Plastic recycling rates are falling in the United States, while production is on the rise, according to a report released Monday (October 24) by Greenpeace USA, which called the existence of a touted circular plastic economy “fiction”. from the industry.
American households generated 51 million tons of plastic waste in 2021, of which only 2.4 million tons was recycled, according to a Greenpeace report released on Monday, October 24.
The trend has been declining, especially since China stopped accepting plastic waste from the West in 2018, while at the same time recycling some of it. In addition, producer prices for plastics are falling due to a rapidly developing sector.
“Industrial groups and large corporations have pushed to present recycling as a solution,” Lisa Ramsden of Greenpeace USA told AFP. “By doing this, they avoided liability,” she added, citing companies like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Unilever and Nestlé.
According to Greenpeace USA, only two types of plastics are accepted in most of the country’s 375 material recovery centers.
The first is polyethylene terephthalate (PET), commonly used for bottles of water and soft drinks, and the second is high-density polyethylene (PE-HD), used for example for shampoo bottles or household products.
These two types are classified at numbers 1 and 2, according to the standards used, which include a total of seven types of plastics.
But being recyclable in theory doesn’t mean that the products are actually recycled.
According to the report, PET and HD-PE had restructuring rates of 20.9 and 10.3 percent, respectively, two numbers down from the latest Greenpeace USA poll in 2020.
In addition, type 3 to 7 plastic, which includes plastic bags, children’s toys, yogurt packaging, etc., has been refurbished at rates below 5%.
Although marked with the symbol indicating possible recycling, these 3 to 7 plastic products are not actually recycled enough to be classified as such by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
Economically unsustainable
According to the report, the practice of recycling plastic does not work for five reasons.
First of all, because the amount of plastic waste is such that it is extremely difficult to collect them all.
Furthermore, even if they were all recovered, since this waste cannot be recycled together, it would be virtually “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 microplastics.
The fourth reason is that these recycled plastics cannot be reused to contain food, due to the risk of toxicity.
Finally, recycling is too expensive, according to the NGO. “The new plastics are in direct competition with recycled ones,” and the former “are much cheaper to produce, for better quality,” the report stresses.
Lisa Ramsden called for priority to be given to non-plastic containers that can be reused and for companies to support an international treaty on plastics, the development of which was launched this year by the United Nations.
He pointed out that the problem of recycling plastics is unique and does not apply to cardboard or metals.
