Recycling: A Waste of Time?

Like me, you probably think of yourself as a pretty environmentally conscious person. You have a food waste bin at home for composting your food scraps, you make sure to recycle every bit of plastic you can, and you even follow Greta Thunberg on Facebook. Just last week you resisted the urge to throw that Evian bottle in the bin (you forgot your reusable water bottle), instead waiting to put it in the recycling at home. Though the world is facing a plastic pollution crisis of unrivalled magnitude, it feels good to know that I’m doing my bit by diligently rinsing and recycling any plastic waste I accumulate. Unfortunately, I recently came across a statistic that shattered any illusions I had of my status as eco-warrior.

In a 2017 study published in Science Advances, researchers conducted the first global analysis of the production, use, and fate of all plastic made to date. Over the relatively short history of the mass production of plastic, which took off in the 1950s as a consequence of the post-war economic boom, humans have created 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic, 6.3 billion tonnes of which has become waste. Here’s the shocking statistic: only 9% of that plastic waste has been recycled. This means that 79% of all plastic ever made is either festering in landfills or littering our environments. If we carry on this way, there will be 12 billion tonnes of plastic in landfills by 2050. This got me thinking, how on earth did we get here? And is there anything we can do about it?

In a nutshell, recycling is flawed. You might imagine that you finish your Evian water, throw the bottle in the correct bin, and off it goes for the local council to sort and recycle. It will be back on the shelf in no time, awaiting another consumer to purchase it and start the whole cycle over. The reality is that most countries produce more waste than they can handle. As a result, your bottle (along with other processed recyclables) enters a global market where it is sold and shipped across the world, often to Europe or Asia, to be recycled and sold back to manufacturers.

Up until recently, China was the destination of choice for nearly half of the world’s plastic waste. However, in January 2018, it enacted its National Sword policy which restricted the amount of waste imported into the country, and effectively put a halt to the global movement of plastic waste to China - but all that rubbish had to go somewhere. As a result, nearby countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia became the overflow dumping grounds for the world's waste. But these countries faced the same problem as China - too much waste to handle, a lot of which is too contaminated to be economically viable to clean and recycle. Consequently, the plastic goes to landfill or overflows into rivers and oceans. We are not recycling. We are shipping our waste across the world to pollute someone else’s doorstep. These countries have now followed in China’s footsteps by introducing bans on imported waste, which begs the question: where will it all go?

“The root of the problem is consumption. The US sends less waste to landfill than ever, with 52% going to landfill in 2017 compared to 94% in 1960. Despite this, the total amount of waste it generates today is still far greater than back then”

The root of the problem is consumption. The US sends less waste to landfill than ever (the rest being recycled or composted), with 52% going to landfill in 2017 compared to 94% in 1960. Despite this, the total amount of waste it generates today is still far greater than back then. On paper the UK recycles 46% of all household waste, but this only refers to rubbish that is sent for recycling. As we have found out, a lot of it does not make it that far. We simply produce too much plastic for our already flawed recycling system to handle, a consequence of the rapid increase in plastic production over the course of the twentieth century.

Jenna Jambeck, an author of the study in Science Advances, says that “this kind of increase would ‘break’ any system that was not prepared for it, and this is why we have seen leakage from global waste systems into the oceans”. Clearly we cannot go on this way. Recycling makes us feel good about ourselves, as it seems like a clear and tangible way to change our impact on the planet. But the reality is that recycling should be a last resort, and we should focus far more on the other two Rs, reduce and reuse. Basically, just buy yourself that reusable water bottle you’ve had your eye on, okay?

Originally published in Edinburgh University Science Magazine, Issue 26: Sustainability