Recycling as a Myth

Recycling as a Myth

Let me set the scene: you’re on your lunch break in between classes, you decide to grab an iced-coffee from your local coffee shop. As you finish your coffee, you toss the plastic cup into the nearest recycling bin. You go about your day, unbothered by the fate of that cup.

By Sam Gibbs

What if I told you that THAT cup, along with hundreds of thousands of tons of plastic from the United States alone gets shipped to economically developing countries every year? What if I told you that the US has had to switch the country it ships this plastic to because these countries are starting to feel dire effects from the overflowing plastic? The United States ships plastic to poorly regulated countries in order to get rid of it. But wait, what happens to this plastic when it gets to these countries? Do we, as mass consumers of plastic, have a responsibility

to understand the process of recycling and how it affects third world countries? Recycling as we know it is a myth, and I am going to uncover the true nature of this process.

According to a study done by The Guardian in 2019, the equivalent of 68,000 shipping containers of American plastic recycling were exported from the USA to developing countries that mismanage more than 70% of their own plastic waste. To mismanage plastic waste means it was dumped or inadequately disposed of in places like open landfills. As an example, Malaysia, a country that is one of the biggest recipients of the US’s plastic, mismanaged 55% of its plastic waste.

The United States has been exporting its plastic to other countries for years. In 2015, China and Hong Kong handled more than half of the recycled waste, which can be estimated at about 1.6 million tons of plastic every year. At first, these countries developed a harvesting industry to use this plastic in products to sell back to the US. However, much of the plastic collected was contaminated with food or dirt, or simply not able to be recycled, which means it had to go into landfills.

Due to this, China enforced a ban on dirty plastic waste in late 2017. Therefore, the US moved onto other countries like Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Bangladesh. These countries were chosen because of their cheap labor forces and limited environmental regulation. But still, some of these countries began to ban plastic imports because of increasing concern about the health and safety of their citizens. The US has currently been sending its waste to Cambodia, Laos, Senegal, Ethiopia and Kenya. These countries have never handled US plastic before. The US chooses countries that cannot afford the proper infrastructure or labor needed to deal with this waste in the right way. Countries like Cambodia and Senegal also have little to no environmental regulations in place, which largely means the waste brought into their land is polluting a place that is already struggling with this problem.

Another issue with the export of plastic is the health effects on the people that are working with it in these countries. The toxic fumes resulting from the burning of plastics or plastic processing can cause respiratory illnesses. Regular exposure can subject workers and nearby residents to many toxic substances, the effects of which can include developmental disorders, endocrine disruption, and cancer. The impact does not stop there. The shift to bringing plastic to Southeast Asian countries has also resulted in contaminated water supplies, crop death, and the rise of organized crime in areas where most imports come in.

You must be wondering, how does this plastic (i.e. your plastic coffee cup) end up all the way in Asia? There is a trading network that spans the globe, crossing oceans and continents. The network has been at a breaking point, simply because there is too much plastic to move. Waste plastic is a commodity, and recycling brokers search across the US and elsewhere for buyers who will want to melt the plastic down, turn it into pellets, and make those pellets into something new. In order to properly dispose of plastic and re-use it, it costs a good amount of money. This is due to the fact that most companies follow environmental regulations and labor laws. However, recently, many countries have turned on the recycling industry because unethical operators have started to spring up, operating as cheaply as possible, with no regard for the environment or local residents. What matters more in this scenario? The cost of recycling or the cost of someone’s life and home?

It seems to me that there are many problems within the recycling industry and the processes that go into it. However, what can we do as mere consumers? We can try and limit our plastic consumption as much as we can. America alone generates 34.5M tons of plastic waste each year, which is enough to fill Houston’s Astrodome stadium 1,000 times. If we cut down on our plastic use, there will be less of a need to ship the waste to poorer, less equipped countries. The inherent ease of recycling bins allows us to not feel guilt about where that plastic actually ends up. This is a reminder that the smallest of things can have large effects on people who do not have the resources to have better lives.

So, next time you toss your coffee cup into the recycling bin, remember that it will likely end up on a beach somewhere far, far away, waiting to be dumped into a landfill or burned up only to harm someone else, the air they breathe, and their home country. Think twice before using plastic, recycling is not as guiltfree as we are led to believe.