Recycling versus Reusables.
Where does our recycling actually go?
Growing up I always thought that recycling was such a wonderful way to reduce my impact on Mother Earth and a smart way to use technology to promote a more sustainable way of life.
I was always very happy to see the blue bins outside of homes in city streets, knowing that the trash was separate from the recyclables. I never gave any real thought to where it was actually going and what the process actually looked like. I was under the impression that the recycling was just processed and broken down and then reused in all the products, containers, and plastics back into circulation.
After 20 years of going blindly through my day to day life assuming that the recy- clables that I sat aside and made sure they where placed into the correct receptacle’s, I never thought more about the process or what exactly happened from that point. I know that some readers will ask why the thought did not cross my mind to maybe do a little web research and see where all this recyclable stuff actually went, well, I just trusted the advertisements that are so ever prevalent in our society.
That day came, the day that I went down the rabbit hole to see exactly what hap- pens to all of these “recyclables”. If you are curious about what really happens to all these plastics and materials that we are suppose to be sending off to be broken down and reused continue reading on and we will see where these materials go and what does in fact happen to them.
According to the EPA
A quote from EcoWatch said that the EPA reported “in the last 40 years, less than 10% of plastic has been recycled. According to another report the EPA estimated that in 2017, 35,370 tons of plastic were produced and 26,820 tons of that was landfilled. NPR reported that Plastic production is predicted to triple by 2050. Those numbers are not a sustainable trajectory for Earth and its inhabitants. Upon further research I discovered that the plastic industry had a nefarious profit driven plot with a massive ad campaign they began running in the late 1980’s. The Plastics industry never really set out to create a viable product solution that would produce a plastic material that could be sorted and reused in a new application. And upon further thought I won- dered what a model like that would look like from a manufactures point-of-view.
According to Lew Freeman, former vice president of government affairs for the in- dustries lobbying group, Society of the Plastics Industry, also known as SPI, said that "There was never an enthusiastic belief that recycling was ultimately going to work in a significant way”. And Larry Thomas, who also worked for SPI for over ten years up until the year 2000 said that the push to recycle as a strategy was simple, "The feeling was the plastics industry was under fire, we got to do what it takes to take the heat off, because we want to continue to make plastic products," Thomas says. "If the public thinks the recycling is working, then they're not going to be as concerned about the environment."
Here is a great video found on YouTube called How the Plastics Industry Used Recycling to Fend Off Bans It is an interesting look into the recycling industry and what kind of thought processes was behind the initial foundation upon which this idea was built.