Recycling is failing as a way to reduce plastic. Here's why

Recycling plastic isn't working.

The figure most often cited is that only nine per cent of the world's plastic has ever been recycled. That statistic is taken from a 2017 study looking at how much plastic the world has thrown out from 1950 to 2015. 

It's a lot: 6.3 billion tonnes, or the weight of nearly 54,000 CN Towers. 

The 91 per cent of plastic that isn't recycled is mostly landfilled, burned and/or unaccounted for in the environment — a demoralizing statistic for people who diligently put their containers and plastic bottles into recycling bins. 

As 175 countries negotiate a binding treaty on plastic pollution in Busan, South Korea, why is recycling still seen as a way to stop this pollution crisis?

'More, not less' 

The world is actually making more plastic. Production has skyrocketed in recent decades, with "the annual production of plastics … soaring from 234 million tonnes (Mt) in 2000 to 460 Mt in 2019," according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. 

Plastic producers and the fossil fuel companies that provide the necessary petrochemicals see a demand for products and only support a solution that won't hinder meeting that demand. In a statement, the Chemical Industry Association of Canada — which is present at the current negotiations — said it supports "an agreement that has plastics circularity at its core, so used plastics are reused and remade, rather than discarded." 

It went on to suggest that a sustainable future — from renewable technology to modern health care — means "the world will need to rely on plastic more, not less."

It's worth noting that investigations (one by NPR and PBS, the other by the Center for Climate Integrity) have revealed internal documents going back decades suggesting the industry knew that recycling was never going to work, but pushed it as a solution to avoid plastic bans. The industry denies misleading the public. 

The industry also advocates for technological solutions, including advanced chemical recycling, which uses methods that break down certain plastics to then be reused. A ProPublica analysis of one method, pyrolysis, which uses high temperatures to break down plastic waste into oil, found the process gave back little recycled material. 

"I think the jury's still out to see if those [methods] are, in fact, effective," Samuel Pottinger, a senior data scientist at the University of California Berkeley, told CBC News. 

Out of sight

Pottinger's latest research studied key policies that could help reduce a particular scourge: the plastic waste that's mismanaged. That's an estimated 62 million tonnes of plastic that isn't burned, landfilled or recycled. This unaccounted-for amount often ends up in the environment.

"If we took all of that mismanaged plastic waste and piled it on top of New York City, it would reach so high that it would disrupt general aviation," Pottinger said.

How this plastic breaks down into micro- and nano-plastics also poses a human health threat, he warned. (While his focus is on mismanaged waste, he notes that other waste outcomes, such as incineration, have negative effects on the environment, too.) 

The solutions, his research suggests, still involve recycling. Specifically, to set a 40 per cent minimum of recycled content worldwide and to invest heavily in waste management infrastructure globally. Richer nations have more complete options for their waste, but poorer countries — including those that make money importing plastic waste — do not. 

"There is a need because of the global interconnected system," Pottinger said. "It's both a selfless and a selfish need to try to fund that expansion across the globe, just not just in places where the wealth is already concentrated." 

Back to the beginning 

The elephant in the room is that these solutions deal with plastic's end-of-life — and don't address the production of virgin plastics.

The call to address that echoes across environmental and Indigenous groups, but is also part of the commitment from the High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution (of which Canada is a member country). 

"A treaty that fails to get at the heart of the issue and stop making so much plastic is a failed treaty," said Sarah King, senior strategist at Greenpeace Canada. She's calling on governments to raise their ambitions at the South Korea summit, to move beyond joint statements and into action. 

"This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to actually begin to curb plastic pollution," King told CBC from Busan. "But we can only curb pollution if we curb production." 

No silver bullet

Pottinger's research reaffirms the positive impact of cutting production on mismanaged waste, and notes that efforts to meet a minimum recycled content level may end up forcing production cuts. But he warns that nothing works in isolation. 

"There isn't really a silver bullet, a single intervention that policymakers can take on to solve this problem," Pottinger said.

The summit in Busan is the culmination of nations agreeing in 2022 to do something with legal teeth about plastic pollution, given its impacts on human health, climate change and the natural environment. 

With no action, global plastic waste is predicted to grow to a billion tonnes annually by 2060.