Breaking Down Plastic: The material, the problem, the solutions

Many are now calling plastic waste a global crisis. In 2018 alone, 68,000 shipping containers of plastic collected in the U.S. to be recycled were exported to developing countries that have been reported to mismanage more than 70% of their own plastic waste. The transport of plastic waste across oceans means a lot of it ends up in the water: Plastic waste outweighs zooplankton—a major food source for many marine animals—by 36-to-1. Virgin plastic resins are made by chemically processing fossil fuels—the United Nations has predicted that plastic production could account for 20% of the oil industry by 2050.

What is plastic?

We think of plastic as a single material, but it’s not. It’s a collection of very different materials that share a common property: They are plastic, an adjective that means “capable of being molded or modeled” and “capable of adapting to varying conditions,” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. The pliable, formable quality of plastics opened—and continues to open—entirely new design and manufacturing possibilities for industry.

Plastic is often associated with the rise of mass consumption within the industrially developed world from the mid-twentieth century onwards. But it is much older than that. The first plastic material was developed by the Belgian-born American chemist Leo Baekeland with the invention of Bakelite. It was the first fully synthetic, plastic material. Durable, heat-resistant, and a good conductor for electricity, it quickly found uses in a rapidly electrifying United States. Bakelite was also prized because it looked and felt like ivory, an expensive commodity that few were able to enjoy.

Data source: McKinsey

Pressing challenges

Mitigating the environmental impacts of plastic waste means addressing key challenges. Some of the most prevalent of those are described below.

The U.S. recycling rate is decreasing.

Most municipalities across the U.S. had introduced a plastic-recycling program by the early 2000s. Data show a boom in recycling rates until 2010, when they more or less flatten out year-to-year even as the amount of plastic that was used and disposed of grew steadily. In 2017, Americans threw away more plastic than they did in 2016—an additional 500,000 tons. Yet the amount of plastic that was recycled dropped, putting an extra 280,000 tons to the already staggering 26,030,000 tons that went into landfills the previous year.

Possible reasons for the decline in the volume of plastic that is getting recycled include the following:

#1 Consumer confusion at the curbside

A 2019 McKinsey & Company study found that consumers with access to curbside recycling only put 40% of recyclable plastic out for collection. The rest goes to landfills where it becomes contaminated with other materials and is no longer recyclable. The study learned that consumers cite two sources of confusion: Knowing which plastics are recyclable and which are not, and the incredible variation of recycling methods in place in even a single town or city.

#2 Single-stream recycling

Residential recycling programs that require consumers to sort recyclables can be expensive for municipalities to manage. This is why so many switched to a “single-stream” system during the 2000s. Not only is it cheaper to collect, it makes recycling easier for residents because all recyclables—plastic, glass, paper, and metal—are put into the same bin.

By 2014, 80% of Americans lived in an area where a single-stream system was in place, a 51% increase from 2005. The comingling of unlike materials makes it hard for materials recovery facilities (MRFs) to completely recycle any one of them. A 2016 report by the New York State Pollution Prevention Institute (NYSP2I), “Reducing Contamination in Recycled Glass from Single Stream Collection,” found that this practice cut the amount of glass that gets recycled by 50%. Plastics become contaminated in this environment, too. Collection trucks smash all the materials together. Shards of glass are compacted into plastic and paper. Residues from food, like grease, also end up in the mix. The result of this is known as “dirty” recyclables.

#3 Innovation of plastic materials outpacing recycling technology

Approximately 30 percent of plastic packaging currently in use can’t be processed by most MRFs in the U.S.³ The processing technology in place at these facilities lags behind the fast-paced development of new uses of plastic for packaging that evolve to sustain market competitiveness. Some companies are working to close this gap through the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. The Max-AI® sorting machine from Bulk Handling Systems is one such example.

China no longer buys “dirty” plastic from the U.S.

Over the last 25 years, dirty recyclable plastic—the surplus that the U.S. couldn’t recycle—didn’t worry recycling processors. That’s because all of it went into a global waste industry worth $250 billion that was fueled almost entirely by purchasing from China.

Chinese companies imported dirty plastic as a feedstock for its burgeoning manufacturing industry. But that ended in January 2018 when China announced that it would no longer accept recycled plastic scrap that is not 99.5% pure. Bales and bales of plastic trash were left on the shores of the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and elsewhere as waste haulers looked for a new buyer. Today, about half of the volume that used to go to China remains unsold, according to the website fivethirtyeight.com. That means it remains stockpiled, often outdoors, where it can leach into surrounding ecosystems.

Carroll Muffett, president and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law, told National Geographic that China’s decision “exposes the myth that the United States is capable of dealing with its own plastics problem.”