Three Headaches for the Recycling Industry

ScrAPES#19: Three Headaches for the Recycling Industry

by Matt Richtel

March 25, 2016

The advanced recycling companies in the world modifies 75 percent or more of the community's waste from landfills. But these companies like, Zero Waste, are having difficulties to recycle THREE products; Diapers, Plastic Bags, and Juice Boxes. Diapers are made of composite materials with more than one type of plastic. A recycling consultant in Northern California, Gary Liss, says that he knows a company that is in the process of knowing a way to recycle diapers. But the process is long consisting of curbside pickup for used diapers, pulling apart, and cleaning. Plus it cost money. There are also adult diapers and it is not going to get better due to Baby Bloomers. Plastic Bags on the other hand are an everyday, per person use. It is in every retail or grocery stores in the United States and in the world. When plastic bags enter the world of machinery they are a nightmare because they float, cling, wrap, and gum up the expensive machines. Juice boxes are also a problem because they are extremely difficult to pull apart. The only possible solution people have figured out is to design packaging that allows the materials to be more easily separated. 

This is interesting to me because I never knew that diapers were one of the massive problems the recycling companies have to endure with to keep it from landfills. But then again it is not surprising because every day almost every second there is a new baby born in the United States. Juice boxes also surprised me because I did not know that machine could not disassemble a box and that people have to do it by hand. What did not surprise me at all was plastic bags because they are very widespread and the quality of these plastic bags are extremely strong.

This is important to the environment because if we do not recycle these products at all or in a faster pace it will build up and will eventually reach the landfills. It will pollute our streams and oceans and kill the aquatic animals. We will not have clean water available and we do need clean water in order to survive. Even though the process to prevent these products from reaching the landfills are expensive I think it is very much worth it! Would people rather care about the green paper we call money than our health and the health of our planet?

Resources:

• Three Headaches for the Recycling Industry

Plastic in the Ocean Podcast

ScrAPES#2: Plastic in the Ocean Podcast

June 5, 2015 Episode

The pod casts from Living on Earth: World Sailors Call For Plastic-free Oceans, Testing Boston Harbor for Plastic, and Meeting the Challenge of Plastic Marine Debris all have a common theme. The theme of the three pod casts are about cause and effect of plastics. In podcast one World Sailors Call For Plastic-free Oceans, sailors discuss about how plastic kills animals in oceans because aquatic animals mistaken micro beads for food. Eighty percent of plastics found in the ocean come from land. Even though plastic is useful for health care, reservation, and it reduces energy; it can also live for a really long period of time. Plastics find their way from water ways that eventually leads to the ocean. Obviously, if aquatic animals like fish eats micro beads they will eventually die and if this process keeps going on and we do not do anything about it, fishes and other aquatic animals will go extinct. We will not have food. The ecosystem will not be balanced. In the second pod cast, Testing Boston Harbor for Plastic, Graduate from University of Massachusetts Boston and Master Degree of Marine and Science Technology, Tyler O'Brien, analyzes micro plastics on the Boston Harbor. She goes into the facts that micro plastics are 5 millimeters or smaller found in plastic bags, bottles, and more. Micro plastics ingest small animal's ecosystem. Also, she talks about how plank tons can feed on sixty-three micrometers which effects animals that eat plank tons as well. Micro plastics are broken down to plastic bags, bottles, and wrapping. In Meeting the Challenge of Plastic Marine Debris, Dr. Sandra Whitehouse is a biological oceanographer and Senior Advisor to the Ocean Conservan explores about how eight million plastic per year are being wasted as trash. Dr. Whitehouse also discussed that twenty percent of sea-based action comes from fishing gears, containers, etc; eighty percent comes from land from human activities, fifty percent comes from Asia and South East Asian countries like the Philippines, Vietnam, Sri Lanka.

These pod casts are quite interesting to me because they all comment on the cause and effect of plastic; that plastic creates pollution in the ocean other than land. The fact that the every day material that we find almost everywhere can ruin our environment by killing animals that live in the ocean because they mistaken it for food is a very nerve-racking thing. Before I have heard about how plastic effects badly on our environment, supermarkets like Market Basket or Shaw's would offer their costumers the right whether to buy reusable bags or not, made me think it was a stupid idea. I did not care much about what a little thing like plastic could do to living things like animals and especially us. Now I understand the idea of reducing or eliminating plastic in our communities because we are basically murdering animals in the ocean. Animals do not know the bad things in life. I feel severely pity for them. It is exceedingly important that we reduce as much or if we can eliminate plastic overall because it will cause our environments to begin to be a healthier place. 

This pod cast is important to environmental science because plastic effects our community it is trash that later turns out into pollution then to deaths of animals and other living things. Now it may be pollution in the ocean maybe next it will be air pollution. Animals like fishes, crabs, jellyfish, sharks, etc have a significant part on the world. It is also important because it is human impacting on the environment; they are the one's causing land and ocean pollution by misusing land resources. People should care more about their environment, land and ocean, because one small thing can effect a whole. 

Sources:

• World Sailors Call For Plastic-free Oceans
• Testing Boston Harbor for Plastic
• Meeting the Challenge of Plastic Marine Debris