Things That Don't Work to Fix Plastic Pollution
We have known for a long time that plastic being tossed into road-side ditches,
blowing down our streets and dropped into our waterways is bad environmental
stewardship, bad for marine life, bad manners and bad economic behaviour. No
matter how much product advertising we see for seeing plastic drink bottles being
what the cool people use, we still know that littering with them is really not
morally acceptable, and simply bad social practice.
Still, the amount of plastic and other debris that ends up in our wild lands
and waters is pretty convincing evidence that we, as a species, are tossing our
plastic into the environment quite regularly, and in increasing volumes.
Why is that the case? Because we value our personal convenience over all else;
over nature, over our own health, over the health of others including our own
children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I'll stop there, because unless
we clean up our act on how we're trashing our home planet, more than
great-grandchildren may not be in the cards.
Good Intentions
If good intentions solved problems, we would not have those problems. There
just aren't enough 'do-gooders' who have a 100% personal success rate in the
population. Please understand I have a lot of respect for those who lug around
reusable coffee and water bottles. (There's many a morning I head out from
home with one of each filled to the lid. My Tervis bottle even has a cute
recycling badge built into it - despite the fact that one of the 6 curved arrows
has fallen off. Somehow, it seems fitting. I have equipped workplace kitchens
with reusable mugs and dishwashing supplies, and more. So, I fully get the
earnestness of those with the good intentions. I also know the full frustration
and disappointment of seeing others ignoring those efforts and continuing to
use throw-away cups and bottles.)
Guiltication Campaigns
A staple of many environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGO) and echoed
by 'green teams' and do-gooders, these campaigns impllicitly believe that if only
EVERYONE knew how bad plastic pollution was, then they would change their behaviour
and embrace better practice. I know these campaigns have been around since the 1980s,
because that's when I enthusiastically participated in them in the workplace and in
public. I have seen the posters (now 'infographics') on bulletin boards, on buses,
on light-poles, in cafeterias, on ferry boats, etc. At some level, people should
be informed about the problems caused by plastic pollution. However, with at least
4 decades of this programming, it's pretty clear people are still throwing plastic
waste into the environment anyway, and ratcheting up the 'shock value' of the images
is not making big (if any) changes in behaviour for the vast majority. The sad
reality is that most people just don't care. They want convenience, not a lecture,
and they believe that if they 'pay' for the convenience, then they are entitled
to have it. The guiltication campaigns do not effectively address this fundamental
belief system.
Bio-degradable Plastic Substitutes
Some people have chased the dream of the environmentally-benign biodegradeable
plastic material for one-use items as if it was the Holy Grail of solving plastic
pollution. It's not. Again, at least 4 decades of seeking this miracle material.
But so far, nothing brings the characteristics we want (no failures in immediate
use, short time to decompose to natural elements in a variety of environmental
conditions, and cheap). If we had a natural material which met those criteria, and
was the same price or cheaper than current plastics based on subsidized oil prices,
it would have already won in our perverse economic system we euphemistically call
the 'free market'. (If we could force the cost of dealing with downstream effects
into the price of the single-use plastic products, bio-substitutes might have a better chance.
However, so far, the combination of being able to handle a hot beverage for 30 minutes
without leaking and then biodegrading quickly in a snowbank has proven elusive.)
Most Municipal Plastics Recycling Programs
This is the one where I really get under the skin of some people. We pay a lot
in our taxes to implement these programs, and absorb the time tax to clean and
sort our recycables (paper, metal, kitchen waste, plastic), and the big polluting
trucks roar up and down our residential streets to collect our carefully tended
personal waste streams. But the systems have a lot of issues and 'leakage'.
Most municipal programs don't actually accept all plastics (e.g.
Ottawa does not
accept polystyrene (styrofoam) in any form, including drink cups). So if you toss all
your plastic waste in the recycling containers, some will be rejected as
'contamination', either at the end of your driveway, or later in the process. Worse
still, in my opinion, some programs change the plastics they accept over time,
based on the market value of the product. But this is almost never accompanied by
a leading education campaign for the population who do the heavy lifting at
the front end of municipal waste diversion programs. And very few programs, if any,
accept mixed waste (e.g. paper coffee cups with plastic lining, frozen juice
containers with metal, paper and plastic all connected to each other).
Most programs provide residents with open-top recycling bins. So, on 'garbage' day, it's
typical to see one-use plastic drink bottles blowing down our street, because it
does not take much wind to lift an empty PET water bottle out of the bin and out
onto the road, driveway, lawn or sidewalk. Given the bin is out for hours before
the collection truck shows up, the wind has moved that bottle out of the 'recycling
stream' and into the environment, probably permanently. There is additional
'leakage' all throughout the process, including 'contamination' and
landfilling and incineration of plastics which were collected in recycling programs.
Halifax will burn waste plastic now that it can't ship to Asia
Calgary: The recycling conundrum: How your blue bin hurts the environment
So, while municipal programs don't work nearly as well as you have likely
been led to believe, I am not advocating for not using them. Despite their
warts, they are better (so far, I believe) than sending all the plastic to
landfills (expensive) or incinerators (trading one form of pollution for another).
Still, I would really like to see the roaring collection trucks switched over
to electric hybrid vehicles. There is no reason the 15-metre hops down our
residential streets could not be done using electric power, even if the highway
runs to the landfill or transfer depot need an internal combustion engine
(biofuel?) for now. I mean, garbage collection is a health program, and
recycling is an environmental program, so couldn't the front-line equipment
reflect this with technology which is better for our health and environment?
Recycling programs can be amazingly effective. Take
Sweden as an example. It comes down to social willingness and political
courage. By comparison, in North America, we truck our trash (including plastic waste) hundreds of miles
from major cities to sanitary landfills prepared to take those excesses for hefty
fees, spewing air pollution and greenhouse gases with every truck round-trip.
Shipping the Problem to Asia
Yes, the easy way out for many North American recycling programs has come to
an end. As of January 2018,
China is no longer accepting most plastic waste from overseas. Now, most of
that will likely end up in landfills or incinerators. Because Asia actually was
our key 'diversion' and 'recycling' destination. However, if the cost of even
nominally dealing with our plastic waste addiction becomes more expensive,
perhaps we'll be motivated to find some real solutions. But, I'm not holding
my breath on that one.
So while the approaches above don't actually work to sufficiently reduce current rates
of adding to the plastic pollution inventory in the environment, things are about
to get worse (as of early 2018). They also don't
address the existing pollution in the environment. For that,
we need a different way of
thinking about the problem.
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