After more than 50 years... Was the plastic recycling fever a hoax?!

Well, it's Pacific turtles again, have you seen them before?

Documentary channels talk about it a lot, that innocent turtle that gets stuck in a small plastic bag and causes its death, or maybe a brave scientist saves it, then we move on to talking about plastic recycling, and how it is necessary to care and look for the recycling sign in anything you wear Rescue that poor tortoise, then buy the biodegradable plastic, and maybe even take a picture with your bio-plastic bag!

But how useful was all this?

Are we really on our way to a plastic-free world?

And to what extent did the recycling actually help those innocent turtles?

Today, more than 50 years after the first recycling symbol was used, international reports and data, including the data of the World Economic Forum, confirm that by 2050 the weight of plastic in water bodies will exceed the weight of fish in them, there are more than 8 million tons of plastic waste entering the oceans Annually, equivalent to emptying a load of plastic from a garbage truck every minute into the sea (1), this means mass killing of marine organisms, which is the opposite of what was expected to happen with all the rumors and rumors about plastic recycling, the conclusion is that the world - simply - continues In his move towards an environmental disaster caused by plastic.

biodegradable plastic

Some believe that the use of products made of biodegradable plastic, such as single-use bags, is less harmful than conventional or regular plastic, which leads them to use these products more, and there is even a common myth that if any of these tools are thrown In the forest or the ocean, microorganisms will decompose them into raw materials that will later turn perhaps into other living organisms, especially if they are made of materials derived from plants, but the truth is that they are more dangerous than ordinary plastic.

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Scientifically, materials are known to be biodegradable if more than 90% of them are converted to carbon dioxide within 180 days of exposure to temperatures above 50 degrees Celsius, meaning that they are materials designed to release carbon dioxide at the end of their life cycle, but in the absence of oxygen, for example If these materials are buried in landfills, their decomposition will produce methane, which is responsible for raising the temperature of the planet by 34-86 times compared to carbon dioxide. vitally.

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Therefore, the use of this type of plastic does not provide a solution to the existing plastic pollution disaster, but rather worsens it, especially in the presence of data confirming that 60% of the plastic produced in the world is buried or collected in waste sites, with the exception of a type of plastic made from a biomaterial that is used Plants manufacture it, and it is less dangerous than ordinary plastic because it does not cause a new emission of carbon dioxide when it decomposes, in addition to another material announced by Pepsi and Coca-Cola, a type of non-degradable plastic developed, but this model It has not yet been transformed into a marketable model.

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plastic recycling

In an academic article published by the famous scientific journal Nature Reviews Materials (5), the journal explained that the danger of plastic lies in all stages of the life of plastic, from resource extraction, chemical refining, to incineration and recycling. Each stage pumps greenhouse gases emitted during the stage, and that if the need for materials and products made of plastic increases, the need for oil is expected to increase globally, which means undermining efforts to move away from the use of fossil fuels in the sectors of energy, transportation and communications, due to reliance on it in the manufacture of plastic.

According to the magazine, the continued progress of the world in this direction means an increase in the need to recycle and manage the current waste for the manufacture of plastic, but this is not happening, as the percentage of recycled plastic does not exceed 9% of plastic waste around the world, not only that, but every stage in the The recycling process consumes part of the energy resources, affects the quality of the plastic and causes the loss of other materials during recycling.

The study also indicated the need to improve methods of managing plastic waste, as the instability of the chemicals used in the manufacture of plastic turns them into toxic pollutants that are resistant to decomposition in the natural environment factors, and the plastic product may turn into small pieces that affect the lives of other living organisms.

In an interview with National Public Radio, the director of a company specialized in recycling and waste disposal said that she sees plastic recycling as a betrayal of the trust of society, as all plastic buried in landfills will not be recycled to make new plastic. Waste recycling is higher than the cost of burying it, and even in the presence of recycling efforts, most of the plastic currently accumulated in waste sites will not be recycled even in the presence of new recycling technologies and tools, but some still market recycling and convince the public of its success.

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Another thing that hinders recycling is the use of hundreds of different materials in the manufacture of plastic, some of which interact during manufacturing to produce materials that are very difficult to recycle, and therefore incineration is the solution to get rid of these wastes, in addition to the presence of plastic associated with other non-plastic materials such as metals and glues in some products , and this makes it difficult to separate the plastic from it to enter it into the recycling stage, and there is no solution for that except to take into account this point when manufacturing new plastic, while it remains an obstacle to dealing with the existing plastic.

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Another thing is that plastic differs from other materials in the inability to recycle it more than once, unlike what happens in metals that are recycled through melting, re-forming and use repeatedly, and this is impossible to apply with plastic, even the plastic product itself is not recycled into a product Similar, for example, recycling a plastic shelf into a new plastic shelf, rather it is converted into other products such as carpets or a certain type of clothing, in addition to that, recycling produces poor quality plastic, which requires adding other types of plastic to improve the new product, as well as a group of Standards that do not allow all types of recycled plastic to be used in certain products such as food containers.

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Corona pandemic

The Corona pandemic has exacerbated the bad situation of plastic pollution around the world from several aspects (9), perhaps the most prominent of which is the increase in the production of personal safety equipment such as gloves and masks, until global estimates for the use of these tools reached 129 billion masks and 65 billion gloves per month. Try to imagine sticking all these gloves and masks. Besides some of them, we will get a cover that hides the entire country of Switzerland, and even many of them will reach water bodies, and jellyfish will be the first victims by the way, followed by turtles, as they will affect fish, birds and animals.

The pandemic has also contributed to the collapse of global oil markets, which means that oil and natural gas prices will drop to their lowest levels, and since these materials are used in the manufacture of plastic products, this means that they will be a much better option than other alternative materials such as seaweed and cellulose, which can be used in Packaging and packaging of goods, and this is a very important point for institutions and companies that seek to win business competition within global markets.

The pandemic also caused a global economic crisis that affected consumer behavior, so the consumer preferred to buy the least expensive products over those that are classified as environmentally friendly, most of the least expensive products are food products wrapped in plastic, and data indicated that plastic waste increased in 2020 at a rate of 30% over the year which precedes it.

Finally, the Corona pandemic added a huge financial burden on the health and other sectors, which caused the redirection of government and global support funds towards health systems and scientific research and development efforts to confront the resulting disaster, and this led to deducting part of the funding provided to recycling systems around the world, even if Some government authorities have stopped recycling programs partially or completely, due to financial crises, as happened in several American municipalities.

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difficult solutions

As a result of all this, academic researchers today, through their review of scientific studies and modern technologies (11) see that thinking about a world free of plastic is similar to searching for an ideal world, meaning that it is not practically applicable, preferring to focus efforts on managing and treating plastic waste, Avoiding the use of incineration and burial and replacing that with recycling processes in which plastic is chemically treated to produce other chemicals or to produce energy, or the tendency to grind it and turn it into micro-granules to manufacture new products, but even these methods require the provision of infrastructure and appropriate government funding, meaning that the process is affected the socio-economic conditions of the countries.

Other researchers assert that rapid action should start with raising the percentage of recycled plastic from 9% to 80% within a short time, and then to 100% in order to reduce plastic waste to the lowest level, and not add more to the currently accumulated plastic, with the possibility of using burial and burning. As temporary solutions as well as recycling.

With the difficulty of stopping plastic manufacturing operations, the percentage of plastic derived from vital sources such as plants must be raised from 1% to 10% in the short term, and then continue to gradually increase this percentage to reach 100%, in addition to the need to legislate laws prohibiting the use of the most dangerous types of plastics to the environment at the long term.

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Well, in the end, it appears - if we look at it with a degree of patience - that plastic is not one specific problem that has one specific solution called "recycling", but it is a structural problem, even an existential one, as the whole world follows a political, economic and social system that is completely opposite to this Innocent turtle, in this respect, social media calls to save the turtle are nothing but an attempt to escape guilt, as if we were whispering, "Here I do everything in my hands, turtle, huh.. Are you happy now?!"

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