Beyond Blue Bins: The Trashy Truth Behind U.S Recycling

Post-meal, piece of plastic in your hand, you hover over the blue bin engraved with that little directional triangle. Then, maybe closing your eyes, you drop the item in the recycling, hoping for the best. This mode of “wish-cycling” is the dominant strategy of most Americans; twenty-five percent of what we throw into the bins cannot be recycled. In addition, only two of the seven types of plastic consumers purchase are turned into new materials: plastics #1, what disposable water bottles are made of, and #2, a thick, durable plastic made into items such as chairs, milk jugs, and crates. Butter tubs, yogurt containers, and clamshell packaging, while sporting the recycling symbol, are destined for incineration.

Despite movements across the United States to improve our plastic sorting and disposing, the vast majority of plastics end up in the landfill. In 2017, the year with the most recent EPA data on recycling, eight percent of plastics consumed in the U.S were recycled. Twenty-seven million tons were buried. And no, the liberal, eco-conscious East Bay is not doing better. Although many people shop second hand, bike, and religiously ponder their ecological footprint, only fifty percent of the city’s recycling is processed into new materials. The remainder is dumped into a domestic landfill in Southern California.

Crucially, the disposal of waste in this country does not equally affect us all. Landfills and other hazardous waste facilities nationwide are disproportionately located in black and brown neighborhoods. The 2007 study Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty found that beyond income, education, and other socioeconomic indicators, race is the most significant factor that determines where a hazardous waste facility is located. Communities where multiple hazardous facilities are located have even higher percentages of people of color.

And what about the eight percent of plastics which, in 2017, were recycled? These were sent to China, in a national approach to wish-cycling. In the southern, seaside Yunnan province, low wage workers in sixty thousand recycling plants would wash and melt the plastic. Yet, this mass enterprise lead to wide scale water, air, and soil pollution with dire health consequences for workers involved. A study from the Guangdong Institute of Eco-environmental and Soil Sciences found that plastic breakdown releases volatile organic compounds, which are directly inhaled by plant workers and known to cause cancer and damage the organs and central nervous system. In addition, plastic burning, a frequent informal method of plastic disposal, releases dioxin into the air, known to cause cancer, birth defects, and Parkinson’s disease.

Weary of importing the trash of high income countries at the cost of ecosystems and public health, the Chinese government passed the National Sword Policy in 2018, limiting the flow of plastics into its borders. Losing China as our trash outlet, U.S cities scramble to send off or stow away waste. Some cities send plastic to Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia, where it is often burned or swept to sea. Other cities are stuffing their landfills, storing it in warehouses, or burning it themselves. National Sword policy or not, it is clear that the U.S recycling system has never been sustainable, and impacts low income people of color, nationally and globally, the most. 

Let’s move beyond wish-cycling and advocate for state bans on single use plastics. We must petition senators to pass bills such as California’s proposed Circular Economy and Plastic Pollution Reduction Bill, which would require companies to reduce their reliance on plastic packaging and invest in domestic recycling plants. Let’s listen to leaders of environmental justice movements and hold cities accountable for processing their own waste. For the sake of public, health, land, and oceanic systems, we must move beyond the blue bins to reach a greener future.