From The Jersey Sierran, July - September 2022
More than 50 years ago, the need to recycle our plastic waste was being discussed by the plastics industry. A key speaker at a chemists’ conference in New Jersey said that inventing decomposable plastics “will be the holy grail of chemists everywhere.”
In the mid ‘70s, the NJ legislature voted against making deposits mandatory on soda bottles because it would hurt the glass bottle industry—which barely existed. In 1980, Woodbury established the country’s first mandatory curbside recycling program, but the state was still far behind. In 1981, the legislature enacted a voluntary five-year plan that set a goal of recycling 25 percent of the state’s municipal solid waste stream by 1986. Then, in 1987, the state passed a mandatory recycling law that affected all 21 counties.
Around the same time, several corporations and civic leaders began a “Keep America Beautiful” campaign. Oddly, the key players included the oil and gas industries that provide raw materials for plastics, plastics manufacturers, distributors, and retailers.
These corporations aired a number of commercials, including an emotional TV ad of a Native American (actually an actor of Italian-American descent) staring teary-eyed as trash was tossed at his feet. Then a baritone voice intoned the message, “People start pollution. People can stop it.”
Today’s recycling logo is based on a Mobius-looking recycling logo developed in 1970 for a corporation promoting its recycled cardboard products. That logo gradually morphed into today’s logo plus numbers indicating the chemical compounds of the different plastic products. These numbers had two functions. They reassured consumers the plastics would be recycled and informed recyclers of their chemical properties. However, they became meaningless to both groups as the mountains of waste overwhelmed recycling programs.
Recycling is labor intensive. Materials must be collected and sorted manually, cleaned, then shipped to plants to create new items. As a result, products made from recycled plastics can be more costly than products made “from scratch.”
Eventually, recycling costs led the United States and other countries to ship plastics and other recyclables to other countries. Unfortunately, much of that exported waste was so contaminated with food, dirt, chemicals, and other unsavory matter that it couldn’t be recycled. Consequently, this waste wound up polluting villages or was burned. Both were health hazards, but burning also released toxic fumes, such as hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, dioxins, heavy metals, and many other substances linked to developmental disorders, endocrine disruptions, and even cancer.
When China shut its doors to plastic waste in 2018, the United States began exporting plastic waste and its hazards to other nations, principally Canada, Malaysia, Mexico, and Vietnam.
During the pandemic, American communities began collecting and recycling less plastic, according to a conglomerate of plastics producers that appealed to Congress to give the Environmental Protection Agency $1 billion to stimulate community recycling and improve the nation’s plastics recycling infrastructure.
About 91 percent (estimates vary) of our plastic waste still ends up as litter on our streets, in dumps, in the air—and even inside us! Plastic waste affects our economy, our quality of life, and even our health—especially in overburdened communities—because plastics don’t decompose quickly and improper combustion poses serious health risks. Decomposition takes up to 20 years for plastic bags and up to 450 years for plastic bottles. Plastics first break down into smaller pieces, then disintegrate further into microplastics 5 mm or less in size.
Today, about 8 to 10 million metric tons of plastic enters our oceans each year—about 3,000 pieces of plastic litter for every football field–sized patch of sea floor. Since the Earth’s sea floors are roughly equivalent to 72 billion football fields, that equals 216 trillion pieces of plastic in our oceans.
Good news! New Jersey is addressing the problem of plastic waste. Last November, Gov. Phil Murphy signed a bill banning single-use plastic and paper shopping bags; and this January, he signed a bill requiring that new plastic items include recycled material. For rigid plastic containers and beverage bottles, the percentage of recycled material must incrementally increase until it reaches 50 percent.
Further, the Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act introduced in Congress, would require a broader list of reforms; and Coca-Cola, which produces about 120 billion plastic bottles a year, has said it intends to include 50 percent recycled content in its plastic bottles by 2030.
But that’s hardly enough. With at least 330 million metric tons of plastic produced each year, we must demand stronger recycling programs that effectively counter the problem of plastic waste.
However, approving futuristic enabling legislation is not the same as writing more immediate enforcement regulations. We must constantly push our NJ state representatives (use the map to select your district) and US senators and representatives to pass legislation with “teeth” that is effective now, not in 20 or 30 years.
Resources
The Guardian: “Plastic investigation reveals America’s dirty secret”
NJ.com: “Our (N.J.) single-use plastic ban has begun”
Sierra Club: “Who Recycles Your Recycling?
Columbia Climate School: “Recycling in the U.S. Is Broken”
Sierra Club: “Plastics Fact Sheet”
National Geographic, “A whopping 91% of plastic isn’t recycled”