Plastic Waste: Problem and Solutions Overview

Over 35 million tons of plastic is generated in the United States each year, of which 75% tends to end up in landfills, while another 15% is incinerated []. Less than 10% of all plastic waste is currently being recycled, partly due to technical and economic constraints. Proper waste management through reuse and recycling significantly reduces emissions and pollutants released into air, water, and soil, thereby reducing adverse impacts on human health and the environment. China’s National Sword eliminated the customary offshore destination for between 40% and 70% of plastics collected for recycling in the U.S., requiring new outlets for up to 700,000 tons of additional material annually [].

There are a wide range of federal, state, and municipal initiatives being advanced that seek to address our fundamental concerns around single-use plastics, plastic’s end-of-life and low plastic recycling rates, along with establishing end markets. This article briefly discusses 3 important pillars to build a circular economy, where we eliminate waste and pollution while circulating materials.

Capturing Material

We will only shift from a linear to a circular model when enough of the plastics produced actually enter the recycling system. In 2019, U.S. curbside capture rates for different plastics ranged from 22% to 53%, with bulky items and plastics #3-7 at the low end and PET bottles (#1) and natural HDPE containers (#2) at the high end []. Increasing these rates is required for success.

National standards and a harmonized approach to recycling that encourages collection of more plastic material and improves quality and consistency across communities and the country is needed. We may still need to consider alternative approaches to collection and sortation for films, tubes, small formats, and other challenging packaging types.

Initiatives around consumer education are crucial. The messaging should emphasize plastic reduction and reuse, but also the importance of post-use (or recycled) plastics. There is also a need for more consistent and easily understandable information for consumers on what and how to recycle.

Advancing the Processing Landscape

A McKinsey & Co. study suggests that 50% of plastics worldwide could be reused or recycled by 2030, creating a plastic waste management industry that could have $55 billion in global profits

Reuse measures conserve the embodied energy and other valuable resources used to manufacture products and components. The more a product is utilized, the larger the return on the resources embodied in the product such as materials, labor, energy, and capital. By keeping products in use, the GHG emissions associated with new production and end-of-life treatment are reduced while providing the same benefit.

While measures that increase product utilization contribute the most to retaining the energy embodied in products, recycling still requires much less energy than the production of virgin materials. GHG emissions are reduced from avoiding new virgin material production and end-of-life treatment, such as incineration and landfill. For example, recycling 1 ton of plastic could reduce emissions by 1.1–3.0 tons of CO2 compared to producing the same ton of plastics from virgin fossil feedstock. Recycling therefore cuts emissions from industrial production processes, which are among the trickiest emissions to address since they rely, for example, on high temperature heat, which cannot be supplied at scale using currently available renewable energy technologies. By contrast, the recycling processes themselves do not suffer from such constraints.

Maximizing our mechanical recycling stream is imperative from both an economic and climate change perspective. For this reason, plastic materials that can be mechanically recycled should be. For those that cannot, we will need to rely on advanced recycling or chemical recycling, which takes harder-to-recycle plastics back to feedstocks. This is essential to capture the value of these materials and enable recycled content at scale in demanding applications such as food contact. Many companies are working to develop advanced recycling, and experts predict that technologies will begin to reach scale near 2030. With over $30 trillion in sustainable investing assets around the globe [], companies within this industry are racing to deliver solutions to help solve the plastic crisis.

Increasing Recycled Demand

Finally, end markets for post-consumer resin (PCR) must be optimized and economically viable for all materials.

Demand for recycled PET, recycled LLDPE and recycled HDPE is likely to exceed supply due to brand owner and retailer current goals, and recyclers are focusing on expanding processing capabilities for these streams. However, some other types of plastic recyclate have few outlets and will continue to languish until end markets emerge or advanced recycling matures.

That leads us to a final key consideration: affordability. When it is more costly to produce PCR than it can be sold for, there will be no investment to deliver the quality and quantity needed. Improved end markets are essential to deliver on value.

Linear outlets such as construction aggregate and plastic lumber that have traditionally valued the PCR primarily as a means to reduce input costs will always be needed as a home for “retired” plastics, but they are not the circular markets of the future.