Where Do All Our "Recycled" Plastics Go?

Each week, residents of Seattle, Washington carefully sort their garbage for recycling. They put their plastic bottles, along with the paper, metal, and glass in special recycling containers provided by the city. Then trucks from Waste Management or Rabanco, two companies that operate curbside recycling programs, collect these materials and cart them off, supposedly to environmentally beneficial recycling facilities nearby.

In a vast slum just outside Jakarta, for instance, women work in a crowded, unventilated room, separating the waste newspapers, pieces of clothing, metal scraps, poor quality and highly contaminated plastic from the reusable plastics. It's 90 degrees and too hot to wear protective smocks or gloves, not that they are available anyway. With their bare hands the Indonesian women wipe the sweat from their brows. The huge piles of plastic bags, liquid soap bottles, food wrappers, jugs, and disposable diapers have familiar logos Dow, DuPont, Monsanto, Solvay, Mobil.

Once separated, the piles of discard are sent to a local dump. One Indonesian recycling company owner estimated that up to 40 per cent of the imported waste is landfilled. Workers shovel the "good" plastic into large grinding machines which turn out plastic pellets or flakes. The women next wash the surface residues and contaminants off these bits. The waste water is then poured onto the dirt floor or out the back door of the recycling plant.

The plastic pellets, sometimes mixed with new plastic or other additives, are melted and formed into long plastic cords. Once cooled, the cords are again chipped and sent to manufacturing plants in Asia to be made into shoe soles, containers, or toys.

Two Months' Plastic Garbage Exports

               Plastic Scrap Exports to Asia
               February 1  March 31, 1992
Country        Number of Shipments           Total (pounds)
China (directly)       6                         210,894
Hong Kong            586                      37,746,957
India                 11                       2,198,339
Indonesia             50                       4,952,518
Japan                  5                         112,797
Korea                  6                         241,866
Malaysia               7                         561,530
Pakistan               1                          41,533
Philippines           58                       5,385,902         
Singapore              5                         157,350 
Thailand               6                         273,071
Taiwan                 6                         344,611

TOTAL                750                      52,053,376  



Link " http://www.things.org/~jym/greenpeace/where-recycled-plastics-go.html"