Boston Globe published an article, "Plastic recycling is a 'myth,' study says." The GreenPeace study, makes many factual and, because of that, concerning points about the recycling industry and technology. The article says that "Of the 51 million tons of plastic waste US households produced in 2021, just 2.4 million tons (5 percent) were recycled, new research shows."
Stirred by the article and its implications, we dialed Daniel Chau, UCSF recycling program manager to ask, "is this true?"
Is This True?
The short answer is "Yes, for most places."
The long answer is:
"In San Francisco, where there are resources at our disposal and different market options that Recology has worked hard on, we are not in that dire of a situation (locally). Waste is a very localized issue just like water. Different regions will have different accessibility and we are in a more fortunate situation regarding our plastics.
This doesn’t mean we should generate more plastic, but we do have a pretty decent process for recycling it. The end goal is still to move away from it whenever possible. Plastic recycling is also directly tied to the price of crude oil. As the crude oil goes up, plastic will have a higher value and therefore be recycled because there is a market for it and when crude oil is cheap, plastic is less desirable as it can make virgin plastic cheaply. The US is always going to want low oil prices so this will automatically cap the upper limits of the plastic recycling market.
Recycling was never the goal. Recycle is always at the bottom or last of any waste hierarchy–Reduce > Reuse > Recycle–and focus should be placed on reduction since that has the greatest impact on helping the environment."
What if your recycling efforts are all for nothing?
