There is good news ahead of us, however. This is the best way for plastic recycling facilities to overcome the disadvantage in economics compared to the continued manufacture and use of virgin plastics. With such low margins, it is up to the federal or local governments to jumpstart a plastic recycling program through a combination of policy and capital infusion. Most material recovery facilities do not have the technology to process flexible packaging, which means that they often end up in landfills or get incinerated. The Anti-plastic Backlash in Response to Very Visible Pollution Problems Over the past several months in particular, there has been intense media coverage of marine plastic pollution, as … But does the science make sense? To tackle plastic contamination, all recycling should be collected as loose, co-mingled material, to ensure that fewer plastic bags can enter the recycling stream in the first place. Low-income countries like India, Pakistan, Tanzania, Senegal, Myanmar, Haiti, Madagascar, and several dozen others have maintained a low per capita rate of generation of plastic waste. A truck has to come and get it from your house, and then it … ready to have your mind expanded by the possibilities and taste a bit of the future before everyone else. In 2013, it was announced that revisions to the resin identification code would eliminate the use of the “chasing arrows” symbol in favor of an equilateral triangle, and some #7 plastics (or “Other” for miscellaneous resins) will have to identify the resin type in addition to the code. Part of our investment discovery process at Loup is to identify large problems, define the problems in our structure of cost/convenience/moral, figure out the best way to solve the problem, then find the companies doing it., figure out the best way to solve the … About 700 million tons of plastic waste has been incinerated and about 2500 million tons remain in active use. As far as humans are concerned, plastic waste has also been found in the food that we eat. I love diving into the latest and greatest in emerging technologies and seeing what they can do. Nevertheless, there are at least as many … Technology to help with plastic sorting continues to be developed. Any entrepreneur or reporter who pretends otherwise is … Plastic pollution in waterways has long been known to have caused the death of marine species either by ingestion or entanglement. Its operations will also require huge operating costs in terms of power, manpower, and equipment maintenance. This deficiency makes the economics of plastic recycling even worse. Multilayered and other forms of lightweight packaging are one increasingly popular example. That’s 200 billion pounds of new material on-market every year, ready to be thermoformed, laminated, foamed and extruded into billions of products and packages. As we have gleaned, a plastic recycling facility is not as profitable as facilities that recycle metal or glass. The plastic that couldn’t be recycled was heaped onto “trash mountains.” According to Marcus, plastic waste is also difficult to recycle, because different types of plastic has different chemical compositions, and separating different types of plastic from each other is labor-intensive, Plastic is finding its way into marine life. In fact, the current recycling system for plastics is actually one of the major contributors to plastic pollution around the world. In the United States, our recovery rate for all plastic rests at 9 percent, according to the most recent Municipal Solid Waste report from the EPA. Plastics and their byproducts are littering our cities, oceans, and waterways, and contributing to health problems in … The trend appears to be skewed towards middle-income countries such as Sri Lanka, Maldives, Fiji, Egypt, Malaysia, and South Africa. The other 400 million tons have also ended up either getting discarded in landfills or incinerated. Fortunately, technology now exists to recycle plastic products. Since China implemented stricter purity standards on the recycled goods they're willing to buy, recycling facilities are turning to A.I. Over the last few years, it’s become increasingly clear that we can’t recycle ourselves out of our ongoing plastic problem. This might be because of the way it is made up or because it is too expensive or difficult to do. We can help yo… Notable examples include China, Indonesia, India, Nigeria, Brazil, Vietnam, and Bangladesh. The UK also needs more advanced secondary market infrastructure in place to deal with hard-to-recycle items such as plastic … Here are Top 5 Solutions to Your Recycling Problems. This also means that plastic cannot be recycled infinitely, unlike glass or metal. The process of recycling an old product into something reusable uses energy and creates pollution. Even in countries with well-developed plastic recycling facilities, there are still technological limitations that prevent them from attaining higher recycling rates. By providing simple images and recycling instructions on each individual label, consumer-side confusion can be greatly mitigated. As a testament to how long plastics take to break down, macroplastics (> 200 mm) dating back to the 1950s and 1960s have been found. The responsibility then falls on the consumer to be aware of which resins are and are not accepted by their local municipal recycling program. In countries like China, India, Indonesia, Philippines, and Thailand, a cursory walk down any street will reveal plastic packaging that is not segregated in any form to prepare them for recycling. : Recycling of waste plastics still remains a challenging area in the waste management sector. This is less of a concern when recycling rates are low (sending a lightweight pouch to landfill is better than sending a heavy rigid plastic with more mass), but once recycling rates start to increase, non-recyclable lightweight options make little sense from a sustainability perspective. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Looking only at the statistics of plastic production per country, it’s easy to spot a trend of rich countries generating more plastic waste. One great hope is chemical recycling: turning … The cost-effective and efficient recycling of the mixed plastic stream is perhaps the biggest challenge facing the recycling industry. Even a PET container may not be recycled by some recycling facilities if it is colored and/or opaque. Recycled plastics account for only around 6 percent of demand in Europe. Recycling in the U.S. is broken. To date, there has no concrete evidence of harmful health effects to humans of ingesting microplastics or ingesting animals with traces of microplastics. Governments can also support reducing plastic waste either by taxing plastic products or providing incentives to companies that provide more sustainable solutions. Required fields are marked *, Subscribe to our newsletter to get interesting stories delivered to your inbox! Hope to ensure their post-consumer packaging can be greatly mitigated have the tools and knowledge create! With the numbers for us to recognize just how much greenhouse gas was.... 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