What Happens to All That Plastic?

According to the United Nations Environmental Programme, global plastic consumption has gone from 5.5 million tons in the 1950s to 110 million tons in 2009.  Where does all this plastic go when we’re done with it?

Today Americans discard about 33.6 million tons of plastic each year, but only 6.5 percent of it is recycled and 7.7 percent is combusted in waste-to-energy facilities, which create electricity or heat from garbage.

Photo credit: Samuel Mann

The rest ends up in landfills where it may take up to 1,000 years to decompose, and potentially leak pollutants into the soil and water. It’s estimated that there are also 100 millions tons of plastic debris floating around in the oceans threatening the health and safety of marine life.

seven codes to distinguish types of plastic for recycling, in reality, only two—polyethylene terephthalate (PET, used for synthetic fibers and water bottles) and high density polyethylene (HDPE, used for jugs, bottle caps, water pipes)—are routinely recycled. In more and more cities like New York and Chicago, low-density polyethylene (LDPE) plastic bags are now being recycled too. And increasingly the recycling industry’s use of near‐infrared spectroscopy, which can identify the chemical composition of plastics, is improving the efficiency and speed of plastic recycling.

Because plastics embody energy from fossil fuels (and actually have a higher energy value than coal), leaving so much of it in landfills is not only an environmental hazard, it is a huge waste of a valuable resource that could be used to produce electricity, heat, or fuel.

The report examined three ways of utilizing non-recycled plastic for energy production: converting plastics directly into liquid fuel, using separated plastics as fuel in special types of power plants, and increasing the amount of garbage burned (currently only 10 percent) in waste-to-energy facilities.

So next time you are about to throw that plastic bag! think about it one more time.

Blessings,

Nafiinu

Derived from: http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2012/01/31/what-happens-to-all-that-plastic/