Truth behind going green; why recycling is not as good for the environment as it seems

     Recycling is a hoax, recycling is being used as a coverup to hide the amount of plastic being created and thrown away by the plastic companies.

     Not-so-fun fact: only about 9% of our recycled plastic is actually recycled and reused, the other 91% is sitting in landfills according to GreenMatters. 94.2 million tons of trash were recycled in 2020, that is only about 35% of a total of 267 million tons of trash discarded in 2020. When you take into account that only 9% of the 94.2 million tons of trash that was recycled actually got reused, the staggering numbers come out to be a miniscule 8.48 million tons of trash recycled.. Out of 267 million… This just is not enough.

     Of the 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic produced since 1980, 6.3 billion metric tons has become plastic waste. The vast majority—79 percent—is accumulating in landfills or sloughing off in the natural environment as litter according to National Geographic.

     Operation National Sword is a policy in China that has banned the importation of certain types of solid waste, as well as set strict contamination limits on recyclable materials. The policy caused a ripple effect in the global recyclables market, causing major pile ups in Western countries who had been collecting lower quality recyclables in single-stream recycling, and displacing some of those recyclables to other countries, mostly in South East Asia, like Vietnam and Malaysia. 

     “The economics are challenging,” said Nilda Mesa, director of the Urban Sustainability and Equity Planning Program at the Earth Institute’s Center for Sustainable Urban Development. “If there is not a market for the recycled material, then the numbers do not work for these facilities as well as cities, as they need to sell the materials to recoup their costs of collection and transportation, and even then it’s typically only a portion of the costs.”

     As a result, U.S. processing facilities and municipalities have either had to pay more to recycle or simply discard the waste. In 2017, Stamford, CT made $95,000 by selling recyclables; in 2018, it had to pay $700,000 to have them removed. Bakersfield, CA used to earn $65 a ton from its recyclables; after 2018, it had to pay $25 a ton to get rid of them. Franklin, NH had been able to sell its recyclables for $6 a ton; now the transfer station charges $125 a ton to recycle the material or $68 a ton to incinerate it (Via Columbia Climate School.)

     As for why this is, as oil prices fluctuate, so does the price of plastic. When those markets are depressed, new, fresh plastic becomes far cheaper to buy than recycled plastic. Additionally, many plastic products degrade each time they’re processed — unlike metal or glass, which can be perpetually recycled— making them progressively less valuable.