I am in the middle of looking at plastics recycling in my area.
Any internet search in this area feeds you a lot of pessimism about the entire concept of plastics recycling. People say that it’s not worth doing, that it’s greenwashing, that it’s a scam, that it all ends up in the landfill, and so on.
But is that true? It all seems to start from a figure that just 5 to 8 percent of U.S. waste plastic is recycled.
Less than an hour of internet search, and I now know that figure is totally irrelevant to the situation I’m investigating. The often-cited 5% is for every conceivable form of plastic waste — stuff that was tossed in the trash, stuff that was tossed on the ground, plastic resins that are not recyclable, plastic items that are not inherently recyclable, plastic integrated into multi-material items, and so on.
That’s a problem, for sure. But right now, I just want to know what happens if I properly handle a recyclable plastic object, where I live. I want to know two simple things:
- What plastic should go in the recycling bin, here in Vienna, VA, and
- What fraction of (say) a clean #1 (PETE) bottle actually gets recycled?