By Coledale environmental advocate Susie Crick

Minderoo Foundation research has proven that Australians are the world's biggest consumers of single-use plastic per person. So what happens to all of that plastic convenience that passes through our hands and where does it end up?

For most of us, the answer lies in that yellow bin that we take out. Once we throw away our plastics, we don’t give it another thought as our respective Councils take care of it. Surely that waste will be sorted and remanufactured into water bottles, yoga pants, shirts, board shorts, toys and more plastic containers and products? But how much of what we put into the yellow bin is actually recycled, and are these reincarnated products safe?

The bitter pill to swallow is that globally only 9% of plastic is recycled, however, in Australia we manage to recycle approximately 18%. Even so, this number is relatively low considering our Government is funding recycling projects. From a financial perspective, recycled plastic waste profit margins are small versus the fact that virgin plastics are far more stable and very cheap. Companies are resistant to change their business models if there’s a risk to their profit margins. Producers must take full responsibility for their products. 

There are over 80,000 chemicals in plastic products categorised into six classes of plastics, and with so many different plastic chemical compounds, it is very difficult to recycle effectively. Some products displaying the numbers in the chasing arrows triangles are recyclable, but most are not.

Plastic was never designed to be recycled. The pervasive presence of plastic in our oceans has emerged as one of the most pressing environmental issues of the modern era. We can’t sit back and wait for industry to act because the plastics industry is a runaway train. We have ‘normalised’ plastic since the 1950s. In 1963, an industry journal editor, Lloyd Stouffer, spoke at the US National Plastics Conference, saying "the future of plastics is in the trash can" and that it was time for the plastics industry to stop thinking about "re-use" packages and concentrate on single use.

The oil and gas industry is presenting false narratives, and greenwashing us into believing that the problem of global plastic pollution can be solved with recycling and promoting plastic as a circular material.

We have been fed clever marketing campaigns over the past five decades asking the consumer to change their behaviours where they lay the guilt on us.

We have been recycling and placing chasing arrows into yellow bins; doing beach and lake cleans; picking up plastic; bringing our own cups and reusing; but are the government policies keeping up with our own good intentions? Can our hope for the necessary global plastic production reduction match what governments are implementing in their policies? Is government inaction allowing us to leave this dirty legacy for our future families to clean up?

There are a few different ways to recycle plastic. Biological recycling requires enzymes and microbes to break down the plastic and whilst this sounds like the silver bullet, it is very expensive, takes time and the products can end up in landfill.

Advanced recycling, also known as pyrolysis (‘pyro’ meaning fire and ‘lysis’ meaning separation) is burning the plastic and releasing the toxins into the environment. 

Chemical recycling is less efficient and produces more pollution than traditional mechanical recycling; it diverts the focus from finding effective solutions to plastic waste, and allows plastic producers to continue to make toxic byproducts that can harm our health.

However you do it, plastic recycling requires a lot of water and, what is more problematic, is that it consistently leaches off chemicals. With copious amounts of microplastics released during all phases, this toxic genie is let out of the bottle.

But it’s not all bad news!

There are a handful of charitable organisations who are doing the right thing and reducing waste to landfill by encouraging recycling. We will need strong government policy and a collective will to create effective change. The best thing that we can do is to ReUse and Refill but most importantly REFUSE plastic. Money talks, so choose what you spend your money on and divest from banks and superannuation funds that are funding fossil fuels.

Knowledge is power, and we can educate ourselves on the dangers that plastics pose through peer-reviewed research papers found on Google Scholar rather than being fed misinformation from fossil fuel campaigns or social media news.

Plastic is leaving multi-generational toxic impacts on our health. We breathe in plastic, we eat plastic and we wear plastic. There is plastic in our paints, our furniture, our carpets and our clothing. We sleep in it, and walk with it each day. It is in breast milk, umbilical cords, in male reproductive organs, on our skin, as well as every crack and crevice of the globe. The compounds in plastics possess endocrine-disrupting properties that can interfere in the actions of hormones, contributing in a detrimental way to human health. When chemicals are found to be toxic to human health, it can take years of research to get the harmful chemicals removed from products.

The push for false recycling is a crime against the ecosystem, the environment, our health, and the planet. No ocean can escape the micro and nano plastics that wash in from our laundry, and from our highways as tyres wear away, leaving a dusty plastic legacy that washes down drains. We need to get real about plastic as there is no way that recycling will ever keep up with the highly addictive plastic products rolling out of factories. The continuous production and consumption of plastics exceeds recycling infrastructure, and results in plastic waste ending up in landfills or escaping into the oceans.  

The solution isn’t to engineer our way out of the plastic pollution crisis. Political parties that promote plastic-based technologies, and aren’t seeking long-term solutions, are generally complicit with the polluters. Technology won’t fix the problem. 

We are addicted to the convenience of plastic without fully understanding its consequences in our daily lives. There is time to solve this problem safely and we need political will to drive the change to a healthier future. International cooperation and collaboration are paramount in tackling this global issue, as plastic pollution has no borders in our one contiguous ocean. We all live downstream.