Plastic berry cartons in the supermarket. Starbucks' transparent coffee cup. Individually packaged yogurt container. Can you put these common disposable plastic products in your blue trash can?

The answer is: not really.

In SLO County and most other places, only No. 1 and No. 2 plastics can be recycled on the roadside. This is the number inside the "chase arrow" recycling symbol on the bottom of many disposable plastics, ranging from 1 to 7. But the symbol is largely misleading because it reminds consumers that anything with a triangle arrow is recyclable.

A good rule of thumb is that recyclable No. 1 and No. 2 plastics are anything that has a bottleneck: such as plastic water bottles, milk cans, empty washing powder containers, and soda bottles. But there are many other plastics that are usually thrown into the wrong bins.

Take the clamshell plastic cartons used to pack strawberries or blueberries in supermarkets as an example. These containers are made of soft, transparent plastic and appear to be recyclable. Mary Ciesinski, executive director of ECOSLO, said that when the cartons are crushed, they will break into many small plastic fragments, making it impossible to dispose of them.

"Plastic has seven different codes. This is very confusing to consumers," Ciesinski said. "Chasing the arrow symbol is more of a marketing plan, rather than the actual designation of the product's recyclability.... We see the recycling symbol, which is deeply ingrained to us humans, and it is recyclable. this is not the truth."

The legislation signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in early October aims to eliminate some of the confusion surrounding plastics. It prohibits manufacturers from putting recycling signs on products that are not recyclable under the California definition.

"I think holding the manufacturer accountable is a very good step in the right direction, and it must happen at that level, because there is only one city or one county that prohibits certain things or makes laws [is not enough]," Ciesinski Say. "It must happen upstream."

Jordan Lane, the Solid Waste and Recycling Coordinator of the San Luis Obispo City Recycling Program, explained why local policies did not have much impact on the entire system.

"[State legislation] will have a huge impact because if we make changes at the local level, it will not necessarily affect manufacturers, because San Luis Obispo does not have much manufacturing. It happens at the state level," Lane Say. "It can really have a huge impact on how people understand recycling."

The new law basically prevents manufacturers from using recycling marks as a marketing strategy, thereby eliminating the public’s confusion about what actually enters the blue box.

However, some people pointed out that this legislative change may not necessarily solve the root cause of the problem: single-use plastics are largely non-recyclable-even those that will no longer become plastic bottles.

Former SLO City Council member and former Integrated Waste Management Authority (IWMA) board member Aaron Gomez stated that “recycling” is not a really accurate word to describe the situation of single-use plastics, even if they are properly disposed of.

"We don't recycle plastic," Gomez said. "We downgrade the recycling of plastics.... They become carpets and jackets. But guess what you can’t recycle: the carpet or jacket is at the end of its useful life. So it’s actually a one-time use. Downward cycle process."

Gomez said that even if California implements laws such as recycling mark regulations, the state also makes it more difficult for people to recycle in other ways. He cited the example of rePLANET, a private recycling company that went bankrupt in 2019.

"When you get a recyclable bottle, everyone has to pay the CRV [California Redemption Value]. This fee goes to the state government, and the state government should also collect it from the manufacturer, because 10 cents will be returned to the handed in People. Bottles," he said. "The state should take away the excess funds and the funds they have collected from the manufacturers and give them to rePLANET to cover the cost of their business."

But in the years before rePLANET closed, Gomez said that California was not paying back the company fast enough, and that the money was not enough to keep the company running.

"So the country let rePLANET shut down," he said. "For me, the country used CRV completely wrongly and did not fill this gap, but instead allowed the local jurisdiction to try to solve this problem."

Historically, individual companies that sell recyclable bottles are also obliged to take them back. If the company fails to do so, the state can even impose a fine.

"When the whole pandemic happened, they just stopped issuing tickets. Now you can go to some grocery or liquor stores and they will sign a small letter there,'We only get six bottles at a time,'" Gomez said. "People used to collect bags and bags, hundreds of bottles at a time. So now it all stops."

These changes are not only affecting the recycling industry. They also affect people who rely on CRV money to transfer bottles: people who are homeless.

Aidan Beals, affiliate marketing and communications coordinator for the homeless at 5Cities, says that a small percentage of his organization’s customers use bottle turn-in to make money. But for those who do, recent changes will only make things more difficult.

"It has become harder for them," Bill said. "As it slowly becomes less and less, its value gets lower and lower...For most people, it is not very worthwhile."

However, if this is someone's only source of income, they may have no other choice, Beals added.

Gomez said that economic unsustainability not only plagues private recycling centers: it is a fundamental problem that hinders governments and jurisdictions from investing in recycling technologies.

"Cost is the core of the entire operation. The entire recycling process is actually based on the commodity market and processing costs," Gomez said. "We are trying to solve this problem through mechanization, but this still requires a huge price."

In addition to these obstacles, Gomez also said that some of California's so-called anti-plastic legislation has some major loopholes.

"The plastic bag ban is a classic example of a policy loophole, which makes us as the public think we are doing something," Gomez said. "The industry itself threatened to file a lawsuit against [prohibition of plastic bags] in state and local jurisdictions, basically in the policy to enforce the thickness of plastic bags."

According to legislation, if a plastic bag is thick enough to be considered "reusable", it is still allowed.

"Even if you call something a reusable bag, you can't make it a reusable bag," Gomez said.

Recycling plastic bags of any thickness is too expensive, so "we have reduced plastic as a goal, and now you end up with a ton of disposable plastic bags that are thicker than the original disposable plastic bags," he said.

From Gomez's perspective, real change requires more than just loopholes and corporate-influenced legislation.

Gomez said: "This is a daunting task, and we have been doing these small symbolic policy changes, when it's like, no, we need a real life-changing change," Gomez said, "and In the next ten years."

Ciesinski from ECOSLO said that the change started in the grocery store.

"When you shop at Target or anywhere, you either choose soda in a plastic bottle or an aluminum can," she said. "It's not like,'Oh, I'm home, what should I do with these products?' You choose in the store."

Most importantly, although recycled glass bottles and aluminum cans can be remade into the same packaging over and over again, plastic cannot.

"As humans, we need to figure out how to better manage the resources we are using," Ciesinski said. "We know that plastics will eventually enter our air, and they will eventually enter our waters.... They will eventually enter humans. People should be concerned about this because it is affecting humans." Δ

Contact full-time writer Malea Martin at mmartin@newtimesslo.com.

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