plastic industry has long promoted recycling, despite being well aware that recycling has failed. Worldwide, only 9% of plastic waste is actually recycled. In the US, this rate is currently 5%. Most used plastic ends up in landfills, incineration, or drifting into the environment.
Now, a startling new study has found that even if plastic is brought to a recycling center, it can end up in tiny pieces that pollute air and water. We focused on one new facility that cuts, melts and pellets. In the process, the plastic is washed several times, and microplastic particles (fragments smaller than 5 mm) are washed into the factory’s wastewater.
Because there were multiple washes, researchers were able to sample the water at four separate points along the production line. (They have not disclosed the identities of the operators of the facilities that collaborated on their project. The team was able to calculate microplastic concentrations in raw water and filtered wastewater. , is a before and after snapshot of the filtering effect.
Their microplastic tally was astronomical. We calculate that even with filtering, the total emissions from the various washings could generate up to 75 billion particles per cubic meter of wastewater. Depending on the recycling facility, the liquid ends up in the city’s water system or the environment. In other words, recyclers trying to solve the plastic crisis may actually be making it worse by mistake. micro plastic A crisis that covers every corner of the environment with synthetic particles.
“It seems a little dated that plastic recycling to protect the environment results in another potentially more harmful problem,” Strathclyde.
“This raises very serious concerns,” agrees Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics and former US Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator. He is not involved in this paper. “I also think that this points to the fact that plastic is fundamentally unsustainable.”
The Plastic Recyclers Association, an international body representing the industry, did not respond to a request for comment.
The good news is that filtration makes a difference. Researchers have calculated that without filtration, this one recycling facility could emit up to 6.5 million pounds of microplastics per year. Filtration reduced it to an estimated £3 million. “So when they put the filter in place, it definitely had a big impact,” says Brown.
But an important caveat is that the team only tested for microplastics down to 1.6 microns. Plastic particles are much smaller. NanoIt’s plastic that’s small enough to fit into individual cells, and the numbers are even greater. So this could be a significant underestimate. And these researchers many especially of small particles. About 95% of the microplastics were less than 10 microns and 85% were less than 5 microns in the two sample points. “I was completely shocked at how small most of them were,” Brown says. “But I could have easily found something smaller than that.”
