I have long known that plastic “recycling” in less-developed countries meant bury or burn. Now it is becoming apparent that the same applies to developed countries too. Six percent actually recycled is worse than a joke, due recyclers’ contribution to micro plastic pollution. Waste-to-energy is the only way we’ll ever get a handle on the problem. Hopefully the dioxin-like byproducts will kill fewer of us than micro plastics themselves.

I've recently been thinking a lot about the recyclability of plastic. I have several stacks of plastic drink cups from various fast food joints in my kitchen; as much as possible, I try to save up and bundle together similar types of plastic before I throw it in the recycling bin, to try to save some sorting effort. And in doing so, I noticed something.

The thing is, a lot of single-use plastics have very similar properties. PETE, HDPE, Polypropylene, solid polystyrene, they're all used to package similar or identical products. I think they're more or less interchangeable, and the choice of a given plastic for a given application has more to do with cost, availability and the preferences of the product engineer than any specific material properties of the plastic itself. There's obviously going to be some exceptions, but I think those are going to be few and far between, and a lot of them could be addressed by switching to other materials.

I think a great first step would be for regulators to encourage/force industries to standardize on one or two types of plastic at most, and eliminate plastics that aren't worth recycling, like polystyrene. That should reduce the manual labor required by a significant amount once the other plastics are eliminated from the waste stream, and make it feasible to recycle plastics locally instead of shipping them off to a third world country.

I think companies should be taxed or otherwise penalized for the plastic waste they foist on consumers, because often there's little choice involved unless you want to boycott a company entirely. If I wanted to eliminate plastic cups from my life, I'd pretty much have to stop getting fast food altogether (yes I know I should probably do that anyway, but that's beside the point). A tax on bulk purchases of plastic may end up being passed down to consumers, but the revenue could be put towards subsidizing production of more renewable materials.

I think food stamp programs could be a strong driver for change on this, as they could refuse to cover products that generate excessive waste. With enough warning, there should be enough time for companies to switch their products to be compliant with little disruption to the consumer.