What Actually Happens to Recycled Waste
- Alexes Johnson
- Sep 15, 2019
- 3 min read
Contaminated Recyclables
I recently listened to a podcast talking about the modern politics of recycling and what really happens to the things we recycle. I found this so interesting. With the recent boom of recycling, you would think good things would come out of it. However, there seems to be many issues arising due to the increasing numbers of recycled items. After listening to this podcast I felt like I learned a lot about what actually happens to the things I recycle and if it's doing more harm than helping.
In this interview with author Kate O’Neill, a professor of environmental science, policy, and management, host Terry Gross asks the questions many of us have about our recyclable waste.
One of the first questions asked is about how recyclables become contaminated and what it means to contaminate recycling. “Recycling can get contaminated in a couple of ways. One is you simply put stuff that's dirty. It's still got food on it. Mayonnaise is a good example. Those jars, you put them into the recycling. And then they have to be thrown out later because they can't be cleaned adequately to be recycled” (O’Neill). This wasn’t too surprising to me, but I am guilty of just throwing plastics into the recycle bin without thinking about washing it. It defeats the purpose.
“The other problem is when too many different types of recyclables are mixed together. And that can be different kinds of plastics all in the same bin or plastics, paper, cans, all of those things that can go into a recycling bin mixed together will render it - make it unrecyclable” (O’Neill). This was something I never would have thought about. It is recommended that people have separate bins for paper, plastic, and glass, but I don’t think it's very likely that people would want four waste bins in their homes. Certain types of plastic are much harder to recycle (soft plastics like grocery bags), and most recycling facilities don't accept them because they can damage machinery (O’Neill).
China and Recyclables
“China stopped taking our recycling waste last year as part of this new policy. They call it the National Sword policy” (Gross). This leads to many problems for the US. O'Neill stated that China stopped taking imports because “western countries as a whole were pretty much taking advantage of China's willingness to import plastics.” Not only that but they were also receiving many contaminated and very mixed items (O’Neill).
China has also been trying to get rid of their bad environmental image and taking tons of the world’s garbage is not making it any better (O’Neill). China did repurpose some things, but they incinerated others. Lots of it was just getting put in landfills which eventually ended up in oceans (O’Neill). There were other countries we had been sending our waste to after China’s ban, but they soon became overwhelmed with it as well and created their own bans (O’Neill). Now that our recycling is building up in the US, more and more recyclables are ending up in American landfills and the oceans.
There is much more to recycling than I thought. Is recycling even worth it? Are those plastic straws actually ending up in a turtle's nose anyway? Will the US do anything about this recycling problem soon? We must learn how to recycle properly or find new and effective ways to get rid of these recyclables before we run out of landfills.
References:
Gross, Terry, host. “‘Waste’ Examines the Global and Local afterlife of Recyclables.” Fresh Air. NPR, Sep
12, 2019,
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