A new report looking at the failures of plastic recycling has led to renewed finger pointing among those seeking to eliminate single-use plastics. If you guessed that Big Oil and plastic manufactures are on the wrong end of the finger, you guessed correctly. I can only sigh because all the finger pointing and blame laying completely misses the point.
Every type of plastic humanity produces is recyclable to one extent or another. The fact that it isn’t has nothing to do with the material itself. A plastic water bottle is an object. It doesn’t have a life of its own. Therefore, whether it is beneficial or harmful depends on the human beings that produce and use it. That is the dirty little secret of recycling’s general failure.
What the Report Claims
The report in question was put together by the Center for Climate Integrity. Its name alone is clear evidence that the organization is by no means an unbiased third-party. This notwithstanding, their report goes on to accuse the petroleum industry and plastics manufacturers for deliberately lying to the public about plastic recycling.
According to the report, the petroleum and plastics industries promoted recycling while knowing full well it could not succeed. Though the report’s authors offer documents supporting their assertions, how those documents are interpreted matters.
Here is the thing: I did not first learn about recycling from an oil company or a plastic producer. I learned about it from a teacher. As an adult, most of my research involving pro-recycling topics is fueled by government resources. A primary source of information is the EPA.
It is easy to point the finger at Big Oil and Big Plastic. But if the two are genuinely guilty of lying to the public, they share their guilt with government entities, educational institutions, and all sorts of advocacy groups who willingly pushed recycling until the facts contradicted their claims and forced them to change direction.
Missing the Point
The goal for this post is not to dispute the report or go after activists who change their positions with the wind. Rather, it is to illustrate the fact that all this finger pointing and blame laying misses the point entirely. And what is the point? It’s that plastic recycling is entirely possible. The fact that we don’t do it doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
Seraphim Plastics is a Tennessee company that has been successfully recycling industrial scrap plastic for years. They purchase scrap plastic from manufacturers and other commercial operations, reduce it to a product known as regrind, and then sell the regrind to manufacturers who use it to make new parts. Their system works. It is efficient, cost effective, and profitable.
Guess what? Seraphim Plastics is not the only company doing this. There are industrial plastic recyclers all over the country. They all succeed because they utilize a system that has proven to work. If we apply the same system to post-consumer plastics, we can recycle them with a similar success rate.
Throwing Them Away Is Easier
So why don’t we do the same thing with consumer plastics? Because it would take too much work. Throwing plastic food containers in the trash is a lot easier than making the effort to recycle properly. But that is a consumer thing. Big Oil isn’t the one throwing plastic in the trash. Neither is Big Plastic. Consumers do it of their own free will.
I understand that the finger pointing will continue until anti-plastic activists get what they want. It is the way the world works. But the finger pointing and blame laying only serve to conceal the truth.