Recycling initiatives have been at the forefront of humanity’s collective consciousness since the beginning of the Global Warming/Climate Change hysteria. They have been put into practice for years in the hopes of mitigating the disastrous effects of these polyethylene compounds and plastics in general on the environment. But, really the question does not lie in whether our efforts are impacting the so-called fight against global warming, but the much more impending issue of throwing a wrench in eco-systems that have been established for thousands of years. Regardless of the good intentions of recycling programs and the efforts to wean us off of polyethylene and plastic products, the effects of our plastic usage and consumption have not been significantly mitigated. 

Central to the general populations efforts to reduce the ecological impact of plastics on the world is the effort to reduce the number of plastic bags around in the world. A noble idea in theory, but one that we have struggled to put into practice. One problem with reducing the number of plastic bags in circulation is this idea of product life cycles. Product life cycles do not refer to just the amount of time that something is in use, but follows it from production to disintegration in a plastic bags case. The problem with these studies is that findings have indicated that promising plastic alternatives, these “degradable polyethylenes” do not actually degrade. “The polyethylenes in the plastic bags studied are made by adding metals like iron and cobalt to the mix of ethylene polymers, to speed up their oxidation. But while such hybrid plastic bags once discarded do, indeed, break into fragments relatively quickly, those shreds seem to persist for a long time.” (Goleman) So while we are certainly reducing the number of true plastic bags in circulation at grocery stores etc, it remains to be seen whether this is helping our case with reducing plastics and increasing biodegradables in circulation. Not helping this case much is the idea that even with our reduction in true plastics around, the damage has already been done and efforts should be made to try and clean up what mess has been caused. “Perhaps the most drastic example of how oil and water don’t mix can be found in the middle of the planet’s great oceans and seas in the form of litter gyres, rotating currents laden with countless bits of floating debris,” (Goleman) Again, this just reaffirms this idea that while our recycling initiatives are noble, they are doing little to reduce our already drastic impact on the world’s ecosystems. This litter is literally getting caught in the worlds vast ocean currents and put into the middle of our great seas where it sits there, caught between a rotating tide of mega-currents. The problem really behind this circulation is the mass production of plastics and the pace at which the plastic production industry grew.Introduced just sixty years ago, the plastic industry has fast become one of the largest in a complex global economy. The ease of production, and also use of these plastics has led it to exacerbate to massive proportions. Plastic production and subsequently plastic waste has not been measured and without measuring it there has been no way to realize how much has actually been floating around. The other idea with not measuring the amount of plastic produced and in circulation is without having concrete statistics, how can any initiatives proposed actually mitigate the impacts of the production? The number of pounds of plastic and plastic waste produced in the past 60 years is staggering, “Of the 8.3 billion metric tons that has been produced, 6.3 billion metric tons has become plastic waste. Of that, only nine percent has been recycled. The vast majority—79 percent—is accumulating in landfills or sloughing off in the natural environment as litter. Meaning: at some point, much of it ends up in the oceans, the final sink.” (Parker) These numbers are astonishing, and another indication that while research efforts should be put into plastic alternatives that are completely biodegradable, researchers should be looking with haste at ways to clean up the plastic we have sent around our planet. Parker is quite frank in her assessment of the state of plastic clean up research, stating that, “Gaining control of plastic waste is now such a large task that it calls for a comprehensive, global approach, Jambeck says, that involves rethinking plastic chemistry, product design, recycling strategies, and consumer use.” (Parker) It is almost incomprehensible to think about the reach our plastic consumption and failure to throw out has reached. Plastic production has doubled nearly every 15 and the average life span of plastic is less than a year, this combination of increased production and shortened product life cycles has led to almost an epidemic of sorts.  I think Irene Rompa presents an interesting take on the scale of the issue we are seeing  and exactly how we should go about addressing it. Born in the Netherlands, Rompa learned to reuse items at a very young age and this is the way she proposes we reduce the ridiculous effects of how much plastic we produce and use. She uses anecdotes about the number of single use plastic beverage containers are used, and how the numbers are so staggering it is difficult to grasp. She uses an anecdote about what a sailor heard, or lack of what he heard in terms of birds on a trip from Melbourne to Osaka. The fish have eaten the plastic, and subsequently died, and the birds have nothing to eat at that point. She goes on to discuss how the reuse of a water bottle by one person, and then another, can cause a ripple effect which has a lasting impact on plastic waste in the ecosystem. She is one of a few different people addressing this through legitimate action, but the past lack of addressing this issue has left scientists way behind the curve, and adds to our inability to mitigate the effects of plastic on the environment even as we look for bio-degradable materials to use in our everyday lives.

Our everyday lives have introduced three main headaches to this problem of plastic production and consumption. Diapers, plastic bags, and juice-boxes, these are three things used almost universally by humans throughout the world and each introduces a different issue to address when trying to mitigate their production, their use, and making sure they are not introduced to disturb the ecosystems of the world. Diapers introduce the issue of composites, and not only are there the composite materials in the diapers, but the organic waste in them as well. This combination of non-recyclable waste and composite materials has made it a nightmare to separate and effectively recycle the materials used. “Gary Liss, a recycling consultant in Northern California who sits on the board of several nonprofit recycling groups, including Zero Waste USA, said he knew of one model for recycling diapers, still in the trial stage in Santa Clarita, Calif., that involves separate curbside pickup for used diapers and then the pulling apart and cleaning of the constituent parts.” (Richtel) The increased reliance on diapers in the early stages of human life has created a difficult scenario for researchers to reduce the impacts of diapers on the environment as it is essentially up to someone to separate the excrement (bio-degradable) from the non bio-degradable container. Juice-boxes present the same issue, as these mass produced nourishment protectors are designed to preserve drinks, but clearly not to reduce the impact on the environment. “They are a perfect example of composites, a vexing category for recyclers that includes a wide range of items … (The juice-box industry says a typical nonrefrigerated carton, as it’s called, includes 74 percent paper, 22 percent polyethylene and 4 percent aluminum.)” (Richtel) This combination of materials again presents an extremely difficult scenario for recycling experts to separate them, and eventually dispose of them in an environmentally friendly manner. Gary Liss compares it to separating an egg yolk from an egg, where it is much easier to do so before it is stirred up, but these products are stirred up so it is the much more difficult thing to do. The last product that poses a serious challenge to researchers attempting to mitigate plastic bag consumption and discarding is the worst of them all, plastic bags. Plastic bags present a unique challenge in that when they go through the recyclable separating machines at even the most advanced recycling centers in the world, they get caught up in the turbines and cause huge headaches for the plants. “an advanced recycling operation in San Francisco, that it used to shut down twice a day so that workers with box knives could cut the plastic bags out of the spinning discs that help separate paper from cans and bottles.”  (Richtel) These three unique challenges are just more examples of how while we are trying to mitigate the production of plastic products and that is fine, in the meantime we need to develop effective systems of destruction and even reuse for problem plastics such as these three mentioned above.

One of the issues in mitigating plastics and their impacts on the ecosystem is that recycling, while somewhat ineffective has just been completely misunderstood, increasing its ineffectiveness and almost making the issue worse. Americans in general have a severe lack of knowledge as to what can and cannot be recycled. This has led to a serious inversion in generating value in recycling, “The value of recovered waste products has plummeted over the past five years, and the amount of effort required to extract them has risen.” (Singer) Recycling as an economic mechanism is suffering from economic impacts that every market suffers from, macro-economic policy and fluctuations in other markets as well as a general increase in recycling material supply has driven the cost down. This is happening while Americans with their terrible understanding of what can be recycled are making sorting stations near impossible to navigate for facilities. The costs for cities to collect recyclable materials have far outweighed the dollar amounts made, “Kevin Miller, recycling manager for the city of Napa, Calif., said “we get back about 20%” of the costs of collecting, sorting and shipping materials.” (Singer) It is interesting that the economics of recycling are having such a monumental impact on the ability to recycle, but it is devastating in that the efforts of cities and townships to recycle and reduce the impact of plastics and other products on the environment is being hamstrung by the economic cycles.  

Recycling as a whole is an extremely complex system, and has developed over the years. Moving from multi-recycling bin processes to single stream and beyond, the science behind recycling is increasing, but the complexity of it is as well and this is causing headaches for those trying to figure out how to reduce recycling’s impact on the ecosystems of the world. One of these main contributors again is plastic, lightweight, flexible, and completely malleable they have taken a massive place in the American production stream. The issue is, even when plastics are recovered and even when they are reused, somehow the plastic always finds its way into a landfill or not even recycled at all. “In 2005 less than 6% of the plastic from America’s municipal waste stream was recovered. And of that small fraction … But plastic is often “down-cycled” into other products such as plastic lumber (used in place of wood). Drain pipes and carpet fibres, which tend to end up in landfills or incinerators at the end of their useful lives.” (economist) The problem with plastics and recycling is that there is no true way to dispose of them, as they are not a part of the natural world. They are a synthetic composite and unless we can figure out a way to rid ourselves of them it will continue to be a problem in terms of harming the global ecosystem.All of these sources point to different ways that in the past 15-20 years humans have tried to mitigate their plastic consumption effects, through increasing recycling capabilities, or trying to reduce and reuse the amount of plastic circulating around. The truth about all of it is that regardless of how much we alter the way we use plastic, it will never alter the way it is created or the fact that it is a foreign substance to the rest of the natural world. Plastics were first introduced 60 years ago into a world that is billions of years old, causing massive disruptions in oceanic food chains as seen by the sailor coming from Australia to Japan and hearing no birds. Unless humanity can figure out a way to stop plastic production and consumption with alternative materials, this is a problem that will persist no matter how much we try to mitigate it.
