Plastic Recycling Issues

Recycling is an environmentally friendly way to reduce human impact on the planet. Reducing the amount of items people throw away and turning them into products people can use again means landfills aren't as full and the growing waste problem will grow a little slower. However, not all items recycle equally. Although there is a massive effort to recycle plastics, which comprise a large portion of the waste society produces, there are issues with recycling plastics that make this material seem less friendly to the environment and human health.

Fumes and Dumping

• For plastics to be recycled, they typically must be melted down and formed into something else. Unfortunately, when plastic heats up to the melting point, it produces noxious petroleum fumes that contribute to pollution and pose a health hazard to those in the vicinity. Recycling workers who deal with the melting of plastic are subject to inhalation hazards associated with the material.

  Much of the plastic recycled by Americans actually goes overseas to China and other countries where the process of melting it is troublesome. Work standards in these areas are not the same as in the United States; the workers often inhale fumes without the luxury of gas masks. Also, since plastic is not considered a hazardous waste, dumping of recycling byproducts tends to happen often in other countries since it is not covered by any international law.

Conversion

• Plastic does not enjoy the same good conversion rate as some of the other commonly recycled materials of the world. Recycled aluminum cans often become new aluminum cans and can be back on the shelf in a relatively short time. But plastics, because of health concerns, are not as desirable for many new consumer products, and plastic bottles do not always become new plastic bottles. Because of the lack of demand for recycled plastics, the price recyclers get for it is quite low. In turn, the people working at plastic recycling facilities also generally receive low wages.

The Bioplastics Issue

• Bioplastics are a version of plastic materials made from natural substances like cornstarch and vegetable oil, which allow the plastics to degrade much more quickly than petroleum-based plastic products. In fact, petroleum-based plastics are so new to mankind that no one knows exactly how long it will take for them to break down. Some estimates say it will take 1,000 years for a plastic bottle to naturally degrade.

  But bioplastics have their own problems related to recycling. Since there is no clear labeling in place to separate bioplastics from petroleum plastics, many people do not know which is which. The problem with this is that a single bioplastics container mixed with petroleum plastic will contaminate the entire batch for recycling purposes.