Plastic Solution Checkpoint: It’s all in the Packaging

Take a tour of pretty much any isle of your local supermarket and you may find a choice in the products you’re planning on purchasing that you’ve never considered. Several items today from juice to spaghetti sauce to salsa come in a variety of containers and packaging. One easy step to becoming plastic free is to simply choose the glass jars and bottles, metal cans, or paper boxes for your products instead of the plastic bottles and wrapping. Although glass, metal, and paper remain contenders for packaging in a lot of items, there are some that are becoming more and more dominated by plastic. There still are a few non-plastic options but they may be hidden somewhere like the organic/natural foods isles or at your local co-op. So why is this important? Here are a couple statistics from the United States Environmental Protection Agency as reported in “Did You Just Eat a Plastic Bag? How Plastic Pollution Has Entered Our Food Chain” by Lisa Kaas Boyle in The Huffington Post on January 6, 2011:

1. Plastic Plates and Cups: 780,000 tons were produced, and all 780,000 tons were discarded.

2. Plastic Trash Bags: 930,000 tons were produced, and all 930,000 were discarded.

3. Plastic Bags, Sacks and Wraps: 3,960,000 tons were produced. 9.8% was recovered (390,000). 3,570,000 tons were discarded.

4. "Other" non-durable goods including plastic disposable diapers, footwear and clothing: amounted to 4,810,000 tons produced with all 4,810,000 tons discarded.

5. PET Bottles and Jars: 2,680,000 tons were produced, 27.2 % were recovered (730,000 tons) and 1,950,000 tons were discarded.

6. HDPE (white translucent homopolymer bottles): 750,000 tons were produced, and 29.3 % (220,000 tons) were recovered. 530,000 tons were discarded.

7. "Other Plastic Packaging" including coatings, closures, lids, caps, clamshells, egg cartons, produce baskets, trays, shapes, and loose fill: 3,720,000 tons were produced. 3% (110,000 tons) were recovered, and 3 Million 610 Thousand Tons were discarded.

All in all that means that of 17,630,000 tons of plastic only 1,450,000 tons or 1.2% were recovered. This is for a few reasons.
1. Some people don’t recycle (thankfully this is improving).
2. Some plastics were never designed to be recycled.
3. Recycling plastic doesn’t reduce the demand for new plastic because when you recycle plastic, it actually is not really recycled. As Boyle reports, because of the complicated structure of plastic, most plastic isn’t recycled but “downcycled” and becomes a different lower grade plastic.
4. Plastics absorbs grease dirt and chemicals. Because of this, as much of a third of plastic dropped off for recycling is too greasy and dirty to be recycled, and gets thrown away anyways.

There are also issues of costs and contamination (including when two types of plastic are found together) that prevent plants from accepting significant amounts of the plastic that is out there.

Overall the best choice when it comes to plastic packaging is to stick with the 1st R of Recycling and reduce the amount you use. Glass, metal, and paper products are all much more easily recycled and returned to their natural state to be used again and because they are also more natural elements less harmful when not recycled as well. If you can’t find your favorite products in non-plastic packaging try contacting the company to try and get them to change.