IS IT REALLY RECYCLING OR JUST EXPORT?

While much of the following discussion is around technical issues detailing which technologies can recycle which polymers using different techniques, it must be recognized that there is an international, environmental justice component to be considered. Most low-income countries do not have the financial or technical capacity to establish sophisticated recycling infrastructure. Many cannot afford to even develop adequate sanitary landfills. Images of rivers filled will plastic waste flushing out to sea are common. On land, enormous amounts of plastic waste are being openly dumped or burned to reduce the waste volume. Burning plastic waste generates airborne toxic compounds leading to exposure of large populations. The toxic chemicals, including POPs, build up in the soil and contaminate the food chain – at times to extraordinary levels. IPEN studies of open plastic waste dumping and burning in Ghana11 and Indonesia12,13,14 demonstrate severe food chain contamination by POPs such as dioxins at levels only seen at sites in Vietnam heavily contaminated with Agent Orange.

Wealthy countries dramatically exacerbate this problem by exporting plastic waste to low-income countries under the guise of recycling, knowing full well that the countries they export the waste to have very limited capacity to recycle the plastic. In many cases, the exported waste contains high volumes of plastic that cannot be technically or economically recycled anywhere. A large proportion of the plastic waste that caused the food chain contamination revealed in IPEN’s reports was imported from wealthy countries. For decades, citizens in many developed countries have dutifully separated their wastes for curbside collection assuming that their plastic was being recycled in their own country. The reality is that much of it is exported, landfilled, or burned in incinerators.

When China implemented its National Sword Policy in January 2018, blocking imports of mixed and contaminated plastic waste, wealthy countries shifted their exports to countries in Southeast Asia, including Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Within two years many of these countries began to reject such shipments due to high levels of contamination and limited means to manage even the recyclable content. In turn, this has shifted the focus back onto wealthy countries to deal with their own plastic waste and onto the producers of the plastic who are now scrambling to placate public opinion with ‘solutions’ to the problem they have created. The main focus of plastic producers is to propose a large-scale expansion and acceleration of technologies for chemical recycling of plastic waste. The analysis in this report demonstrates that chemical recycling in the context of the current crisis is largely a public relations distraction that will have little impact on the problem of plastic waste.