According to The Vegan Digest (TVD) Publication #3, Recycle Facilities, “most items put in recycle bins are deemed ‘unmarketable’ and would not actually be recycled if there would be no buyer of the recycled items.” TVD further cites 1) contamination via plastic bagging of items or poorly rinsed out recycled items, 2) business efficiency lost in the mechanical sorting of batched recyclables, and 3) type of materials recycled, as some of the main reasons why Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs) wouldn’t actually recycle items brought to them via recycling trucks.

According to Ernst & Young (EY), recycling rates of plastics in the United States (U.S.) did not exceed 10 percent as recently as 2022. EY explains that the remainder percent “of plastics disposed of by consumers in the U.S. either ends up in landfills or is combusted in waste-to-energy plants.” Per the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), “waste-to-energy plants burn municipal solid waste (MSW) to generate electricity or heat,” although this method of recycling requires energy and contributes to emissions.

Per EY, CPG (consumer-packaged goods) brands now make commitments to use recycled plastics in their products and packaging. EY noted that ‘chemical recycling’ would improve success rates from facility processing of disposed consumer plastics. Chemical recycling can increase production of recycled plastics that have a quality-grade suitable for brands. Of the many chemical recycling technologies, EY highlights “Purification” (dissolving to remove impurities), “Conversion” (using high heat to convert plastics into fuels or other inputs), and “Depolymerization” (deconstructing plastic molecules into their most basic forms) as viable chemical recycling.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), for Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics (STAA), shares that “chemical recycling can promote a closed-loop system, known as a circular economy, wherein plastics are reused rather than discarded in landfills or incinerated.” The use of landfills and the practice of incineration contribute to carbon emissions and other forms of pollution. The GAO appears to refer to the use of processes that deconstruct plastic molecules into their most basic forms, as “Decomposition” rather than “Depolymerization.”

The GAO also spotlights ‘biological recycling’ (or ‘biorecycling’), at times considered a type of chemical recycling, as an “emerging technology that uses microbes, such as bacteria or fungi, to break down plastic into its basic components for reuse.” Per the GAO, biorecycling can support ‘upcycling.’ Upcycling is the creative reuse of plastics, and doing so without degradation of quality, benefit, or grade of plastic that ‘downcycling’ would.

According to the GAO, biorecycling can upcycle plastics into more biodegradable plastics, upcycle plastics into high value chemicals, and recycle plastics into similar quality plastics. The GAO identifies increased resource conservation, reduced reliance on fossil fuels, and reduced reliance on landfills, as opportunities from the implementation of alternatives to mechanical recycling of plastics.

The Vegan Digest believes that viable business opportunities from recycled plastics should improve human and planetary health. Selecting simple and efficacious recycling processes can be a wise strategy for how to choose among these now-obvious methods of recycling plastics. Many of these viable recycling methods would have avoided present day landfills that are cluttered with plastics that won’t fully decompose. International convergence in best practices must aim to mitigate collective pollution from global industrial production of plastics. Without designs for circular reuse, and without mitigation of undesirable effects from chemical or biological recycling, continued production of plastics on earth is irresponsible.