." Earlier this month, Maine became the first U.S. state to pass such legislation. It recycles the kind of plastics that mechanical recycling cant look at: the pouches, the sachets, the black plastics, says Adrian Griffiths, the founder of Swindon-based Recycling Technologies. The present dumping ground of choice is Malaysia. Tina Hill, a Paris-based copywriter, signed up to Loop soon after its launch in France. Renewlogy later this year plans to launch another plastics recycling facility, this one in Phoenix, Arizona, according to its website. We need to expand recycling access, fix system-wide challenges, support emerging end markets, and design packaging to be recyclable in practice . (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File). The remainder is often burned in the open air. The benefits of automation, Smith says, are twofold: more material to sell and less waste that the company needs to pay to have burned afterwards. Throw out Tupperware and plastic takeout containers, and replace with Pyrex. By moving from disposable to reusable, you unlock epic design opportunities, says Szaky. These giants are striking deals with startups that claim they can transform this garbage into fuel or resin to make new plastic. For example, plastics allow you to hold devices that have lots of electricity flowing through them without the fear of. When I think about the plastic conspiracy, I think about my mom, who loyally rinses out her recyclables, peels off labels from bottles and cans, and separates them by type for pick up by the recycling company. In future, Szaky anticipates that Loop will be able to email users warnings for expiry dates and other advice to reduce their waste footprint. The number denotes the grade but, interestingly, also presages the likelihood of that product ever being recycled. Shell will make a decision in 2022 on whether to invest, a company spokesperson said. Renewlogy co-founder Benjamin Coates emerged from the building to speak to a reporter. In the UK, there are 28 different recycling labels that can appear on packaging. In hindsight, she said, it would have been better to build a customized recycling program with a local partner so that Boise could control where its waste was going. If you use more glass, more metal, those materials have a much higher carbon footprint. The company recently launched a trial scheme with Tesco and is already working on a second facility, in Scotland. In October last year, a Greenpeace Unearthed investigation found mountains of British and European waste in illegal dumps there: Tesco crisp packets, Flora tubs and recycling collection bags from three London councils. Environmental groups tracking chemical pollutants say incinerating plastic this way produces significant carbon emissions and releases dioxins associated with the chemicals in the plastic. Hefty EnergyBag said Renewlogy left the program for good in December 2020. This song was my first formal education in sustainable living. Nor has pyrolysis proven capable of transforming unsorted garbage into high-quality fuel and clean plastic resin, says Susannah Scott, a chemistry professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who receives funding from the plastics industry to perform recycling research. Scott said melting different numbered plastics together through pyrolysis produces a complex blend of hydrocarbons that must then be separated and purified for reuse. Renewlogy said in an emailed response to Reuters questions that it could recycle plastic films. Were actively working with others to determine ways to scale this technology, a company spokesperson said. A shocking new Greenpeace report reveals that most types of single-use plastic cannot be recycled in the United States. For a whole day of third grade, we had an assembly sorting trash, singing songs, and all wearing matching green shirts with the iconic recycling logo on the back. Eventually, Griffiths hopes to sell the machines to recycling facilities worldwide. Other countries, too, are shutting their doors to foreign waste, putting pressure on the developed world to deal with its own garbage. MYTH: Plastic recycling is broken. Thus began THE MYTH OF PLASTICS RECYCLING. 702 H Street, NW, STE 300, Washington, D.C. 20001 | 1-800-722-6995. Most "recyclable" plastics are either landfilled, burned, or end up in the oceans. These cookies will be retrieved when you visit or use our Website again. FACT: According to the EPA, nearly 6.2 billion pounds of plastic were recycled in 2018. A crushed Tupperware container, the meal inside uneaten. Current Agilyx CEO Tim Stedman told Reuters in March the project was delayed due to negotiations over contracts and finances and was eventually killed by COVID, referring to the pandemic that spread around the world in early 2020. Most experts agree that recycling is an important way to reduce waste and to recover valuable materials, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and conserving significant amounts of energy and water. This website uses some cookies which are placed on your device. The Utah governors office said the program under which PK Clean received the grants had ended and it was no longer funding the company. It's just that the process of recycling plastics of different types can change based on its physical and chemical compositions. Advanced recyclers say theyre overcoming these problems with innovations in energy efficiency and purification. FILE - A trash can overflows as people sit outside of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial by the Tidal Basin, Dec. 27, 2018, in Washington, during a partial government shutdown. What is the problem with biodegradable plastic and what are compostable plastics? Countries like Malaysia and Thailand took up the slack for a while, but then changed their minds. According to Statista, the cumulative plastic production estimate in 2050 will be 34 billion metric tons, up from 8.3 billion in 2017. Hefty EnergyBag, as the recycling program in Boise is known, is a collaboration between Dow and U.S. packaging firm Reynolds Consumer Products Inc, maker of the programs orange garbage sacks and popular household goods such as Hefty trash bags, plastic food wrap and aluminum foil. But that hasn't stopped the plastics industry from embarking on a decades-long misinformation campaign to perpetuate the plastic recycling myth . One great hope is chemical recycling: turning problem plastics into oil or gas through industrial processes. But new research reveals that most of these so-called "home-compostable" plastics don't live up to their labels. Cleaning contaminated plastic takes a lot of energy and resources, so many times, these are thrown in landfills. At Recycling Technologies in Swindon, nearly all plastics can be turned into plaxx, an oil that can be used to make new plastic. But, like most European countries, it actually recycles much less plastic than is commonly believed. China, however, no longer wants our plastic rubbish. But its shares tumbled 40% on May 6, the day short-seller Hindenburg Research published a report calling the recyclers technology unproven and its financial projections ridiculous. PureCycle shares have since regained some ground. Haley Falconer, Boises sustainability officer, said the city has learned from the setbacks. Not only is this garbage choking landfills and despoiling oceans, its contributing to global warming because its made from fossil fuels. REUTERS/George Frey, A wheelbarrow full of glass jars containing a murky liquid at Renewlogy. Only about 5% of the 51 million tons of plastic waste produced by American households in 2021 was recycled domestically, according to a new study conducted by the environmental nonprofit. We need your help to expose the reality that recycling is not the solution to this single-use plastic crisis. A Salt Lake City fire inspector who visited in February told Reuters the facility was basically shut down with no equipment inside. Will you start by checking out our exciting new toolkit? During the second world war, scrap metal was made into tanks and womens nylons into parachutes. The Plastic Pandemic: COVID-19 trashed the recycling dream. Formerly known as PK Clean, the firm received $550,000 in grants and loans from Utah taxpayers. 2 or No. Plastic waste ready for inspection before being sent to Malaysia; the UK produces more refuse than it can process at home about 1.1kg per person per day. Bakaya said in a TEDx talk in 2015 that she initially set up a company called PK Clean to recover oil from mixed, dirty landfill-bound plastic. PK Clean later changed its name to Renewlogy, Bakaya said in an interview with MIT in 2017. UNILEVERS RADICAL RECYCLING FALTERS. In case you missed it, in August of this year there were more than 8 billion of us on the planet. From councils burning the lot to foreign landfill sites overflowing with British rubbish, Oliver Franklin-Wallis reports on a global waste crisis. In the U.S. barely 6% of that waste was recycled last year, down from around 9% in 2018, as nations like China stop taking U.S . Waste sorting is already a habit for Germany and Germans. K. Ward Cummings (kwardcummings@gmail.com) is a former senior congressional staffer and the author of The Capitol Hill Playbook (2nd Edition), written under the pen name Nicholas Balthazar. With pyrolysis, the value of what youre making is so low, Scott said. But, every single plastic created can be recycled. But within a year it was clear the technology was not commercially viable, and plans to build a full-scale operation were dropped, two people involved in the program told Reuters. Its really a complete myth when people say that were recycling our plastics, says Jim Puckett, the executive director of the Seattle-based Basel Action Network, which campaigns against the illegal waste trade. Were just looking at waste before it begins.. n alarm sounds, the blockage is cleared, and the line at Green. Outside, a machine called an Air Spectrum masks the acrid odour with the smell of cotton bedsheets. That means lower volume, but better margins, as the company can charge clients directly and maintain control over what it collects. These goals are all similar; McDonalds, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Coca-Cola and other major companies all promise that by 2025 or 2030, their packaging will consist of 100% of renewable, compostable, or recycled materials. a new investigative report from reuters, "the recycling myth: big oil's solution for plastic waste littered with failure", published 29 july 2021, details the ways in which the industries that create and recycle plastic are hiding the hard realities of plastic recycling: they're hard to separate; they are dirty and costly to clean; they contain An assessment of the Hefty EnergyBag program was commissioned by Reynolds. Margins are thin and landfill tax is 91 a tonne. Recycled plastic is generally down-cycled into lower quality, lesser value plastic. Academics and NGOs doubt those numbers, due to the uncertain fate of our waste exports. Back in Boise, the Hefty EnergyBag program continues, but Renewlogy is no longer involved. The ACC, the chemicals trade group, continues to promote the potential of advanced recycling. Plastic that does not enter the ocean by a stream, lake, or river route will, over time, travel over land to accumulate on one of the worlds beaches, where it is ground by the surf into progressively smaller bits and carried out by the tide. But the true. The New York Times. The Myth of Plastic Bottle Recycling - Ethics Alerts The Myth of Plastic Bottle Recycling May 8, 2014 Most of us are under the impression that plastic bottles are being recycled once they are put in a recycling bin. R-E-C-Y-C-L-E, please recycle each and every day! Plastics Are Inert, Indigestible, Non-Toxic, and Widely 'Myth-Understood'. The problem with recycling plastic is that it doesnt really happen. Boises plastic waste is now being trucked to a Utah cement plant, which burns it for fuel. The company said its technology could turn hard-to-recycle plastic garbage into diesel fuel. And of course, we know very well that what gets burned or landfilled ends up contaminating our environment too, with toxic chemicals ending up in the soil we grow our food, the water we drink, and the air we breathe. Enerkem says its technology uses extreme heat to turn plastic and other common household garbage into bio-methanol, a fuel for use in the chemical industry and transportation sector. (The US, the worlds most wasteful nation, produces an astonishing 2kg per person per day.) Then, on the first day of 2018, China, the worlds largest market for recycled waste, essentially shut its doors. But Renewlogy was unable to handle plastic films, used to make food packaging and grocery bags, and eventually left the program, the City of Boise told Reuters. No civilised society should be getting rid of its waste to a developing country.. That company, TerraCycle, is now a recycling giant, with operations in 21 countries. In theory, all plastic can be used again. A Greenpeace USA study found that of 51 million tons of plastic waste generated by US households in 2021, only 2.4 million tons was recycled, around five percent. But like many European countries, it actually recycles a lot less plastic . For example: Unilever is working on toothpaste tablets that dissolve into paste under running water; Hagen-Dazs ice-cream comes in a stainless steel tub that stays cold long enough for picnics. 3. It can't be used to make the same products again; for example, food packaging that is recycled cannot be used again as food packaging. This symbol holds meaning. An alarm sounds, the blockage is cleared, and the line at Green Recycling in Maldon, Essex, rumbles back into life. Wishcycling is aspirational recycling, or the practice of throwing items into the recycling bin that can't actually be recycled hoping for the best. Renewlogy did not respond to questions about how much of Boises plastic waste it had recycled. During the second world war, scrap metal was made into tanks and womens nylons into parachutes. At Recycling Technologies pilot plant in Swindon, plastic (Griffiths says it can process any type) is fed into a towering steel cracking chamber, where it is separated at extremely high temperatures into gas and an oil, plaxx, which can be used as a fuel or feedstock for new plastic. While the global mood has turned against plastic, Griffiths is a rare defender of it. Boise spokesperson Colin Hickman said the city was not aware of any statements or assurances made to Renewlogy about specific levels of contamination. Last year, Green Recycling became the first MRF in the UK to invest in Max, a US-made, artificially intelligent sorting machine. Enerkem said the project was never cancelled, rather repurposed to focus on making jet fuel from waste due to high demand for a sustainable product. Sixty percent of plastics that are certified for home composting don't fully disintegrate, according to a study published last week in the journal Frontiers in Sustainability. In June, one of the UKs largest waste companies, Biffa, was found guilty of attempting to ship used nappies, sanitary towels and clothing abroad in consignments marked as waste paper. The waste stands stacked neatly in bales, ready to be loaded on to trucks. Big retailers like Target are influential.