Recycling Plastic: Myths vs. Realities

“Reducing plastic consumption begins at the household level, but combating the problem also means holding companies accountable for their own consumption.”

An estimated 242 million metric tons of plastic is produced every year, with the U.S. consistently topping charts as a major contributor. Despite the growing issue, only around 9% of plastic waste is actually recycled—a surprising fact considering how commonplace recycling has become. The unfortunate truth is that plastic is not easy to recycle.  

Plastic products are generally made up of a mixture of chemicals. This makes it more difficult to isolate the base materials that can be recovered and reused. So why is recycling framed as such a simple solution? For profit. 

During the last few years, multinational companies such as McDonald’s, Procter & Gamble, and Coca-Cola, have made ambitious promises of using 100% renewable, compostable, or recycled materials for their packaging by 2025 or 2030. However, conveniently left out of these statements is that plastic production is predicted to grow by 40% in the next decade, and these companies are eager to profit from this development. Hence, any proposals pushed forth by such corporations only allow for the unrestricted growth in plastic packaging production. 

In an NPR interview, Laura Leebrick, a manager at Rogue Disposal & Recycling, tried for years to tell the public the truth about how “it was costing more to recycle than it was to dispose of the same material as garbage,” a fact that the nation’s largest oil and gas companies knew all along but never disclosed to the American public. 

In a joint investigation with PBS Frontline, NPR spent months scouring internal industry documents and interviewing former officials. They discovered the plastic industry convinced the public that the majority of plastic could and would be recycled. Meanwhile, they were profiting off of selling the world new plastic. 

This greenwashing movement began as early as the 1970s. Commercial ads funded by oil and gas industry giants such as Shell, ExxonMobil, and Dow, disguised themselves as environmentalist messages fed to an unassuming public. At the same time, these same plastic industry moguls were initiating a number of feel-good projects to promote recycling, including sorting machines, recycling centers, and nonprofits, only a few of which were sustainable and actually turned plastic into new things. At the end of the day, no effort could circumvent the fact that making new plastic out of oil was substantially cheaper than making it out of old plastic trash. 

So what actually happens to this plastic trash if it isn’t recycled? Much of it is sent to landfills, while another generous portion is burned, releasing toxic greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. For many years the U.S. and other wealthy countries sold plastic trash to China to be recycled into new products. However, in 2018, the Chinese government abruptly shut down its recycling operations and cut back almost all imports of trash out of concern for contamination. Much of the plastic was polluted with materials that made it more costly to recycle, thereby curbing profits from importation. With China cracking down on plastic trash imports, a lot of plastic is now either being stockpiled in warehouses, ending up in landfills, or getting incinerated, discouraging consumers from recycling. 

Experts say this crisis isn’t a call for ending recycling efforts, rather to switch approaches and focus on being more mindful consumers. Reducing plastic consumption begins at the household level, but combating the problem also means holding companies accountable for their own consumption. Through sustained effort and innovation, a plastic-free world is within reach.