The Problem with Plastic

With the rise of one-bin-takes-all curbside collection programs, it might seem that recycling has become simpler. The truth is that after it leaves your curb, it becomes a dizzying roll of the dice.

Some materials are no-brainers for recycling. Aluminum cans, for example, are not only readily recyclable but making new cans from old uses only a fraction of the energy required to make new ones from scratch, starting with mining bauxite ore. There are active secondary markets for glass (if it's not broken) and paper, as well.

Plastic is far more complicated. It's important because the global tsunami of plastic has become an environmental scourge. Of all the plastic you toss into that blue recycling bin, only about 6% to 10% actually gets recycled, depending on how you do the counting. And plastics production is projected to double by the end of this decade.

"Plastics recycling has been an abysmal failure," says Judith Enck, who may be the nation's most prominent anti-plastic activist. A former regional administrator at the federal Environmental Protection Agency, she now heads Beyond Plastics, a nonprofit based at Bennington College in Vermont. "Plastic is anything but benign," she says. "Sixteen thousand different chemicals are used to make different types of plastics."

Now 64, Enck has dedicated her second career to tilting at the environmental effects of runaway plastic production. They are numerous, including a growing global litter crisis and threats to ocean life and to human health, ranging from toxic air pollution in the manufacturing process to the insidious microplastics that result when plastic breaks down in the environment.

Microplastics are showing up in almost every organ, and are linked to a range of health problems from endocrine disruption to heart attack and stroke, once they enter the bloodstream. Plastic production is also a leading emitter of greenhouse gasses because most plastics are made from fossil fuels.

Enck is not out to purge the world of all plastic. She's more of a realist than that and recognizes the great utility and convenience of many plastics. "It's impossible to avoid plastic," she concedes. "So we do what we can." Enck is mostly targeting "pointless plastic," her term for single-use items like water bottles and unnecessary plastic packaging of, well, everything. "It's as if we've forgotten how to cut fruit," Enck is fond of saying, as she marvels at all the plastic packaging in the produce departments of supermarkets.

For Enck, disposable plastic water bottles are public enemy number one. "Avoid these at all cost," she advises, even though the average American uses more than 150 plastic water bottles per year with 60 million thrown away. "It is not difficult to carry a metal water bottle with you," says Enck. "Maybe you don't do it 100% of the time. Do it as much as you can, and then you save money by not having to buy these expensive single-use water containers."

It is sometimes a challenge finding places outside your home to refill water bottles. Most airports and many other public places now have rapid-refill water dispensers. "We're trying to get rid of pointless plastic things that can be replaced with non-plastic material," Enck explains. "We're very much focused on single-use plastic packaging because that's over 40% of plastic use in the U.S."

Instead of buying juice in big plastic bottles, Enck favors a retro-solution: a glass pitcher and frozen concentrate (yes, they still sell it). It's less expensive and most containers have only a thin plastic seal around the metal lid. If that's too much work, consider buying juice in "gable cartons" (aka milk cartons), which can often be recycled with paper.

On laundry day (something else Enck says she "avoids at all costs"), Enck uses a service that provides a sturdy, refillable bottle of liquid. The bottle is plastic but the key is that it's used over and over. "There are certain items you just can't avoid and you don't have to do this perfectly," she advises. "Don't beat yourself up over this."

Enck is "not a fan" of the laundry strips that claim to be greener. "It's really frustrating because consumers are trying to do the right thing," she says. "They are buying the strips to avoid the plastic jug and then finding out that there's small amounts of microplastics in most strips." She says most contain polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), the same material as the detergent pods that have become so popular for laundry and use in dishwashers.

"There are a lot of companies that say, 'Oh, it's biodegradable.' Most of it is not," she says. "It is a type of plastic. I have very serious concerns about the PVA plastic and the pods and how this industry has exploded." When PVA dissolves in automatic washers, it goes down the drain and ends up back in the watershed. The PVA pod that you tucked into your dishwasher may come back to you via your kitchen faucet.

Further complicating matters is that what is and isn't accepted for recycling varies widely from place to place. (In the small town where I live, there is no published guidance; you just have to go to the transfer station and ask.)

So what is the likelihood that things marked "Recyclable" and bearing the chasing-arrows logo will actually be recycled? Check the number inside the triangle (if you can read it; they seem to be getting smaller). In general, the higher the number, the less likely there is to be a secondary market for that type of plastic and hence, more likely to end up in a landfill or incinerator. So tossing many items in the "blue bin" may be a feel-good act without much reality to back it up.

"I think single-stream recycling is a mistake," says Enck. "I've never seen any data that shows you get a higher level of recycling because of single stream. It is more convenient for the haulers but you get a much higher contamination rate, meaning you're going to get non-recyclable plastics."

Keurig claims that its K-Cup pods are now "100% recyclable." That may be theoretically true but the plastic in K-Cups is polypropylene, a type that is not widely recycled, according to Enck. K-Cups are also made of mixed materials, which complicates the recycling process. On the upside, some research suggests that coffee pods are less wasteful of both coffee and water and may result in less carbon emissions than using ground coffee and filters.

Enck avoids that dilemma by brewing her morning coffee in a French press. She says if you have a Keurig machine, try using your own grounds in the reusable inserts that are available. If the resulting coffee seems less robust than from the throwaway pods, try a darker roast.

Enck also cautions against using plastic cutting boards in the kitchen. Paradoxically their very reuse is a problem. Every time you drag a knife across one, "You will get little microplastics when you cut," she says. "That's inevitable. So definitely a wooden cutting board — that's what we do."

Recent years have seen the rise of "bioplastics" — plastic substitutes made from renewable inputs like corn starch. They are marketed as "biodegradable" or "compostable," but that's not as straightforward as it sounds. According to a Beyond Plastics report released this summer, bioplastics "are made using the same processes as traditional plastics. That means they contain many chemical additives, yet even less is known about the potential toxicity of those chemicals than the ones in conventional plastics."

Through an outreach organization called America's Plastic Makers, the plastics/petrochemical industry is running ads touting new solutions to the plastic waste problem, largely through what's known as "advanced recycling" or "chemical recycling" – using solvents and high-temperature processing or "pyrolysis," to break plastic waste down into its basic chemical building blocks.

"I see a comprehensive industry leaning in on this, quite frankly, trying to solve this issue, not running away from its problems," APM's president, Ross Eisenberg, told a roomful of environmental journalists in April.

The writer Arielle Samuelson rebuts that assertion in a recent article for Heated, a newsletter about climate change. "They're trying to sell consumers a utopian idea: that plastic consumption can continue as is, without irreparably damaging public health and the planet," she wrote. "But solid evidence for that idea is remarkably thin. In fact, numerous investigations over the last four years have found that advanced recycling not only rarely produces new plastic, but that it may be worse for the environment than regular recycling."

Eisenberg counters: "This is the future of advanced recycling. There's no silver bullet but it is certainly a big part of that solution. Option B is — there is no option B. It goes to the landfill and winds up in the environment."

Of course, there is another option: make and use less plastic. Recently uncovered documents show that the plastics industry has known for years that no amount of recycling would solve the problem of plastic waste. Enck's organization and others, such as the Bloomberg Philanthropies, maintain that the only real solution is to reduce the amount of plastic produced and sold in the first place.

While there are things everyone can do to reduce plastic in their lives, many experts agree that it will take major policy changes to move the needle. Five states have adopted versions of producer responsibility laws, which shift responsibility for the life cycle of plastics from consumers to producers. A similar bill requiring reductions in plastic packaging and setting much higher recycling rates is stalled in New York's state legislature.

Enck bristles a bit when I suggest that perhaps the most stubborn obstacle in her quest isn't a monolithic plastic industry or torpid government regulators, but basic human nature. People love convenience and that's what plastic represents to them. "No, I don't think so," she replies. "I think people adjust."

Enck's utopian future is the opposite of what America's plastic makers offer. It is one where "pointless plastic" goes the way of leaded gasoline and DDT. "But we only get that future if we pass new laws that require a reduction in plastics," she says, "because It's not going to happen on its own. It's up to us as taxpayers to get rid of all of this."

Craig Miller is a veteran journalist based in the northern Catskills of New York. His reporting is focused on climate science and policy, energy and the environment. In 2008 Miller launched and edited the award-winning Climate Watch multimedia initiative for KQED in San Francisco, where he remained a science editor until August of 2019. He’s also a proud member of his local volunteer fire department.
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