When you throw plastic soda bottles or milk cans into the blue roadside recycling bin, you might imagine somewhere-puff! -It became a new container or maybe a woolen jacket.

The fact is, we are not sure what will happen to plastic.

We do know that if it is clean and one of the types accepted by the waste connection, the garbage hauler serving Clark County will go to the West Vancouver Material Recycling Center near Vancouver Lake for sorting. Like plastic—for example, those soda bottles—is squeezed into huge pieces called bags. Then they are sold as commodities. This is when we lose our way.

Has that plastic become a new thing? Or is it spinning in the ocean?

In 2019, the legislative agency instructed the State Department of Ecology to commission a third party to review Washington's plastic packaging management methods.

Alli Kingfisher, the agency’s plastic policy expert, said: “We know this is a problem that people are passionate about, and we are working on a solution.”

A review published last year estimated that of the 410,300 tons of plastic packaging waste generated throughout the state in 2017, approximately 17% was sent for reprocessing.

The review report stated that as to what the plastic has become, "the current system...cannot guarantee that the material is actually recycled responsibly, or that any environmental benefits are actually achieved."

It is difficult to understand the scale of plastic pollution. A 2017 study published in the journal Science Advances estimated that between 1950 and 2015, 9.1 billion tons of plastic were produced globally, of which 6.9 billion tons became waste, and only 9% was recycled.

According to the data of the United Nations Environment Programme, 330 million tons of plastic waste will be generated every year, of which 8.8 million tons will eventually flow into the world's oceans. According to a study, at the current rate, by 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish.

Some of the plastic comes from things like discarded fishing nets, but the large amount of plastic floating in the ocean is designed to be recycled and exported to countries with weak regulations.

Before announcing that it would no longer be a dumping ground for garbage, China had processed nearly half of the world's recyclable waste. In 2018, China strictly restricted the import of most plastic waste and other recyclable materials. This has upended the global market for recyclable materials.

Then in 2019, an amendment added plastics to the Basel Convention, an international treaty that restricts the flow of hazardous waste between countries. As of January, the treaty restricts the trade of mixed plastic bags that are so problematic. (Disposing of them involves low-income scavengers picking valuable plastics and throwing away the rest, which usually ends up contaminating land and waterways.) In most cases, there are only plastics that are sorted into single polymer packages and destined to be recycled separately Waste materials can now be exported to developing countries. Although the United States has never signed the Basel Convention, it cannot trade with countries that have signed the Basel Convention.

Even before these restrictions came into effect, U.S. exports of plastic bags had already begun to decline. According to a report from the Association of Plastic Recyclers, approximately 12.1% of recycled plastics were exported overseas in 2019, down from 39% in 2010.

The State Department of Ecology requires recycling facilities to submit an annual report detailing how much waste they processed and where it went. According to the state’s public records law, a report submitted by the West Vancouver Material Recycling Center of Waste Connections indicated that most of the plastics were sold to middlemen for export in the past five years, and the rest was sold to North American factories.

Derek Ranta, the company's regional manager in Clark County, said Waste Connections has established long-term relationships with trusted brokers and has a clear understanding of where the materials are going.

"Our expectation is that they will sell it to factories and facilities that dispose of it in an environmentally friendly way," Lanta said. "The broker has a relationship with these overseas factories and will report to us. In the time I have been here-18 years-I have not encountered a situation where the facilities or factories have not handled materials in an environmentally-friendly way. ..... The client must believe that the City of Vancouver, Clark County, and other cities in the area have reviewed us as a contractor and believe that we are doing everything we can to collect materials."

Just because plastic is exported does not mean that it will not be recycled correctly, especially now that so many countries are fighting. But in our current system, we cannot be sure. The waste transporter sells the plastic bags to other companies, and the two parties usually keep the transaction confidential.

According to the state’s review of plastic recycling, “there is very little information about where these products were sent or what parts are ultimately recycled into new products and packaging.” “When the information was provided, no independent verification of the claims made was performed.”

The national review suggested that although the Ministry of Ecology has no authority to supervise commodity transactions and verify the final disposal of plastic packaging, it should clarify reporting requirements and better collect data.

Recycling-conscious consumers desire greater transparency.

Patty Page, a resident of Hazel Dell, has been actively involved in the recycling movement since the early days when she lived and helped in Portland.

"Since then, when I learned the mantra of reduce-reuse-recycle, I tried my best to reduce my trash footprint. There have been many ups and downs," Page said.

"I sympathize with those who try to do the right thing because the rules are constantly changing. For most people, it seems really random. It has to do with the ups and downs of the market," she said. "It becomes puzzling because the manufacturers do their best to justify the existence of plastics and pretend that they are recyclable, and they are not responsible."

She has experience navigating all complexity. In the past ten years, she has helped coordinate the recycling program of special non-curbside items for the Vancouver Unitarian Universalist Church. The plan is dormant during the pandemic, but under normal circumstances, people going to church can drop materials on their way to the service.

Church members also put together items for Ridwell to collect. The Seattle-based company charges customers to purchase items such as plastic bags that cannot be placed in the blue trash can in Seattle, Denver, and Greater Portland. The company reported where the material went, how it was used, and how much of it was too dirty to be recycled and had to be sent to a landfill. For example, according to Ridwell, plastic bags were sent to Trex, which produces laminate flooring, and about 2.2% of the plastic bags collected were contaminated.

Expanding this transparency will be challenging. In fluctuating markets and decentralized systems, the number and types of materials processed by roadside recycling are much greater.

Plastics may be marked with chasing arrows and numbers from one to seven, but this does not mean that recycling them is actually feasible. The waste connection requires bottles (No. 1, also known as polyethylene terephthalate or PET), water bottles (No. 2, also known as high-density polyethylene or HDPE), and buckets (No. 5, also known as polypropylene or PP). ). Even among the items accepted by the roadside, the demand varies.

Dan Leif, executive editor of Resource Recycling, a Portland-based trade publication, said that the current market demand for PET and HDPE plastics is very strong, as evidenced by the increase in packaging prices.

Leif explained that turning big bags into usable plastic first requires separating contaminants, removing labels, cleaning materials, and shredding them into thin slices. These flakes then become pellets, which manufacturers use to make their products.

"It takes a lot of things to change plastic bottles or drums back into materials that can be used for manufacturing," Leif said. "This is a very technical process. This is one of the problems trying to increase the recycling rate of plastics.... You must ensure that there is market appeal throughout the processing and pre-manufacturing chain. You need the needs of the end user."

As the national policy analyst Kingfisher said, "We are very good at collecting materials. We are not very good at placing materials."

This is why the agency has taken the lead in implementing a plan to strengthen the recycling market and processing in Washington. And why the state has set a goal that by 2025, the packaging sold here contains at least 20% post-consumer recycled content.

In addition, the state’s review of plastic recycling recommends that the legislature adopt a deposit return system for beverage containers (much like the system that Oregon has adopted for many years), and requires "extended producer responsibility" for all packaging and paper.

So far, only Maine and Oregon have passed producer responsibility laws, and this year. These laws are designed to shift the burden from consumers to producers.

Oregon’s law requires companies that sell packaging, paper products, and food servers in the state to join the management organization by 2024 and then pay in 2025 to support recycling programs and infrastructure.

David Allaway, a nationally recognized recycling policy expert who works for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, said the law also includes waste reduction. For example, part of the fee collected will be used to pay for the school dishwasher so that students can use durable trays instead of disposable trays for lunch.

When the meeting is reconvened, the Washington legislature will consider the Producer Responsibility Act introduced earlier this year.

The state has set a goal that by 2025, the plastic packaging sold here will be 100% recyclable, reusable or compostable, but Allaway warns that focusing on recycling is not enough to reduce environmental damage, let alone avoid what has already happened Catastrophic global change.

Allaway said that no country has a 90% recycling rate, and even if it can, a study in Oregon shows that it will only reduce its carbon footprint by 3%.

"Recycling is a necessary element for a sustainable future, but it's just too inadequate, too insufficient," Allaway said.

A study he conducted in Oregon found that labels such as "recyclable" or "compostable" in no way indicate that the product is actually better for the environment.

"It is very unfair to expect consumers to make thousands of purchase decisions a year, especially when the only information they get is these attributes, such as'recyclable' or'compostable'." It’s meaningless," Allaway said. "The only way to get out of this dilemma is to stop blaming individual consumers and make some systemic changes. Easily do the right thing and choose a sustainable option. ​​"

What can you do about the plastic problem?

• When buying, do not rely on labels that indicate that the packaging is recyclable. David Allaway, a nationally recognized recycling policy expert who works for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, said that lighter packaging is generally a better choice for the environment, regardless of whether it is recyclable or not.

• Make sure the items you put in the roadside bins are empty, clean, and dry-and they are indeed accepted. (There is an app: RecycleRight. Or take the online course "Recycle Complete" from 7 to 8:30 on Wednesday evening. Register at clarkcountycomposts.org.)

"Sometimes it's okay to throw things away," said Alli Kingfisher, a plastic policy expert at the Washington Department of Ecology. "Not everything belongs to the trash can."

She said that if your local jurisdiction does not accept a certain type of plastic, "this means they have no market, or it will contaminate more valuable materials."

Allaway said that "ruyi recycling" or "ruyi recycling" (that is, putting things that are not recyclable but you want them to be recyclable into the blue trash can) is the cause of the system crash.

• Consider the impact of the entire product life cycle when purchasing.

"99% of the carbon impact is the result of production; only 1% is the result of disposal," Allaway said.

"One thing that is lost in the recycling discussion is to reduce the power of using materials in the first place," said Dan Leif, the managing editor of Resource Recycling, a trade publication based in Portland. "If you can reduce the amount of packaging or materials you buy, and then have to enter the waste stream... If you can't own these things in the first place, it will have the greatest benefit to the environment."