The Path of Plastic

Sarah Kuck studies environmental journalism at WWU and is our Whatcom Watch intern. She is also the chief editor of The Planet.

Tamia Sheldon, a senior at Western Washington University, zigzags past students enjoying lunch in Red Square to buy a beverage at the Miller Market between classes.

The life of Sheldon’s plastic bottle will continue long after she consumes its contents and disposes of it. How she decides to discard the plastic ultimately determines the journey the bottle takes. Her bottle could become litter on a roadside, trash in a landfill or a different, recycled product.

If Sheldon litters, her plastic bottle will take approximately 200 years to decompose, said Steve Dillman, an engineering technology professor at Western.

If Sheldon discards her bottle in a trash bin, it will end up in a landfill. Thick layers of clay and plastic surrounding the landfill prevent ultraviolet light from degrading the plastic, Dillman said.

“These landfills preserve waste so well that scientists have found legible newsprint as old as 40 years, as well as foodstuffs that were still recognizable after several decades,” Dillman said. “If a plastic bottle were to end up in a landfill, it would be around indefinitely.”

In 1999, the recycling rate for plastic bottles made from Polyethylene Terephthalate, or PETE, was 40 percent nationwide, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. This percentage limits the recycling industry, however, from producing more post-consumer recycled products.

“Personal choice is the first step,” said Richard Neyer, the Associated Students Recycle Center manager. “It is important to recycle to keep garbage-collection costs down and to save resources.”

Recycling plastics reduces the need to make new plastics from oil, according to the Washington State Recycling Association. Plastic resins come from nonrenewable resources, which people could conserve or use for a variety of other applications. Recycling one ton of plastic saves the equivalent of 3.85 barrels of oil, or 161.7 gallons. And recycling a dozen 12-ounce PETE bottles yields enough fiber to make one extra-large t-shirt, one square foot of carpeting or the filling for one insulated ski jacket, according to the association.

For Sheldon’s plastic bottle to be reprocessed into another product, she must recycle it. Western’s Associated Students Recycle Center collects overflowing barrels in and around the academic buildings on campus once a week and barrels from university residence and dining halls twice a week.

Trucks loaded with blue barrels pull up to Western’s recycling center to be sorted. Plastic flies through the air as the goggle-clad students sift through the bins for bottles. Once sorted, the bottles travel to Northwest Recycling Inc., a material-recovery facility that handles most of Whatcom County’s residential and business recyclables.

After the dump truck arrives at Northwest Recycling, it pours a mountain of bottles beside a conveyor belt. Four workers in yellow vests rapidly sort the plastic from glass and aluminum containers as the garbage rushes up the belt. Glass breaks and plastic pops with ear-shattering dissonance. The workers toss PETE bottles into a trailer to be compacted into 1,000-pound bales, said Carol Kuljis, the business manager for Northwest Recycling.

“We store it in the warehouse until we have enough material to fill a semi truck that can hold 6,500 pounds,” said Kuljis, pointing to the 10-foot towers of compressed plastic behind her. Northwest Recycling sends these shipments to Seattle, then off to reprocessing companies in China. The company has shipped mixed plastic overseas for 15 years.

The United States collects approximately 800 million pounds of PETE bottles a year for recycling. But in 2002, the last year for which figures are available, roughly 275 million pounds of that went outside the country, mainly to China, according to the Department of Ecology.

Strong markets for PETE bottles exist in China, India and the United States. The market in China, which drives the global waste trade, generally makes more financial sense for Washington bottles, said Ron Kemalyan with Pacific/West Recycling Services Inc. Landfill charges are rising, making it relatively less expensive to send waste abroad.

The next step in the recycling process begins when companies that buy post-consumer waste chop the bales into penny-sized flakes. A heated chamber, called an extruder, liquefies the flakes. A revolving screw inside the extruder moves the melted flakes toward one end. The extruder squishes the molten plastic through a die, pressing out pasta-like fibers. These cylindrical fibers can be used to create more than 1,400 post-consumer products.

An estimated 60 percent of PETE bottles recycled in the United States make the polyester fiber used in some t-shirts, sleeping-bag fill and carpet, according to the Washington State Recycling Association. This may eventually happen to Tamia Sheldon’s bottle, but for now, she is reusing it.

“After I’m done with my bottle, it goes in my backpack,” Sheldon said. “I take it back to my house to reuse it later.”

Sheldon eventually recycled her plastic bottle, but recycling plastics is a short-term solution to a larger problem. Although recycling is important, reducing waste is the most important thing citizens can do because it stops waste before it is created, said Shelly McClure, the sustainability specialist for Ecology.

“As a society, we need to develop more closed-loop systems in partnership with manufacturers and producers and ask them to take responsibility for their products,” McClure said. An example of this would be a company offering to take back unwanted products to ensure their safe recycling, she said.

Ecology is writing a plan called Beyond Waste, which advocates a move toward a sustainable future. According to the plan, society needs to show industry and politicians that the environment, the economy and human health are important.

“We need to think about future generations and the legacy we are leaving them with,” McClure said. “We cannot wait for a catastrophe to happen before we move in a new direction and towards a new vision.” §

This article was first published in the Fall 2004 issue of The Planet, a Huxley College of the Environment publication. It is reprinted here with permission.