Recovering scrap or waste plastic and molding it into a useful product is recycling. The process of recovering scrap or waste plastic and reprocessing the material into useful products. Compared with profitable recycling of metal, and very much similar to the low grade of glass recycling, it is very much challenging because of its low density and degrading value. The large scale production and consumption began in 1950’s has been snowballed. In 2020, an estimated 24 million to 34 million tones of plastic waste will enter the world’s lakes, rivers and oceans. That is roughly the weight of 21,000 rail locomotives. If any improvement is not monitored that how we manage plastic wastes we will be polluting a large amount of earth water and the count will be approx 90 million tones of plastic waste by 2030. It is estimated that 10,000 tones of plastic waste enter the Great Lakes every year.
If we go back in 2015, 8 million of plastic waste is contaminating the great oceans and it is unacceptable because it will danger the water species. Many international platforms comes forward to resolve this great danger including our Ocean, IN this UN sustainable development organization will also contribute all of its efforts but the question is will they reduce plastic pollution at this rate?
The plastic that you put in recycling bin will eventually going to landfill. If you live anywhere in world, there are chances that you have between 2 and 4 bins outside your home or apartment in which one of those is for recycling. If every citizen takes responsibility of drying, recycling and all the plastic when they see it on their way and will be a game changer for the population and will also reduce health hazard and spread of diseases, talking about the fact. Over 350 million metric tons of plastic are produced annually across the world, but according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, only 14-18% of that is actually recycled. But why? Because it’s cheaper to make new plastic than it is to recycle it.
Essentially, we are living under a solid lie but thanks to marketing strategies. It makes us feel good to know that recycling exists, but when it comes to plastic, it is burned and also fills the land area. Two years ago, the U.S. sent the majority of its plastic to Chinese landfills, but now they just land in domestic dumps. But a new problem came up with this as China cut off their plastic chain, but according to a new NRP expose, the plastics industry has known about this issue all along.
Research of NPR and PBS says that plastic industries are now selling the local plastic to local peoples the idea behind this concept is to recycle major plastic scrap despite knowing it wouldn’t be economically feasible to do so and it is also used in for general purpose to decorate their houses while making billion of dollars making new plastic. It will be more expensive to sort out every used plastic but, basically all used plastic can technically be recycled into new things but on the other hand it gets very expensive if it is made from oil and gas. Also, plastic degrades each time it’s reused, so it can only actually be reused once or twice. New plastic is cheaper to produce and of better quality, so there’s no any profit to recycle old plastic, many leaders and influencer now comes forward to give their ideas on how to reduce plastic usage but now talking about the advancement, plastic is now made from oil and gases to prevent financial crunches.
The frequent symbols which are present on the side or top of the plastic containers have different meaning but few individuals don’t understand this and falls in a trap of wrong practices, industry officials told NPR that symbols are made to identify and to sort plastic from other waste but this information hasn’t been clarified to customers at all which results in more plastic waste. Ask any person what the recycle symbol means, and they will tell you it should be go in dustbin with other waste but it needs to be out from it. In fact, Earth911 says that if you want to know which plastics you can actually toss in your curbside bin, you have to call your local recycling service provider, as different types of plastic need to be composed in different locations. For example, those plastic wrappers of candy come in during the winters? Is one of example of the above scenario it is not supposed to be thrown in recycling bin. But back then nobody knows which plastic is going to be in which location so, awareness should be increased so as to stop the landfill.
Many giant companies are coming up with a new and advanced technology for scraping the plastic waste very appropriately but, we as an aware citizen should keep a clean and green world for us.
