Report Reveals Worrying Plastic Recycling Practices in US
Wednesday, February 19, 2020 - 12:49:57
Greenpeace has published the results of a recent study which suggests that American consumers are being misled about the extent to which the plastic waste they send to be recycled is actually being processed in a sustainable way.
The Guardian reports that as little as 15 per cent of the recycling centres across the country are able to deal with clamshell-style plastic packaging materials which are being collected in growing numbers.
Part of the problem stems from the fact that the US, like a number of other western nations, was previously reliant on the ability to export recyclable materials to China for processing, whereas a recent ban on this has left a black hole in the recycling infrastructure, necessitating the use of entirely unsustainable solutions.
Another issue identified in the study is that products which are being sold based on their recyclability at the moment are either not gaining traction in the market or are not actually possible to recycle domestically.
More warnings have been issued about the rise in mixed plastics being marked as recyclable, even if ultimately only a small proportion of the facilities which handle recycling duties in America are able to deal with them.
Experts argue that there is a lot of confusion surrounding this issue today, especially since consumers are being told one thing by manufacturers and retailers while finding that their activities are not as eco-friendly as they might have hoped.
The only effective way to tackle this problem is thought to be reducing the amount of plastic which is passed on to consumers in the first place. It will take some time to update the recycling infrastructure to cope with current levels of input, so the quicker solution of slashing waste plastic volumes is the most obvious option.
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