Plastic waste, getting right with reality

It’s been a crazy week in the world of plastics. China put the kibosh on imports of scrap plastics, raising serious concerns about the state of recycling. This has been compounded by a few articles and a recent study by Roland Geyer, Jenna R. Jambeck and Kara Lavender Law, “Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made.” All illustrating the catastrophic environmental impact plastics are creating and our inability to combat this problem through recycling. I know for some this may sound like environmental blasphemy, but those that keep saying “we must recycle everything, at all costs” need to take a timeout.

In order to create circularity, energy recovery must be a part of the equation and it must be dealt with first, not as an afterthought. It is ubiquitous that the majority of plastics are ending-up in a landfill. But not a single article or study clearly defines this waste infrastructure. These aren’t unmanaged garbage dumps anymore. If sustainability professional would stop propagating this idea and understand the intrinsic value that comes from how today’s modern landfills are managed, the world would be a better place.   

There’s no mantra that can combat this catastrophy, this is not a consumer problem. Pick-up any plastic application and ask the brand what the common disposal environment is, not hypothetically, realistically. If that product is not designed to perform in accordance to that answer, whose fault is it?