How to Recycle Ocean Plastic Waste

 

By Judith Willson, eHow Contributor

Larger items of plastic litter are easier to identify.

The oceans are packed with plastic waste. Plastic litter does more than make beaches look messy; it kills millions of marine animals every year and releases dangerous pollutants into the seas. Beach clean-ups are a practical way for people to help with the problem. The most eco-friendly way to disposDifficulty:  Moderately Easye of the materials you collect on a beach clean-up is to recycle them, but plastics are sometimes problematic. After floating about in the sea for a few months, plastic items can become hard to identify, which makes it difficult to determine whether they are recyclable.


Things You'll Need:

• Refuse sacks
• Cleaning brush
• Tub
• Work gloves
• Litter gripper

 

Instructions

Difficulty:  Moderately Easy

1. Contact a local recycling center and ask what kind of plastics it accepts and how it wants them prepared. Use this as a guide during the cleanup. Putting a whole load of mixed plastics into a recycling receptacle meant for just one type, such as vinyl, would be counter-productive.
2. Sort the plastics as you work according to the guidelines you received. Put recyclables, such as plastic bottles, into one refuse sack. Put anything the center will not take, you cannot identify or is contaminated into another sack. You will need to take the second sack to a landfill.
3. Clean and sort the recyclable plastics, if the center requires this. Brush off sand, rinse in a tub of water outside if necessary and divide by type. If you need to identify what kind of plastic a bottle or container is made from, look at the bottom or sides. There will be a raised number in a triangle with letters underneath identifying the material. The numeral 1 and the letters PET, for example, indicate Polyethylene terephthalate, which is a common material for soda bottles. These codes are international.

 

Tips & Warnings

• Always wear work gloves when doing a beach clean-up, supervise children and use tools for picking up anything sharp.

Seven Misconceptions about Plastic and Plastic Recycling

Misconception # 1: Plastics that go into a curbside recycling bin get recycled. Not necessarily. Collecting plastic containers at curbside fosters the belief that, like aluminum and glass, the recovered material is converted into new containers. In fact, none of the recovered plastic containers from Berkeley are being made into containers again but into new secondary products such as textiles, parking lot bumpers, or plastic lumber – all unrecyclable products. This does not reduce the use of virgin materials in plastic packaging. "Recycled" in this case merely means "collected," not reprocessed or converted into useful products.

Misconception # 2: Curbside collection will reduce the amount of plastic landfilled. Not necessarily. If establishing collection makes plastic packages seem more environmentally friendly, people may feel comfortable buying more. Curbside plastic collection programs, intended to reduce municipal plastic waste, might backfire if total use rises faster than collection. Since only a fraction of certain types of plastic could realistically be captured by a curbside program, the net impact of initiating curbside collection could be an increase in the amount of plastic landfilled. The Berkeley pilot program showed no reduction of plastic being sent to the landfill in the areas where the curbside collection was in operation. Furthermore, since most plastic reprocessing leads to secondary products that are not themselves recycled, this material is only temporarily diverted from landfills.

Misconception # 3: A chasing arrows symbol means a plastic container is recyclable. The arrows are meaningless. Every plastic container is marked with the chasing arrows symbol. The only information in the symbol is the number inside the arrows, which indicates the general class of resin used to make the container. The attorneys general of 11 states objected to false and misleading claims about plastic recyclability. The recent settlement that they reached with the American Plastics Council paves the way for a first-ever definition of what claims can or cannot be made about plastic recycling and recyclability.

Misconception # 4: Packaging resins are made from petroleum refineries’ waste. Plastic resins are made from non-renewable natural resources that could be used for a variety of other applications or conserved. Most packaging plastics are made from the same natural gas used in homes to heat water and cook.

Misconception # 5: Plastics recyclers pay to promote plastics’ recyclability. No; virgin resin producers pay for the bulk of these ads. Most such ads are placed by virgin plastic manufacturers whose goal is to promote plastic sales. These advertisements are aimed at removing or diminishing virgin plastic’s greatest challenge to market expansion: negative public conception of plastic as unrecyclable, environmentally harmful, and a major component of wastes that must be landfilled or burned.

Misconception # 6: Using plastic containers conserves energy. When the equation includes the energy used to synthesize the plastic resin, making plastic containers uses as much energy as making glass containers from virgin materials, and much more than making glass containers from recycled materials. Using refillables is the most energy conservative.

Misconception # 7: Our choice is limited to recycling or wasting. Source reduction is preferable for many types of plastic and isn’t difficult. Opportunities include using refillable containers, buying in bulk, buying things that don’t need much packaging, and buying things in recyclable and recycled packages
Plastic packaging has economic, health, and environmental costs and benefits. While offering advantages such as flexibility and light weight, it creates problems including: consumption of fossil resources; pollution; high energy use in manufacturing; accumulation of wasted plastic in the environment; and migration of polymers and additives into foods.
Plastic container producers do not use any recycled plastic in their packaging. Recycled content laws could reduce the use of virgin resin for packaging. Unfortunately, the virgin plastics industry has resisted such cooperation by strongly opposing recycled -content legislation, and has defeated or weakened consumer efforts to institute stronger laws. Plastic manufacturers recently decided that they will not add post consumer materials to their resins used in the USA.
There is a likelihood that establishing plastics collection might increase consumption by making plastic appear more ecologically friendly both to consumers and retailers. Collecting plastics at curbside could legitimize the production and marketing of packaging made from virgin plastic. Studies of garbage truck loads during the recent plastic pick-up pilot program showed no reduction of "recyclable" plastic containers being thrown away in the pilot areas (in fact, there was a slight increase). Due in part to increased plastic use, glass container plants around the country have been closing, including Anchor Glass Container Corporation in Antioch, putting 300 people out of work
Plastic recycling costs much and does little to achieve recycling goals. Our cost/benefit analysis for implementing curbside plastics collection in Berkeley shows that curbside collection of discarded plastics: involves expensive processing; has limited benefits in reducing environmental impacts; and has limited benefits in diverting resources from waste.
Processing used plastics often costs more than virgin plastic. As plastic producers increase production and reduce prices on virgin plastics, the markets for used plastic are diminishing. PET recyclers cannot compete with the virgin resin flooding the market.
Increasing the capture rates of glass, paper or yard debris in Berkeley could divert more resources from landfills than collecting plastics at curbside. The "recyclable" plastic to be collected in Berkeley at most would only amount to 0.3% of the waste stream.


Five Strategies to Reduce the Environmental Impact of Plastics

1. Reduce the use
Source reduction Retailers and consumers can select products that use little or no packaging. Select packaging materials that are recycled into new packaging - such as glass and paper. If people refuse plastic as a packaging material, the industry will decrease production for that purpose, and the associated problems such as energy use, pollution, and adverse health effects will diminish.

2. Reuse containers
Since refillable plastic containers can be reused about 25 times, container reuse can lead to a substantial reduction in the demand for disposable plastic, and reduced use of materials and energy, with the consequent reduced environmental impacts. Container designers will take into account the fate of the container beyond the point of sale and consider the service the container provides. "Design for service" differs sharply from "design for disposal".

3. Require producers to take back resins
Get plastic manufacturers directly involved with plastic disposal and closing the material loop, which can stimulate them to consider the product’s life cycle from cradle to grave. Make reprocessing easier by limiting the number of container types and shapes, using only one type of resin in each container, making collapsible containers, eliminating pigments, using water-dispersible adhesives for labels, and phasing out associated metals such as aluminum seals. Container and resin makers can help develop the reprocessing infrastructure by taking back plastic from consumers.

4. Legislatively require recycled content
Requiring that all containers be composed of a percentage of post-consumer material reduces the amount of virgin material consumed.

5. Standardize labeling and inform the public
The chasing arrows symbol on plastics is an example of an ambiguous and misleading label. Significantly different standardized labels for "recycled," "recyclable," and "made of plastic type X" must be developed.

Ecology Center, Berkeley, California
http://www.ecologycenter.org/ptf/misconceptions.html

Do plastics degrade in the environment?

Do plastics degrade in the environment?

In general, yes*; however there are many things to note.
A few points to consider (Singh and Sharma, 2008):

There are MANY types of plastic, and thus many different chemical compositions
Degradation rates depend on chemical composition, molecular weight, additives, environmental conditions, etc.

Based on research to date, most commonly used plastics do not ever fully “go away,”** but rather break down into smaller and smaller pieces (A. Andrady, pers. comm.). Also keep in mind that many of the bio-based and truly biodegradable plastics break down in a compost pile or landfill, but not necessarily in the ocean.

* Degradation here is defined as a process leading to deterioration of the physical properties of a plastic polymer (Bovey and Winslow, 1979).
** Here, “go away” refers to a process called mineralization, or the full conversion of all breakdown products into carbon dioxide, water, and small inorganic molecules (Andrady, 2003).This is a very good question and the answer you get depends on who you ask and their definition of the term "degrade."
Degradation depends on:

• Density of the plastic – density will affect sunlight availability and whether the piece floats or sinks
• Temperature of water – if the water is warmer there will likely be greater degradation
• Type of plastic – the structure of the plastic affects degradation
• How the plastic is compounded – for example, what types of additives are included in the plastic (e.g., light stabilizers, anti-oxidants)?

Photodegradation: Most plastics photodegrade in the marine environment, breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces due to exposure to solar ultraviolet radiation. When in water, plastic may not get direct sunlight exposure; therefore breakdown happens much more slowly in the aquatic environment.
Thermal (thermo-) degradation: This type of degradation, caused by increased temperatures, leads mainly to the loss in extensibility (i.e., "stretchiness") of most plastics, except polystyrene.
Biodegradation & bio-based plastics: There are some bio-based (e.g., corn, wheat, tapioca, algae) and biodegradable plastics on the market and in development. There are also products that call themselves "biodegradable," but simply break down into smaller pieces faster, so be careful! Remember that biodegradability still depends on numerous factors, including the environment that the plastic is in. Many of the bio-based and truly biodegradable plastics were created to biodegrade in a compost pile and will not biodegrade in the ocean.


marinedebris.noaa.gov