AmericanChemistry

Plastic Recycling Myths

I’d like to wrap up this blog summit by dispelling some pervasive plastic recycling myths.

Myth #1 - Plastic cannot be recycled: I suppose you would not be reading this if you believed this one, but I am still amazed as I travel around this country how often I run into people who still believe that plastic cannot be recycled. It can and it is. In fact, a multi-billion dollar plastic recycling industry survives in the USA!

Myth #2 - Plastic must be “downcycled”: Unlike paper—which has fibers that break each time it is recycled so it must be “downcycled”—plastic polymers do not change when they are recycled. Technically all plastic products could be turned back into the same product, but practically there are some reasons why they are not.

Color & Contamination: First, once color is put into the plastic, it cannot be mechanically removed, thus the new products must either be a darker color or—like some HDPE recyclers do (e.g., Envision Plastics)—it must be color sorted. This is why clear or uncolored plastic has such a high value; manufacturers can use it to make a product of any color—including no color. Other practical problems include concerns about contamination with food contact materials. No one wants to inadvertently make someone sick because the recycled plastic container had a non-food material in it the first time around. Some plastic types (e.g., PET) can be washed and re-extruded at such high temperatures that anything that was in the plastic containers is removed. Other plastics absorb the contents to the point where it would be too costly or to risky to put them back into direct food contact applications. Manufacturers can make these plastics into the same type of container again (e.g., a bottle to a bottle) by utilizing either a layer of virgin material or by selling them for non-food applications.

Collection & Supply: However, there are two primary reasons why more plastic is not turned back into the same product. First, the current collection and MRF infrastructure does not lend itself to this. Curbside programs collect used plastic mixed with other products that contaminate the plastic. Turning plastic packaging back into packaging requires very clean material: the cost to purchase dirty bales, sort, grind, super clean wash and extrude into new packaging can be prohibitive. The second is that when plastic recycling developed ~ 25 years ago, the technology to turn plastic packaging back into packaging did not exist. So plastic reclaimers, here and abroad, built the infrastructure around non-packaging applications (such as carpet and pipe), and now the infrastructure and demand for these products is so strong that they are using up most of the available supply. If we could supply more material (recycle more plastic!) then there might be enough material available to justify building additional reclamation capacity to turn used plastic packaging back into new plastic packaging.

Myth #3 - Plastic can only be recycled once: As I mentioned above, plastic polymers do not change when they are recycled. Some plastic characteristics can change when they are recycled. For example, clear PET that is recycled can yellow, but the polymer itself is sound and there are steps that reclaimers can take to diminish the yellowing. Technically, plastic could, and should, be recycled indefinitely! Let’s work toward this!

Myth #4 - When plastic is exported to China (or other Southeast Asian nations) it is burned, not recycled: I’ve never understood this one from a purely practical standpoint. Why would someone pay for bales of plastic, pay to ship them across the ocean, and pay to ship them inland to a facility just to burn them? Especially since coal is cheap and plentiful in China. Utter nonsense! In addition, I have been to China to see plastic recycling facilities and I did not see any evidence of this. I did see very low-tech coal burning extruders (yikes) but I also saw clean high-tech electric extruders. China is a developing nation, rapidly pulling itself out of poverty; our low-cost recycled plastic feedstock helps.

Myth #5 - Plastic scrap sent to China for recycling comes back to us as new products: I suppose there may be some truth to this one, but my experience is that the recycled plastic we send to China is made into inexpensive products used locally in China. We Americans, unfortunately, like our products to be exactly the same, time after time —the same bright red bottle for our detergent, the same yellow ears on today’s movie tie-in plush toy—this expectation of complete consistency does not lend itself to the cost-effective manufacture of recycled products. Thus, Chinese manufacturers tend to use recycled content products for internal sales and virgin for export.