As is my habit, I’m writing this post to try to get my thinking straight about a practical question of interest to me. In this case, the question is, should I stop putting plastics in with the household recyclables?
This, in response to some recent reporting in the Washington Post, described what appears to be a huge amount of microplastic released into the environment during plastics recycling. It was only one study, of one facility, but the numbers were eye-catching. Even with filtration, 6% of the plastic brought to the facility left as microplastic in its waste water.
Which got me asking whether I might be better off incinerating my single-use plastics (the default here in Fairfax County), rather than trying to get them recycled.
This looks like a straightforward question, but there’s a lot to unpack.
So far, as near as I can tell, in terms of recycling in my area:
- Recycling facilities are not registered, permitted, or regulated in Virginia.
- Information on actual recycled quantities is essentially non-existent.
- Guidance on what plastics should and should not be recycled is conflicting.
Given the information vacuum into which I am tossing my plastic recyclables, I think I’m going to cut back on that. Going forward, maybe I’ll continue to recycle clear PET/PETE, and maybe HDPE (#1 and #2 plastics). Everything else is going into the trash. And as I find out more, maybe the PET/PETE and HDPE will end up in the trash as well.
I’m undecided on the general idea of substituting glass for plastic. Fairfax County does have a D-I-Y glass recycling program that appears to be successful. But glass itself is heavy and fairly energy-intensive to make. And most of the grocery items that I could buy in glass, I could also buy in PETE or HDPE. It’s not clear that a wholesale switch from plastic to glass, where feasible, would get me much (or any) net environmental benefit.
Which leaves me with “buy less plastic”. A laudable if damn-near-impossible goal.
Setting up the rest of the analysis, if any.
The key question is, what happens to the plastic that I put into my recycling bin?
And here’s where I got stopped. Because, as it turns out, it’s hard to get any information at all that’s relevant to that exact question.
Everybody knows that a truly dismal fraction of U.S. plastic waste gets recycled. Depending on the data year, it’s something between 5 and 8 percent. And even that’s iffy, because (I believe) that as long as we shipped it overseas “for recycling”, that counted as being recycled.
At this point, I’m supposed to tsk-tsk, nod my head, agree that plastic recycling is a dismal failure, and that plastic is bad, and to pledge to use anything but single-use plastic.
Not so fast. If you look below the details, you should realize that you have absolutely no idea what the 8% number represents.
Is the plastic recycling number that low because …
-
- … most people simply toss plastic into the trash, not recycling, OR
- … most disposable plastic that people buy is non-recylable, OR
- … the recycling process itself is that ineffective?
Question: To be as clear as possible, if I put my plastics into the recycling bin (NOT A), and I only buy (say) highly recyclable PET/PETE containers (NOT B), then what fraction of my plastic waste gets recycled?
Answer: So far, I can’t even find a rough estimate. I can’t even guess.
And so, I end up in a sort of environmental topsy-turvy world.
On the one hand, I am not terribly concerned about the single-use plastic that I throw away (put into the trash, as opposed to the recycling bin). For example, plastic bags and plastic films have to go in the trash. In Fairfax County, those are cleanly incinerated to produce electricity. That plastic does not escape into the environment. My sole concern is the C02 created as those oil-based plastics burn, but the quantity of single-use plastic is so tiny, relative to my other use of fossil fuels, that it’s more-or-less rounding error in my carbon footprint.
(A plastic grocery bag weighs about 5.5 grams, and by weight is almost pure carbon. When burned, it will produce about 18 grams of C02. I’ll spare you the math, but if I drive four miles, round trip, to my nearest Safeway, using my wife’s super-efficient Prius Prime, I produce as much C02 as burning 40 plastic grocery bags (if I run in gasoline hybrid mode) or 16 bags (in EV or electric mode). Of course I use re-usable grocery bags. But I don’t kid myself about the magnitude of the benefit.
Don’t even get me started on plastic straws.)
On the other hand, crazily enough, my concern is the plastic that I am trying to recycle. What actually happens to that? Is there a net environmental benefit, or not? Is there something material that I can do to minimize my environmental impact there? (Other than, “don’t buy plastic”, which I understand, but have a difficult time implementing.)
And, so far, I have been able to find clear information on exactly zero aspects of this question. Between the advocates and the industry, it’s hard to tell fact from fiction on this issue.
If I can find out anything solid, about what actually happens to the plastic I toss in the recycling bin, I will post more on this topic.
