HALLANDALE BEACH GREEN INITIATIVES NEWSLETTER VOLUME 9 | APRIL-JUNE 2019
PLASTICS AND RECYCLING Plastic. It's everywhere. Literally, everywhere. It's the keyboard I'm typing on, the blended fabric of our clothes, the tires on our cars (or bikes), the wrapping on our food, the vessel for our beverage. Recent studies have shown that microplastics are found in 90% of table salts, 90% of bottled water, 83% of tap waters found worldwide, and in varying amounts in the food we eat including fish and chicken. A survey of sea turtles across all the world's oceans couldn't find a single turtle without plastics in their stomach, most averaging 150 pieces of plastic per individual. Plastics have caused a worldwide ecological crisis though humans' momentary convenience.
to not consume that single-use plastic in the first place. Where does your plastic recycling go once you put it in the bin? For the past few decades, it was shipped to China for recycling. In February 2017, China announced it wanted to stop being the world's plastics dump through a Policy called "National Sword" which aims to improve their air quality and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Following China's ban on 24 kinds of imported waste, it seems the plastics recycling system is broken. Frantically in response to China's policy, the US and other developed nations are shipping plastic wastes to Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, India, and Indonesia. Between January and July in 2018, the US sent 178,238 metric tons of plastic What is plastic? "Plastic" refers to items waste to Malaysia and approximately made of polymers and monomers which twice that tonnage to Thailand. In recan be molded to shapes when warmed sponse to the massive amount of waste and harden when cool. Its malleable masent to the Country, Malaysia has already terials, overwhelmingly made of petroleannounced it will phase out imports of all um or oil. Oil is produced by decaying types of plastic within three years. The matter, mostly ancient algae and zoobales of plastic are piling up in unfathomplankton, which got trapped under multiable quantities on land and choking rivers ple layers of sand and mud and exposed with floating debris. In many of these to heat and pressure sometime in the past Southeastern Asian countries, the infra25-500 million years structure necessary for recycling is severely lacking, as China has cornered the marIf you must consume single-use plastics, recycling is the thing to do with recyclable ket almost the entire time recycling has plastics. The ideal thing to do, however, is occurred. What plastics are not recyclable
THE CITY OF HALLANDALE BEACH
are being burned in fields with little to no emissions controls, making an impact on local's respiratory and environmental health. It's also worth noting that only 9% of plastics are recycled, globally, so that pile being incinerated is obscenely large. All for a convenient water bottle. I want to note that recycling does not limit the amount of plastic which is produced. If anything, it signals to companies that people are happy to buy products in plastic as recycling assuages our guilt. Plastics production is slated to use 20% of oil extracted by 2025, creating a tangible driver of climate change. The current level of plastic consumption is simply unsustainable. Please, please, make efforts to reduce your plastic consumption and waste for the sake of the planet.
Title image by CustomMadeÂŽ
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