[Sustain] The Plastics Recycling Myth

[Eric Brooks]

Hi all,

I recently wrote this response to a member on the Our City list, and
thought it would be informational to pass it on to the Greens as well...

Eric Brooks wrote:

Well, it's true that 'recyclable' plastic is shipped overseas to poor
countries, however almost none of it is recycled. Most of it is burned
in incinerators creating deadly and planet warming pollution.

Less than 25% (and probably more like less than 10%) of supposedly
'recyclable' plastics are actually 'recycled'.

And I put 'recycle' in quotes for a reason. It is actually a myth that
plastics can be recycled at all. It cannot. So called 'recyclable'
plastics have chemical bonds that are broken down and shortened each
time such plastic is melted down and reformed in to another product.
This means that 'recyclable' plastic can only be reformulated, at the
most, 5 times, each time being used, not to create the same product
'recycled', but another one that requires weaker plastic bonds.

So a bottle, becomes a bag, becomes part of a jacket, then becomes
molded into plastic 'lumber', and then it stays in that state,
continuing to decay toxic plastic waste into the environment for
millenia. This process is more properly named 'downcycling' not recycling.

And because this downcycling has gotten people to believe that plastic
is benign, we now use massively more of it for packaging than before.

For example, before plastics 'recycling' Coca Cola produced zero plastic
bottles. Now. Coca Cola -alone- produces 5 billion plastic bottles per
year. Even if 25% of that total is downcycled, and even if we pretend
that downcycling is somehow 'good', that means, that because of
Coca-Cola, by itself, there are now tens of billions more plastic
bottles polluting the environment that never would have been produced
had it not been for the recycling myth.

In fact, the reason that plastics recycling was begun by the plastics
manufacturers in the first place, is that a growing number of
environmentally aware governments in the 70's and 80's, were about to
start banning all plastic packaging and containers. Seeing that this
would put them out of business, the plastics manufacturers created
'recyclable plastic' and started putting deceptive 'running arrows'
symbols on -all- plastic containers -even- those that cannot be downcycled.

For more information see:
http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/new_articles.cfm?articleID=335&journalID=57
and
http://www.ecologycenter.org/iptf/recycling/plasticwasteexceedsrecyc.html

It is also very important with the new Mirkarimi law that we steer
clear of supposedly 'biodegradable' bags containing part plastic and
part corn, because the plastic doesn't actually degrade, it just breaks
down into smaller and smaller very tough toxic pieces.

Some biodegradable bags, like the ones made of potato starch, contain no
plastic. However, even here, we have a problem, because the planet is
now seeing a decline in arable land for food production, and within a
very short time we will actually be growing less food than the human
population needs. So using any land to produce bio-bags or bio-fuels
will quickly become an exercise in insanity.

peace,

Eric

> Hi Eric,
>
> Thanks for the reply.  I noticed today that plastic bags have been 
> banned in grocery stores.  For me, I have used the plastic bags that I 
> don't recycle as garbage bags.
>
> Our family uses very little that goes into the garbage bins.  We 
> purchase a lot of things with minimum packaging and still our large 
> recycling container that we share with our neighbors is always full.  
> We also use compostable bags as well as empty milk cartons for our 
> compost.
>
> Can you confirm for me something I heard, that our recycling is 
> shipped overseas to be sorted and recycled?  If this isn't true, the 
> city may want to make an effort to let people what is actually 
> happening so the rumors of futility aren't so potent.