“Time to stop the senseless waste, time to stop trashing the environment” 

Our Proposal:

• Use nano-identifiers to automatically and precisely sort solid waste, and recycle accordingly
• Switch to plastics that can be infinitely recycled
• Dismantle the single-use plastics revenue model

The Goal:

• Stop the squandering of reusable materials
• Put a brake on, and hopefully reverse, the scourge of plastic waste

Explanation:

In the U.S. we dispose of hundreds of millions of tons of solid waste annually, only a fairly small percentage of which gets recycled. The vast majority ends up in incinerators or landfills, which needlessly squanders an enormous amount of reusable materials; the EPA estimates that up to 75% of this solid waste could be recycled or composted. Besides being wasteful, incinerators and landfills also harm the environment. Incinerators for example introduce toxic gases into the air, and people living nearby have increased risks of cancer, birth defects, and other health problems. Landfills produce a significant amount of methane, an ultra-potent heat-trapping gas that plays an outsized role in global warming. Landfills also leach a toxic soup of hazardous materials that can end up in underground water sources.

Plastic waste is particularly a problem, especially considering that less than 10% of it gets recycled. Due to this poor recycling rate, over the past decades billions of tons of plastic waste have been dumped into the environment. This discarded plastic breaks down into microparticles, a small percentage of which eventually works its way into the tissue of living organisms—including humans. It has been estimated that the average American consumes the equivalent of a credit card’s worth of plastic every week thanks to the innumerable microscopic plastics particles floating around everywhere. Even if we quibble over the exact amount actually being ingested, the stark fact remains that as we continue to recklessly dump ever more plastic into the environment, the amount of ingested plastic will continue to rise. How much damage this will do is unclear, but it is probably unwise to assume the effects will be negligible. In fact, the frightening uncertainties are endless. Do we know for example if all of this ingested plastic will adversely affect the brain and vital organs, or significantly reduce fertility rates? Will it increase birth defects, or otherwise harm developing fetuses? What about the effects on crops and livestock? No one really knows for certain, a fact that should alarm everyone.

Thinking Outside of the (Garage) Box

Could we implement a new way to do things, in which the vast majority of waste gets recycled or composted? It seems there are good reasons to believe so.

For starters, some materials such as metal and glass can be recycled virtually an unlimited number of times. Paper can also be easily recycled. Organic materials could and should be composted. Just efficiently processing these items alone would go a long way to reducing the needless waste of reusable materials. But in order to realize a truly effective waste management scheme, the problem of plastic disposal must be addressed.

Presently, plastic recycling is not practical for the following reasons:

1. Many of the tens of millions of single-use plastics that are discarded daily cannot be recycled due to the nature of the plastic itself; examples include plastic grocery bags, disposable utensils, and takeout food containers
2. Of the subset of plastics that can be recycled, there exist different varieties that must be precisely sorted in order to be recycled. Such complex sorting is currently not logistically practical
3. Recyclable plastics can only be processed a limited of times at most before their quality deteriorates to an unacceptable level, essentially rendering them useless for further recycling
4. Recycling plastic is a complex endeavor, and as such it is actually cheaper to just make new single-use plastics

Another significant issue has been relying on the public to properly sort waste so that it can be subsequently recycled. The “multiple bin” approach (recycle bin, organic waste bin, and the “other” bin) simply does not allow for the precise sorting needed for effective recycling, nor should the public be realistically expected to do such microsorting. Just look into the different waste bins at an airport or a Starbucks and one can see the randomness of the disposed items, despite clearly marked bins. Actually, it seems that the multiple bins are mostly a “feel good” sham to lull the public into believing that the waste will be treated in a responsible way, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.   

A Proposed Way Forward

The Solutions Party proposes that an effective recycling system could be realized by implementing a sophisticated sorting mechanism in combination with novel, infinitely recyclable plastics and limitless clean energy. Specifically:

Proposal 1: Sorting

1. Uniquely identify different types of disposable non-organic materials by coating or embedding them with “nano-identifiers” at the time of manufacture; the nano-identifiers could be based on nanotechnology, for example
2. At disposal sites, automated sorting systems would utilize the nano-identifiers to precisely sort items according to their recycling characteristics; glass for example could be sorted according to color and possibly other attributes. Other materials such as metals and paper could also be sorted accordingly
3. Organic materials would be identified and sorted out of the mix by virtue of their lack of nano-identifiers. In addition, sophisticated AI and neural network-based imaging technology could help more accurately identify and collect organic materials for composting, and to otherwise act as a filter for non-organic substances that were inadvertently not sorted out for recycling in previous stages

This proposed waste sorting mechanism would have the potential to make recycling much more practical since precise sorting is so key to an effective recycling scheme. An added benefit would be unburdening the public from the largely useless task of sorting things into different bins. This system would also do away with the need to have multiple sanitation trucks handling different types of refuse, simplifying the collection process and further saving resources.

Proposal 2: Infinitely recyclable plastics

In order to solve the terrible problem of plastic waste, a versatile plastic that is easily and cheaply recyclable is needed, one that can be recycled over and over without a loss of quality. The good news is this type of plastic has already been developed and could be adopted to replace many, maybe most, of the environmentally harmful plastics currently in use that are hard or impossible to recycle. The combination of this new plastic combined with a nano-identifier-based sorting system could help us realize a far more efficient plastics recycling routine, thus putting a brake on the awful worldwide scourge of plastic waste. The Solutions Party further proposes that a well-funded R&D effort should be launched to build on the progress already achieved in this area, the goal being to bring to the market a variety of infinitely recyclable plastics to meet the range of society’s needs and applications.

Proposal 3: Unlimited Energy + Brilliant Creativity = New Solutions to Plastic Pollution

Since recycling is an energy-intensive process, the availability of cheap, limitless green energy could make it even more practical. In addition, one can imagine that creative ways could be devised to channel such unlimited energy to help remove previously disposed of plastic from the environment, including the oceans. The twofold goal is to not only to permanently eliminate wasteful and environmentally-harmful single-use plastics, but to also make progress in cleaning up the plastic-waste mess that now plagues the entire planet.

Anticipated Resistance

The current business/revenue model for single-use plastics is extremely attractive—for the plastics industry, they ensure a constant source of recurring income, exactly in the same way that internal combustion vehicles do for the fossil fuel industry. As such, it is easy to imagine that certain powerful special interests will strongly resist any effort to make such plastics a thing of the past, just as the fossil fuel industry has resisted the worldwide effort to transition to green energy. Powerful industries doing whatever it takes to maintain lucrative revenue models is nothing new, even at the expense of the overall public good. One can therefore foresee a multifaceted pro-status-quo effort involving massive (culture war-prodding) advertising, misinformation, compliant politicians, and “profits-above-principles” news media organizations.

Reducing the effectiveness of these types of insidious pro-status-quo campaigns will require reforming the business culture, our politics, and journalism. We must greatly debilitate the triad of unscrupulous special interests, power-addicted politicians, and zero-principles news organizations—not only when it comes to plastics but in many other areas as well. This topic will be elaborated upon in an upcoming post.

In the case of single-use plastics, perhaps the most effective way to take on the pro-status-quo special interests is to make the revenue model far less appealing. Currently, plastic producers have the best of both worlds: the recurring revenue from single-use plastics is privatized, while the environmentally-harmful disposal is socialized. The Earth, and by extension the tissue of living organisms, is effectively a free dumping ground for plastics.

It is time for that party to end. A possible step in the right direction could be achieved by utilizing the nano-identifier technology proposed above; specifically, waste facilities could not only precisely sort out the non-recyclable plastics, but also with the nano-identifiers they could pinpoint specific manufacturers. The disposed-of non-recyclable plastics would be grouped together and sent back to the original manufacturer for responsible treatment and disposal, at the manufacturer’s expense. Sorting and transportation fees could also be charged. The goal is to eliminate the “free lunch” disposal aspect of the single-use plastics business, and thus hopefully make the revenue model less appealing. Isn’t it time the manufacturers own up to the responsibility of proper disposal?

Let’s start a new age of less waste and less plastic pollution by making recycling greater than ever, and also by dismantling the revenue model that fuels the poisoning of the world’s environment.