Plastic does not recycle
The promises engage only those who believe them.This is the calculation that the plastic industry made in the 1980s, deciding to promote the recycling of its favorite material.At first glance, the idea seems attractive, shiny even.Who wouldn't want to believe in recycling?A virtuous process aimed at making plastic waste that we generate to make new packaging or new baths of baths.With this attractive promise: the end of plastic in the oceans and an infinite loop that would never produce virgin plastic again.Wait ... "never produce virgin plastic again"?Unless you are suicidal, how could the plastic industry support a process that would sign its death?
The answer is in the excellent Plastic Wars documentary, broadcast this spring and made jointly by NPR and PBS, radio and the public American television channel.In this investigation by journalist Laura Sullivan, three former industry officials admit for the first time with their face discovered that the promotion of recycling was only responding to a strategy to green the image of plastic with consumers and guilty them intheir purchases.We are talking so much about pollution these days that we tend to forget that forty years ago, plastic was already seen as an undesirable: a study of the US Congress exhumed by the days listed in 1989 law proposals targetingto ban it in at least sixteen states to reduce the pile of waste.Some suggested prohibiting expanded polystyrene of fast food trays, others vinyl polychloride (PVC) in containers and kitchen utensils.Several states even planned to proscribe disposable diapers and hygienic stamp applicators.Unimaginable today.
In an internal memo, the American industry is then concerned about "increasingly negative perception by the public", the image of plastic "deterior [ant] at an alarming speed".The Society of Plastics Industry (SPI) - The ancestor of the current lobby, the Plastics Industry Association - is quick to react.In 1988, she created an ad hoc committee, the Council for Solid Waste Solutions (CSWS), the advice for solutions to solid waste.Its members: virgin plastic giants (Exxon, Chevron, Dow, Dupont ...).Its mission: to find outlets for plastic waste to return in grace to consumers."The plastic industry was in the fire of criticism, we had to act to lower the pressure, because we wanted to continue to make plastic products," said Larry Thomas, who long directed the spinnaker.But how to act?Well, replies the former official in Plastic Wars, "if the public thinks that recycling works, then it will not be also concerned about the environment".CQFD.
The task is entrusted to Ronald Liesemer, then boss of the CSWS.He remembers the millions of dollars spilled in this project."Make recycling was for them a way to keep their products on the market," he confirms.This improved the image of plastic, and allowed them to continue selling it.And this, even though the industry was aware, from the 1970s, that recycling would be "expensive" and "difficult", as evidenced by internal documents given to American justice: one of them already evokes "A serious doubt "on the fact that plastic recycling is a large -scale operational day and" can never become economically viable ".Fifty years later, perhaps the situation has changed, we take it to hope.Negative, shower Ronald Liesemer: what was written at that time "is still topical and will still be tomorrow".
Statistics do not say anything else: out of the 7 billion tonnes of plastic waste produced since 1950 worldwide, only 9 % have been recycled.In the United States, while 5 % of plastic was recycled in the 1990s, thirty years and hundreds of millions of dollars invested later, this figure still does not reach 10 %.The height is that for two years, he has been back.And not only in the United States, but in most Western countries that used to export their least valuable plastics to China.Whole of waste of waste took the sea to be retained there: a part was actually melted, transformed into pellets and reinjected into objects of lower value - often in appalling sanitary conditions -, while the rest ended incinerated, in discharge in the skyopen or in the oceans.
Simple Things Like that, WOULD IT REALLY MATTER?Yes!Are All People Educated On How To Take Their Medicines?WOULD… https: // t.CO/LXLNKW3DEM
— Jeremiah Mon Mar 23 02:04:28 +0000 2020
Recycling is only an alibi to "justify the use of the disposable" and encourage consuming more plastic, "a counterproductive drift" when the only emergency is to reduce the amount of waste produced, alerts the director ofThe NGO Zero Waste France, Flore Berlingen, which recently published an essay on the question.For its part, the industry, however, ensures that dilatory strategies, it is in the past.Crache juror, now, it's for real: words will finally succeed the acts.Can we believe it this time?It is true that recycling progresses (a little) each year, but we are far from the 100 % recycled.Small reminder of figures already mentioned in this obsession (read episode 1, "plastic, strong material"): Nestlé, Mars and L'Oréal were committed by 2025 to 15 %, 30 % and 40 % D'packaging designed from recycled material.Latest news, these multinationals only reached 2 %, 0 % and 5 % respectively.
"It is very perverse, this communication from manufacturers who defend recycling," reacts Natacha Cingotti, "health and chemical" campaign manager within the Heal network (Health and Environmental Alliance).Why ?Because "the essential question remains the marketing of toxic plastics, whatever they are (read episode 4," plastic, don't you know that you are toxic? "): Industrial communication wants to doforget that.They make a wind, promise that they will recycle and everyone looks elsewhere "."Most plastics should not be recycled, but classified among toxic waste," agrees Tatiana Santos, "chemical products" manager at the European Environment Bureau (BEE), a network that brings together some 160 NGOs from the continent.For the Bee, "if we want a real circular economy, you just need to include plastic".Glass or metals like aluminum are perfect candidates, but not plastic, because "it is a dangerous material from its design: it comes from oil (read episode 3," plastic are melted with oil "), it is very unstable and contains thousands of additives ».Recycled plastic constitutes a danger especially in food contact or in toys, often chewed by children.This has shown a study published in May by the International Network for the elimination of IPEN pollutants.Researchers have shown that plastic toys made from recycled electronic equipment had high levels of dioxin and delayers of bromé flame (RFB).Used to make phones and computers less flammable, RFB are none other than persistent or "pop" organic pollutants, suspected of inducing cancers, but also neurological and hormonal disorders.Released in the environment, they contaminate air, soil and water over very long distances and can easily penetrate the food chain.
Faced with this toxicity, China ended up saying "stop": in 2018, it closed its door to the most contaminated and less recyclable foreign waste.Large plastic exporters then started to target neighboring countries: Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, India or Thailand.In early 2018, the latter saw its imports multiplied by 70!New lords of the bankruptcy of recycling, these countries, submerged with waste, themselves ended up refusing these poisoned deliveries, placing the United States but also Japan, Australia, Germany, Belgium or evenThe United Kingdom in a very uncomfortable position.Insufficient locally equipped, Western countries must have resolved to discharge or burn these plastics, recyclable in theory but in reality almost impossible to recover.At a time when recycling is sold like panacea, it is in fact regressing ... The recycling manufacturers themselves launch the alert: the COVVI-19 was the shock of.In Europe, they expect a crisis that will last several quarters.During confinement, many of them said they temporarily dropped the curtain, for lack of profitability: too little plastic to recycle due to a collection disorganized by the pandemic and a free fall request because ofa virgin plastic at floor prices since the tumble of oil prices.
The European Union has a much more honorable recycling rate than the global average: 32.5 %.But beware, this figure corresponds to the plastic collected in order to be recycled.In reality, it is much less than a third of European plastic that is actually recycled.The rest ends up burned or in landfill.The plastic used in construction - a large PVC consumer, known for her toxicity - is very little recycled.The one used in the automobile is much more: a European directive of 2000 provides that a minimum of 95 % of the weight of the vehicle must be reused or valued, of which at least 85 % by recycling.The problem, note NGOs, is that a large part of the automotive plastic should not be reinjected into production because it often contains delayers of brominated flame, now prohibited.
When we talk about recycling, the main question generally revolves around packaging that does not absorb 40 % of the plastic product.Globally, it is estimated that only 14 % of them are collected in order to be recycled.But on the way, many disappear from the noble path, because they prove to be non -recyclable, or are recycled for lower quality applications, such as insulation or signaling posts.At the end of the chain, less than 2 % of the plastic packaging put on the market are therefore truly processed into equivalent or similar quality products.But how is it possible when the "recyclable" mention is flourished everywhere on packaging?It's all about polymers and practices a bit misleading.But that, you will discover it in the next episode.
