Look around as you stroll through your favorite grocery store. The shelves are full of plastic bottles that will need to be recycled, but often they are not. We need a bottle recycling bill to help send more recyclable plastics to our recycling centers. We also need the business community to be more willing to accept bottle returns.
Special infrastructure is needed for recycling plastic. It costs money. Some grocery chains and food producers have made an effort. This summer, ShopRite stores in New Jersey partnered with TerraCycle of Trenton to accept flexible plastics, such as zip baggies.
The NJ Department of Environmental Protection offers a page of answers to frequently asked questions about recycling. Each county in New Jersey provides more specific information for its residents. Be sure to check out their websites for helpful information.
Facing the Challenge of Recycling
We’ve all seen those plastic recycling chartswith the arrows and numbers. Often, we are disappointed to learn that our used plastic items have the wrong numbers and cannot be recycled. Some people put them into the recycling container anyway. This practice has been termed “wish-cycling.” It contaminates the plastic that is recyclable and increases the amount of waste. Nonrecyclable plastic must go out with the regular trash, and this of course is a big problem for the environment.
What About Plant-Based Plastics?
Plant-based! What a concept! Grow soybeans and turn them into plastic bottles that could be recycled and used again. Unfortunately, bioplastics are not as good as their hype. They break down slowly in the environment, produce methane gas, and contain everything that farmers sprayed on their crops, such as pesticides. It’s still a good ideato sidestep plastics and choose reusable containers and utensils.
Beyond Plastics, an anti-plastics advocate, notes that bioplastics are resource intensive: “In addition to the greenhouse gases produced, growing the crops to make these materials also requires significant amounts of fossil fuels, farmland, and water—all precious resources that can and should be used to grow actual food.”
Jenna Jambeck, an environmental engineer, states that there are benefits to bioplastics, but “only when taking a host of factorsinto consideration.” Bioplastic made from plant sugars, for example, won’t biodegrade in a meaningful timeframe unless intense heat is applied through industrial composting. “It’s really not any different from industrial polymers,” Jambeck says.
Other Considerations
Even if we cannot find alternatives, our deposits of petroleum, natural gas, and coal—from which most plastics are made—are limited.
Fossil fuels are huge contributors to global warming, but the problem is worse than that. Petroleum-based plastics, for example, can contain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which are toxic and leach into our water and food. Bioplastics also can contain https://www.beyondplastics.org/fact-sheets/bad-news-about-bioplastics.
Back to the Drawing Board!
It looks like we’ve got a long way to go before we solve the plastics problem. In the meantime, buy only products with clearly recyclable plastic, give up “wish-cycling,” and separate bad plastics from genuine recyclables. Be a voice calling for more solutions to the plastic pollution problem. Join beach and wildlife area cleanups whenever you can, and take back the plastic that’s choking our world!