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That the plastic recycling system is broken is an open secret. But it’s just little by little we are realizing The problem dimension. The American Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) association published last year A report on plastics recycling. It lashed out at the plastic industry, which they accused of having promoted the recycling of these materials even knowing the low technical and economic viability.
A difficult task. Recycling plastics is not an easy task. In our day to day we use a wide variety of materials of this type, each with certain characteristics, functional and chemical. All end in the same container, that of the containers, but from there it is necessary to separate each type of plastic for proceed to your recycling When possible. It is not always possible.
Disgusty data. According to Ecoembes data, in 2022 they were recycled in Spain 708,596 tons of plastic containers, although NGOs like Greenpeace question. According to Greenpeacethe difference between the plastics recycling rate declared by Ecoembes (89.2%) and the one estimated by the NGO itself (34.8%) is notorious. It should be noted that it is still over the world average of 9% estimated by the OECD.
According to the reportfigures like these are just the reflection of an impossibility: effectively recycle plastics is out of reach. Not only from an economic perspective but also from the technological point of view.
A single use. However, the report emphasizes an accusation: even knowing this impossibility, the industry He promoted the idea that recycling was possible and viable to facilitate the path to single -use plastics such as those we use in the containers. “They knew that if they focused on the (plastics) of a single use people would buy and buy,” explained to The Guardian Davis Allen, CCI researcher and co -author of the report.
Another point of view. The industry reaction soon arrived. The American Chemistry Council, In a statementhe pointed out that “American plastic manufacturers are investing billions of dollars in better innovative products and technologies that separate, capture and recycle greater amounts and more types of plastics.”
They claim that the “wrong report” refers to obsolete technologies and that is an equivocal characterization of the industry and the capacities present for the recycling of plastics. “As is typical, instead of working together towards real solutions for plastic waste, groups such as CCI choose attacks at the political level instead of constructive solutions,” protested Matt Seaholm, President and Executive Director of the Plastics Industry Association, in statements also collected by The Guardian.
Will we achieve it? We may never achieve An efficient system of recycling that we can apply to the plastics of our day to day. But perhaps we are one day capable of treating this waste so that their waste does not contaminate our environment. One of the Great bets In this sense, it is the discovery of enclosures capable of decomposing plastic polymers, breaking these chains to turn them into harmless molecules. It is undoubtedly a great promise but nothing guarantees for now that it does not result in a chimera, only time will say it.
Although time is not what about. Pollution caused by microplastics is already a reality. These waste has appeared in the most remote places on Earth, a sign of the great reach of these pollutants. It is also very little that we know about the potential impacts on health and the environment of these waste.
In Xataka | I have always been curious about what they did with yellow containers: so I have followed one
Image | Krizjohn Rosales
*An earlier version of this article was published in February 2024
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