Plastic recycling is a “fiction”. For Greenpeace USA, the circular plastic economy touted by the industry does not exist. Plastic recycling rates are declining in the United States while production is on the rise, according to a report released Monday (October 24th) by the association. According to this survey, American homes generated 51 million tons of plastic waste in 2021, of which only 2.4 million tons were recycled.
“Industry groups and large corporations have pushed to present recycling as a solution. (…) By doing this, they have evaded all responsibility.”
Lisa Ramsden, Greenpeace USAat AFP
The trend is downward, especially since China stopped accepting plastic waste from the West in 2018 and at the same time recycling some of it. In addition, plastic production prices are falling due to a rapidly developing industry.
Recyclable products in theory, less in practice
According to Greenpeace USA, only two types of plastics are accepted at most of the country’s 375 material recovery centers. These two types are categorized numbers 1 and 2, according to the standards used, which include a total of seven kinds of plastic.
But being recyclable in theory does not mean that the products are actually recycled. According to the report, PET and PE-HD had refurbishment rates of 20.9 and 10.3% respectively – two numbers down from Greenpeace USA’s last survey in 2020.
In addition, type 3 to 7 plastics, which include plastic bags, children’s toys or yogurt packaging, were reconditioned at rates below 5%. Although marked with the symbol indicating possible recycling, these products using plastics 3 to 7 are not actually recycled enough to be classified as such by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
The environmentally harmful recycling process
According to the report, the practice of plastic recycling is not working for five reasons. First, because the amount of plastic waste is such that it is difficult to collect all of it. Then, even if they were all recovered, since these wastes cannot be recycled together, it would make in practice “impossible to sort trillions of products”according to the report.
Third, plastic recycling processes are themselves harmful to the environment, exposing workers to chemicals and generating micro-plastics. The fourth reason is that these recycled plastics cannot be reused to contain food, because of the risks of toxicity. Finally, recycling is too expensive, according to the NGO. “New plastics are in direct competition with recycled ones”and the first “are much cheaper to produce, for better quality”says the report.