Nicole PamaniComment

Resolving to Reduce Waste

Nicole PamaniComment
Resolving to Reduce Waste

The average American produces about 5.91 pounds of trash in a day.

Out of that waste, only about 1.51 pounds gets recycled.

But let’s talk about recycling for a second…. in 2016, the US exported 16 million tons of plastic, paper and metals to China. 30% of that waste was contaminated and unusable, ultimately resulting in an estimated 1.3 to 1.5 million metric tons of plastic finding its way into the ocean off China’s coast.

As a result, in 2018 China instituted a ban on most plastics and other materials that did not meet higher purity standards. The US then turned to Vietnam, Malaysia, and Thailand until they too instituted bans on imported plastic waste.

Today, the US still ships over 1 million metric tons of plastic abroad to countries like Cambodia, Bangladesh, Ghana, Laos, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Senegal - countries that are very much already overwhelmed with waste but have cheap labor and lax environmental regulations.

This bears an important question: Why are we shipping so much of our waste abroad?

Well there are a few reasons….

  1. Because of our reliance on China for so long, we do not have robust recycling systems here. Recycling infrastructure varies from municipality to municipality, with no standard operating procedures across the board. Where there has been no need, there has been no system design.

  2. Recycling is complicated. There are roughly 20 different categories of plastic, but beyond those 20 are blends and hybrids. Some are easily recyclable, but many types of plastic are not, and almost all of them are broken down by completely different processes. It’s not as easy as melting them all down and throwing plastic lava into a new mold.

  3. Recycling is expensive. Some recycled plastics cost as high as three times as much as virgin plastics, which are derived from cheap and readily available oil + petroleum. And so, there hasn’t been a huge market demand for recycled plastics. Without a sufficient demand for these materials, it becomes really difficult to justify the costs of labor, energy, water, and space.

All this to say: there is no business case for municipal recycling. As an industry (and recycling isn’t just a municipal service… it’s an INDUSTRY) it is not profitable.

As someone who works in the circular economy, I spend entirely too much time thinking about this broken system. Can we even fix it? Well. Here’s my potentially unpopular opinion: No. We can’t fix it.

Maybe, though, we can create a new system. A better system. One that is profitable and is in the hands of manufacturers and producers rather than municipalities. This is the theory behind extended producer responsibility - the idea that companies should be responsible for the materials they make/sell past the point of sale. Whether we’re talking about closed loop systems (where the materials come back to the manufacturer to be repurposed) or open loop systems that provide a competitive advantage or build brand loyalty …. I see way more opportunities for ROI if brands were to take extended responsibility for their products.

In this week’s episode of Do What You Can For The People, I chat with Kathy Pazakis, the Executive Vice President, Commercial of TerraCycle. TerraCycle is a company that partners with brands to recycle the hard to recycle. Kathy and I chat about why recycling is such a big challenge in the US, how so many household items aren’t actually curbside recyclable, and share some of our favorite FREE recycling programs from TerraCycle’s long list of partnerships. If one of your 2021 resolutions is to try and live a lower impact life, you might learn some helpful tips from this episode and find some support from TerraCycle’s programs! At the very least, I hope this inspires you to think a bit harder about what really happens when we throw things ‘away’ and what happens to waste that ends up in the wrong streams.

Cheers to a new year and a fresh opportunity for making an impact!

 
 

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