Plastic (46 page)

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It was a change that had its roots
: Frank Ackerman,
Why Do We Recycle? Markets, Values, and Public Policy
Washington, DC: Island Press, 1997), 124–35.

174
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No sooner did Coke and Pepsi
: The first recycling of the bottles took place in 1977.

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Wellman had been using
: Author interview with Dennis Sabourin, director of the National Association for PET Container Resources (NAPCOR), February 2010.

175
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we recycle only about a quarter
: Association of Postconsumer Plastic Recyclers (APR), "2009 United States National Post-Consumer Plastics Bottle Recycling Report." In 2009 the figure was 28 percent, up from 24 percent in 2007.

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That's nearly enough polyester
: According to NAPCOR, it takes sixty-three twenty-ounce bottles to make a sweater, so it's more than 870 million sweaters.

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It's a collection of energy
: Container Recycling Institute, "Energy Impacts of Replacing Beverage Containers Wasted in 2005," accessed at
http://www.container-recycling.org/facts/datashow.php?file=/issues/zbcwaste/data/energytable.htm&title=Energy%20Impacts%20%20of%20Replacing%20Beverage%20Containers
.

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In yet another of plastic's paradoxes
: The recycling rate for high-density polyethylene, the #2 plastic used in milk jugs and detergent bottles, is slightly higher than for PET—29 percent in 2008. But in terms of tonnage, far more PET is recycled, according to the EPA, "Municipal Solid Waste Generation, 2008."

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We recycle less plastic
: Ibid.

176
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people have been recycling and reusing
: Ackerman,
Why Do We Recycle,
14.

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Americans produced relatively little trash
: Strasser,
Waste and Want,
11–13. The book provides a useful history of how Americans have dealt with and disposed of waste.

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"
trash heated rooms
": Ibid., 13.

177
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The pendulum began to swing back
: Strasser,
Waste and Want,
and Ackerman,
Why Do We Recycle,
are good sources for the history of recycling.

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the Mobro's plight
: Ackerman,
Why Do We Recycle,
12.

178
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The code is such a poor guide
: The standards-setting body, ATSM, Inc., is developing changes to the code, some of which may involve adding new number categories. See Mike Verespej, "Changes Planned for Resin Identification Codes Include Categories for PC, PLA,"
Plastics News,
October 26, 2009.

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shaky commitment
: Ackerman,
Why Do We Recycle,
18–19.

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Most Americans now have access
: The American Chemistry Council estimates eight out of ten Americans have access to recycling, but some experts say that estimate is too high. Susan Collins, director of the Container Recycling Institute, notes that 40 percent of Americans live in multifamily housing that is generally not well served by curbside recycling programs and that
access
could mean someone who lives in a state that has one drop-off recycling center. Author e-mail correspondence with Collins, July 2010.

182
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California recovers nearly three-fourths
: California Department of Resource and Recovery, "Biannual Report of Beverage Container Sales, Returns, Redemptions and Recycling Rates," May 2010.

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six times the average of non-bottle-bill states
: The average collection rate in non-bottle-bill states is 13.6 percent, according to the Container Recycling Institute. Bottle-bill states recover 71 percent of soda bottles and 35 percent of noncarbonated bottles. See the CRI website,
http://www.container-recycling.org/facts/all/data/recrates-depnon-3mats.htm
.

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San Francisco calculates
: Author e-mail correspondence with Robert Reed, spokesman for Recology, May 2010.

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it's located in one of the city's poorest
: To site the facility there, the city promised residents of the neighborhood would get first shot at the facility's union-wage jobs.

183
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Plastics are a challenge
: Author interview with Steve Alexander, executive director of the Association of Post-Consumer Plastic Recyclers, December 2008.

184
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seventeen-dollar-an-hour
: Author e-mail correspondence with Robert Reed, July 2010.

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There's a certain chicken-or-egg quality
: That problem prompted Boston businessman Eric Hudson to found Preserve, a company dedicated to making products out of used polypropylene, the #5 plastic, in the hopes of juicing the economics to encourage recycling of the plastic. Its first product was a toothbrush made of used yogurt containers; it could be mailed backed to the company for further recycling. Nothing Wasted, Everything Gained is the slogan on the package. The company recently partnered with Whole Foods on a campaign, called Gimme Five, that encouraged shoppers to bring their used yogurt containers back to the stores for recycling. The first year, the campaign brought in forty-five thousand pounds of used polypropylene, a drop in the resin bucket. Author interview with Preserve spokesperson C. A. Webb, February 2010.

185
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it's been cheaper for San Francisco
: Author interview with Leno Bellomo, commodities manager, Recology, September 2009.

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Surprisingly, by some analyses
: Author interview with David Allaway, policy analyst in Solid Waste Program of Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, February 2010.

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takes about 70 percent
: Toland Lam, quoted in Nina Ying Sun, "China's Lam Talks Up Recycling and Change,"
Plastics News,
April 7, 2008.

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Much of that is composed of
: Actually, the bottles have to be shredded before China will accept them, though China is reconsidering that long-standing policy. If it is rescinded, American recyclers worry it could lead to even more PET bottles being exported overseas. Steve Toloken, "China to Accept Whole PET Bottles,"
Plastics News,
December 14, 2009.

186
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The program tracked a shipment
: The
Sixty Minutes
episode "The Electronic Wasteland" originally aired in November 2008.

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Lam was one of the early entrepreneurs
: Author interview with Toland Lam, March 2009.

187
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later ship back
: Not all recyclers are as fastidious. Another recycling plant I visited mixed different plastics together in its recycling process, and the resulting resin was a lower-quality plastic—fit only for low-end products, like flowerpots and coat hangers. Most of that plant's customers were Chinese manufacturers.

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From a global perspective
: Author interview with Edward Kosior, managing director Nextek Pty Ltd., a recycling specialist who has designed closed-loop operations around the world, January 2010.

188
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China's hunger for those used goods
: Until recently, all those #3 through #7 plastics were sent straight overseas. With the recession, freight rates skyrocketed, and it became more economical for Recology to find local reprocessors who will take those lower-value plastics.

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In 2009, American recycling programs
: National Association for PET Container Resources, "2009 Report on Postconsumer PET Container Recycling Activity."

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China factor is undercutting American recycling
:The reliance on China also left recycling programs around the country hugely vulnerable when the world economy went into free fall in the autumn of 2008. The bottom fell out of the commodities market, China stopped buying all used materials, and the whole recycling infrastructure seized up. Prices cratered for various types of scrap materials, and plastics suffered the most. Recycling programs found themselves selling at a loss, turning away hard-to-recycle plastics, leasing warehouse space to store plastics they couldn't move, and, in some drastic cases, actually landfilling plastics. A few municipalities decided to just close their recycling programs altogether. See Philip Sherwell, "Crash in Trash Creates Mountains of Unwanted Recyclables in the U.S.,"
UK Telegraph,
December 13, 2008.

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Recycling rates have been dropping
: America's overall recycling rate of 34 percent in 2008 is down from the overall rate of 41 percent in 2000, and down twenty percentage points from the all-time high of 54 percent in 1992, according to Container Recycling Institute, "Wasting and Recycling Trends, 2008," 4. Accessed at
http://www.container-recycling.org/assets/pdfs/reports/2008-BMDA-conclusions.pdf
.

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"
We get people to do it
": Chase Willett, analyst for Chemical Market Associates, Inc., speaking at Plastics Recycling Conference, Austin, Texas, March 2010.

189
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To try to entice more people
: Peter Schworm, "Recycling Efforts Fail to Change Old Habits,"
Boston Globe,
March 14, 2010. The problems of single-stream systems are examined in Clarissa Morawski, "Understanding Economic and Environmental Impacts of Single-Stream Collection Systems," a report done for the Container Recycling Institute, December 2009.

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One recycling expert told me
: Author interview with Patty Moore, Moore Consultants, December 2008.

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Closed-loop systems
: The upstream environmental benefits of closing the loop is considered to be ten to twenty times greater than those gained by downcycling or disposing of a product. Morawski, "Understanding Economic," 8.

190
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supporter of bottle bills
: The first bottle bill was passed in Oregon in 1971. Over the next fifteen years, ten more states followed suit, and then the push for bottle-bill legislation stalled. There were eleven bottle-bill states until 2010, when Delaware repealed its twenty-eight-year-old five-cent deposit. State lawmakers said the measure didn't lead to many bottle returns because most stores refused to take the containers back. So the legislature replaced it with a nonrefundable four-cent fee, which is supposed to provide start-up funds for waste haulers to set up curbside recycling programs. Mike Verespej, "Delaware Replaces Bottle Deposits with Controversial Fee,"
Plastics News,
May 17, 2010.

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Plastic Pollution Texas
: The group was started by Mike Garvey, a water-pollution activist in Houston. Author interviews with Mary Wood and Patsy Gillham, March 2010.

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the specifics of deposit laws vary
: Author interview with Collins; also "What Is a Bottle Bill,"
http://www.bottlebill.org/about/whatis.htm
.

191
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bottle-bill states have at least twice the recovery
: Container Recycling Institute website.

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gets more than 90 percent
: Ibid. Beverage container litter has dropped by anywhere from 69 to 84 percent in bottle-bill states.

192
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Aside from Hawaii
: Author interview with Collins and her predecessor Betty McLaughlin, October 2007. See also Mooallem, "Unintended Consequences," on the fights over broadening container-deposit laws to include bottled water.

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Howard Rappaport
: Author interview with Rappaport.

193
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for every pound of trash
: Brenda Platt et al.,
Stop Trashing the Climate
Washington, DC: Institute for Local Self-Reliance, 2008), 19.

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"
The recycling movement has missed the forest
": Author interview with Bill Sheehan, executive director, Product Policy Institute, February 2010.

194
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In 1970, the average American
: EPA, "Municipal Solid Waste," 2008, 9.

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more plastic packaging
: The Grassroots Recycling Network report "Wasting and Recycling in the U.S. 2000" indicates that between 1990 and 1997, plastic packaging grew five times faster by weight than plastic recovered for recycling; cited in Jim Motavalli, "Zero Waste,"
E
magazine (March/April 2001).

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"
a rite of atonement
": John Tierney, "Recycling Is Garbage,"
New York Times Magazine,
June 30, 1996.

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"
you make it
": Lyle Clarke, vice president policy and programs, Stewardship Ontario, which manages one of the province's EPR programs, speaking at Plastics Recycling Conference, Austin, Texas, March 2010.

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Sheehan maintains this is perfectly logical
: The full argument is laid out in Helen Spiegelman and Bill Sheehan, "Unintended Consequences: Municipal Solid Waste Management and the Throwaway Society" (Athens, GA Product Policy Institute, March 2005). See also Melinda Burns, "The Smoldering Trash Revolt,"
Miller-McCune
magazine, January 21, 2010.

195
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the first explicit EPR law
: Information on the German system comes from Imhoff,
Paper or Plastic
, 46–53; Clean Production Action, "Summary of Germany's Packaging Takeback Law," September 2003; accessed at
www.cleanproduction.org/library/EPR_dvd/DualesSystemDeutsch_REVISEDoverview.pdf
. A good overview of the program is Betty Fishbein, "EPR: What Does It Mean? Where Is It Headed?"
Pollution Prevention Review
8 (1998): 43–55; accessed at
www.informinc.org/eprppr.phpP2
.

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The law has accomplished
: "Profits Warning: Why Germany's Green Dot Is Selling Up,"
Let's Recycle,
November 25, 2004, accessed at
http://www.letsrecycle.com/do/ecco.py/view_item?listid=38&listcatid=218&listitemid=2056§ion=
.