PART 1: AN ORIGIN STORY

Origins of plastic recycling

Part 1

The story of plastics is a story about convenience, consumption, profit, and narrow vision. It is about linear systems and disposable economies. It is a story about one country’s ability to effectively create, sustain, and now drastically transform a global industry. It is a story about markets and production. It is a story about stuff. The story of plastics is a story, ultimately, about us.

The advent of curbside plastics recycling programs in the United States – and for that matter globally – did not happen by chance in the 1990s. Rather, it was a byproduct of China’s demand for the raw materials needed to fuel an economic boom that produced much of the world’s goods. China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 only strengthened the country’s already burgeoning economy and trade activity with the likes of Europe and the United States.

The 1990s witnessed a barrage of cargo ships from China laden with toys, electronics, clothing, and other plastic goods arriving on the US West Coast. As their contents were offloaded and sent to retailers nationwide, the ships were full of empty cargo containers — valuable space that made no sense to send back empty overseas. What better way to fill these containers than with something China was willing to pay for and the US was equally happy to part with: plastic waste. It was an economic match made in heaven, especially since China did not produce much of its own virgin plastic but required large quantities of inexpensive plastics to meet the growing global demand for plastic goods.

While Chinese manufacturers craved America’s plastic waste, investments in domestic manufacturing infrastructure floundered in light of the very same economic factors that fueled the appetite overseas – cost and demand. Inferior manufacturing demand and the cost-prohibitive factors of US-based labor and facility operations could not compete with the inexpensive labor, readily available markets, and insatiable appetite from overseas — and all with virtually free shipping.

THE RECYCLING STREAM. Recycling is part of the solution, but it’s not enough. To do their part for the environment, people need to think beyond merely tossing their plastics in a recycling bin. Each year, less than 10% of plastics used in the US get recycled. It’s due to a variety of factors, including a lack of consumer awareness and participation in recycling programs, the volatility of prices for recycled plastics, processing costs, recyclables accepted by curbside programs, and the biggest challenge — the lack of recycling infrastructure. While 400+ million tons (and growing) of plastics are produced globally each year, recycling infrastructure remains largely stagnant.

[Information Artwork by Douglas Gayeton]

Reaching the tipping point.

The growth of the disposable economy created more than just overwhelming volumes of plastic. It’s creating new and different hybrid plastics that manufacturers can’t use. These evolving, multi-layered, complex polymers are designed for single-use and disposability as opposed to durability and recyclability.

Even something this economically rational could not last forever. After nearly three decades of growth and economic vitality, a number of factors emerged and began to take their toll on the virtuous cycle—namely a glut of plastics. The United States was far from the only country sending its plastic discards to China. And as plastics became more integrated into our everyday lives — covering our coffee, cradling our salads, and containing our bottled water—and as more and more nations bought into the system, China’s once mighty appetite for plastic began to wane.

THE PRE-SORT. Not all plastics are created equal, yet effective recycling of any plastic is dependent upon its marketability. These evolving plastics are generally designed for convenience and disposal, and the economics of recovery and thus scalable recycling solutions do not yet exist. If material processors like Recology cannot effectively collect the materials, and if recyclers cannot in turn sell the materials back to manufacturers, the recycling system falls apart. Plastics producers must be mindful of the utility, recyclability, and marketability of their products.

[Information Artwork by Douglas Gayeton]

Meanwhile, the quality of plastic bales arriving at Chinese ports deteriorated at the same rate that recycling popularity grew in the US and elsewhere. As recycling became available to the masses, and as the lower-grade, disposal-minded plastics entered the market, consumers’ thoughtless – or sometimes overzealous – participation in recycling programs led to messy, contaminated bales.

Add to these challenges the growing costs of labor and processing for recycled plastics. It turns out that collecting, sorting, baling, shipping, cleaning, shredding, melting, pelletizing, and coloring plastics requires resources, time, and people. All of these cost money, and the cost for manufacturers to use certain recycled plastics in their products quickly exceeded the cost of using new virgin resins.

Global Disruption.

And remember China’s economic boom? Thirty years of economic growth does a lot of good for a country – chief among them being the creation of a middle class. A middle class that, not surprisingly, creates its own waste that itself needs to be managed. China, fueled by the world’s waste, eventually came to generate enough of its own that its craving for foreign discards diminished further.

On the world stage, China’s emergence as a superpower (due to its economic boom and the resulting burgeoning middle class) included new climate and pollution reduction targets. They aimed to address the adverse environmental impacts created during the manufacturing frenzy of the previous 30+ years by curbing and reshaping the manufacturing and production processes across the country. Another factor is the country’s desire to cast itself in a new environmental light – one outside the shadow of being perceived as the world’s dumping ground.

All these factors – the glut, cost, evolution, and messy nature of plastics; peaking production; the emerging middle class; and the country’s arrival on the global environmental stage led to the country’s decision that it would all but eliminate the import of recycled materials, beginning in 2018. In addition, the Chinese government placed strict quality requirements on their remaining recycled material imports while banning others outright, including various grades of plastics. The announcement, not surprisingly, sent shockwaves throughout the global recycling industry as material processors and recyclers scrambled to identify new markets for the truckloads of recyclables that continued to arrive at their doors.

Markets emerged, particularly in Southeast Asia, but with only fractions of the appetite held by China. Compared to the formerly reliable, high-volume demands of the Chinese markets, the smaller markets in Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia are of greater distance from US ports and are quickly overloaded—resulting in backlogs of material and issues with these countries handling their own domestic waste streams.

In the end, recycling is dependent upon markets – markets that are subject to fluctuations and volatility caused by external factors like trade and labor relationships, costs and availability of virgin resources, and regional economic trends. If nobody wants to buy the materials or if market factors diminish the materials’ value, companies can’t profit from selling them, and the system falls apart.

Grappling with Change.

Back home, the disruption continues to be felt. Baled recyclables sit stockpiled in warehouses, waiting for an opportunity to be sold. Some cities, finding no other outlet, have turned to landfill-collected and baled recyclables. Still, others have reduced recycling programs, no longer accepting certain plastics they once did.

Recycling is not broken, but it’s grappling with change. It needs all the help it can get – from manufacturers, to processors, to individual consumers. The most effective – and perhaps only – way to combat the growing glut of plastic waste in our society is to refuse disposable plastics whenever and wherever possible. With the average American generating 215 pounds of plastic waste each year, we have created an issue that recycling alone cannot solve.

Despite the widespread availability of recycling collection programs, the EPA estimates that less than 10% of plastic waste generated in the United States is recycled each year. While this can be partially attributed to a lack of consumer participation in recycling programs, a number of other factors contribute to this lack of recovery.

THE PLASTIC BALE. Despite widespread implementation of national recycling programs and educational campaigns, the US recycling rate for PET plastics hovers around 30%, with the rest ending up in landfills, incinerators, or as litter. Lack of participation in these recycling programs, limited consumer awareness, and fluctuating commodity markets pose complex barriers to closed-loop recycling systems. With the average American generating 215 pounds of plastic waste each year, the most effective way to combat the growing glut of plastic waste in our society is to refuse single-use plastics in the first place.

[Information Artwork by Douglas Gayeton]

Our consumer culture – driven by the notion of new, better, and more – is by no means exempt from ecological principles. Resources (inputs) must come from somewhere, and waste (outputs) must in turn go somewhere. When something no longer retains its perceived value, our society simply wants to make it disappear. With ecology as our guide, Recology aims for the best and highest use of our society’s discards, by striving to capture value in what we, collectively, throw away.

As is often the case with complex problems, no one solution exists. Recycling is part of the answer, but it’s not enough. We need plastics manufacturers to produce resins that can be recycled at scale, and we need a new consumer consciousness that values those products. Yet, investments in recycling infrastructure alone – foreign or domestic – only validate a continued reliance on disposable plastics. The answer, ultimately, rests with a slackening and eventual elimination of our addiction to the plastics that for decades we cheerily, and perhaps naively, sent away. Ecology – the study of organisms and their interactions that govern all life on our planet – teaches us that there is no “away,” that everything goes somewhere.