Let’s start with the hardest pill to swallow, plastic recycling is largely a myth. When it comes to just plastic waste, recycling rates have actually dropped in recent years, from 9% in 2018 to 4% today. Think about that for a moment, only 4% of plastic waste gets recycled in the United States. Meanwhile, the United States, the world’s largest plastic polluter, recycles a mere 4% of its household plastic waste.
Around the world, the situation is slightly better, but a staggering 91% of plastic waste is still incinerated, landfilled, or mismanaged (e.g. dumped into the ocean). What makes this even more disturbing is that as a result of the environmental backlash and legal threats they faced in the 1980s, it’s argued that the plastics industry began a campaign to sell the promise of plastic recycling.
Strategies included the ubiquitous yet overpromising recycling symbols with numbers inside. Those little numbers on plastic containers? They’re not actually telling you the material that can be recycled, they’re just identifying the type of plastic. It’s been one massive marketing campaign to make us feel better about consuming more plastic.
Here’s something most people don’t realize, recycling was never really an environmental program, it was a business. While we’ve been dutifully sorting our plastic bottles, something sinister has been happening. Microplastics have been found in the land, sea, and air, across the food chain and throughout the human body. While the full extent of the health impacts of microplastics are not yet known, studies indicate that they can increase the likelihood of heart attack, stroke, or death.
Research shows that lab exposure to microplastics can disrupt the gut microbiome, lead to inflammation, lower sperm quality and testosterone levels, and negatively affect learning and memory. The recycling system we trusted to protect the environment has failed to prevent plastic particles from invading our most intimate biological spaces. These microscopic particles from degrading plastic are now literally part of us!
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