4 November 2020
The contribution of the United States to the plastic soup turns out to be much larger than expected. In a country where garbage is neatly collected, things go wrong anyway. How is that possible?
Americans constitute only 4% of the world’s population but are responsible for 17% of all plastic waste in the world. In 2016, the United States produced 42,000,000 tons of plastic waste, more than any other country.
A new study published in Science Advances estimates that 5% of that (2,240,000 tons) ends up in the environment uncontrolled. The researchers point to the great responsibility of the United States for the problem of plastic soup.
GOOD SYSTEM FAILS ANYWAY
Almost every inhabitant of the United States has access to waste disposal. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 75.4% of the plastic waste collected is disposed of in controlled landfills, 15.3% is incinerated, and 9.3% is recycled, making it look like everything is being processed in a controlled way.
However, these figures do not consider what people throw on the street and what is dumped illegally. The authors estimate that, in 2016, between 140,000 and 410,000 tons of plastic ended up in the environment in this way. That’s between 2.3 and 2.9 percent of all plastic waste in the United States, which may seem small. Still, the Americans calculated that in 2016 they consumed an average of 130.09 kilos of plastic waste per person (15.67 kilos in China and 54.56 kilos in the European Union).
RECYCLING MYTH
The percentage of 9.3% is plastic collected for recycling. But this is not the percentage of the plastic collected that is recycled. It is much lower. Much of the collected plastic is traded internationally and automatically counts as recycling in the statistics. But the recipient countries do not recycle everything by a long shot.
The United States is the second-largest exporter of plastic waste in the world. These exports are often mixed plastics, only part of which can be recycled. There is virtually no control over what is recycled from the exported plastic. The researchers indicate that the part that is, in any case, unsuitable for recycling may account for a quarter of total exports. There are indeed numerous reports of illegal dumping of imported plastic in the receiving countries. In this way, too, the United States contributes to the plastic soup.
AMERICAN PLASTIC WASTE TO AFRICA
China has not imported plastic waste since 2018. As a result, the United States has lost a significant export country. Meanwhile, the Basel Convention has also been tightened up. This international treaty regulates the international transport of hazardous waste and includes mixed and contaminated plastic waste. The United States is not a party to this treaty, but countries that are part of it can ban imports from the United States from now on. The United States is therefore looking for new markets such as Africa and, at the same time, trying to circumvent the Basel Convention.
PLASTIC WASTE AS DEVELOPMENT AID
Kenya and the U.S. are negotiating a trade treaty to regulate imports of plastic waste bilaterally. The New York Times unveiled last summer a lobby by the U.S. chemical industry to ship plastic waste for recycling to Kenya as a form of development aid.
The measures Kenya has taken in recent years against plastic pollution, including a total ban on plastic bags, are seen by the U.S. chemical industry as a threat to its sales. Plastic producers such as Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and Shell, represented by The Chemistry Council, are also lobbying to lift anti-plastic measures in Kenya as part of the trade treaty.
Photo: Plastic Soup Atlas of the World. Andy Keller protests against plastic as the bag sample in New York.
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