RECYLCLING: OVERCOMING A BUNKER MENTALITY

It’s my daily chore to clear my room of dirty plates and cups. If I dump my dishes on my

sister’s bed instead of putting them into the dishwasher, can I tell my mom that I cleaned my

room? What if I just light a bonfire of cups in my room? This is what we are doing in the name

of recycling. We are throwing our trash in our brothers’ and sisters’ spaces and burning down

our home planet. When we toss our bottles in the recycling bin, we assume that we are saving the

environment, but what we do not know is that our bottles may be shipped across the world to be

processed, burned, or tossed in a landfill (Dell; Retamal).

So what happens when I throw away my lunch at Poly? Mr. Yamaoka, Poly’s Manager of

Safety and Sustainability, said that my composted sandwich crust goes directly towards local

gardens. Athens Company hauls away our trash and sends the recycling to the Allan Company’s

material recovery facility. These for-profit companies contract with the city of Pasadena. I spoke

with the General Manager of the Allan Company, Mr. Brett Weigand, who said that half of our

recyclables, mostly cardboard, can be sold or processed within the US. The other half sails on

cargo ships to Asia as processing it overseas is cheaper (Weigand). But what is the true cost?

Plastic and metals are shipped abroad because of the simple power of the dollar. Stricter

environmental regulations in the US make processing more expensive here. But there is a hidden

cost to the earth behind shipping our recyclables abroad. Cargo ships use bunker fuel, black

sludge like La Brea Tar Pits, the dregs of what is left from refining oil, sending 3,500 times more

pollution than oil into the air (BBC). Fifteen of the biggest cargo ships produce more pollution

than all of the cars in the world (The Economist). It’s an inconvenient truth that when we recycle

plastic bottles abroad, we contribute to global warming through sulfur oxide emissions on cargo

ships.

You might think that even if shipping the recycling abroad contributes to global warming,

at least landfills aren’t filled. In fact, the only plastics that can be recycled are plastic resins

labeled “PETE.” This includes most clear plastic beverage containers. One of the ways PETE

plastic is cheaply “recycled” is by burning it as fuel, which is toxic (Garthe). But into the landfill

go bottles of laundry detergent; into the landfill go milk jugs; into the landfill go saran wrap and

grocery bags. They are simply not worth the money to process. Even with PETE plastics, 75%

end up in landfills abroad (Geyer). So we preserve the rivers of America only to defile the rivers

of Asia. Picture bottomless Grand-Canyons of water bottles, teetering Mount Everests of yogurt

cups, flowing Yangtze Rivers of sunscreen tubes. Our environmental preservation here causes

environmental devastation abroad. In fact, the government of China just banned the import of

foreign trash (CalRecycle). As a result, Mr. Weigand, the manager of the Allan Company, told

me they are looking for other countries that will accept American recycling.

So what can I do with this drink that I just bought in the Haaga House? To improve the

odds it’ll be recycled, I can rinse it before I chuck it in the bin because recycling that is

contaminated by waste cannot be sold. That last crust of pizza in the box marks it for the landfill.

So we can think before we buy and sort for true recyclables and wash our plastics or metals clean

of food.

What Poly does with the thousands of bottles we drink a year is like a drop in a rapidly

rising ocean of plastic. Some might say that if 75% of plastics end up in the landfill, nothing we

do here at Poly can have an effect. When I started researching this speech, I thought we needed

to organize protests targeting the government. However, by talking with administrators at Poly

and in Pasadena, I learned that officials want to improve recycling, but the regulations are fast-changing and opaque (Department of Public Works). Mr. Gabriel Silva, the former Pasadena

Environmental Programs Manager, said that the city has no way of knowing what happens to our

recycling when it leaves the US. Pasadena is a recycling leader in California, exceeding the law

that 50% of total waste must be diverted from landfills, but “diverted” may mean bottles sold to

recycling firms here end up in a river in Vietnam. Even after being washed and carefully sorted

into the correct bin, most of our recycling is destined for the dump.

Far from being helpless in the recycling labyrinth, we can use our voices to bring the

truth of what happens to recycling to light. Far from being helpless against the plastic deluge, we

can work with Pasadena to redefine the meaning of the word, “recycle.” We must make every

effort to develop recycling practices based on compassion, and compassion based on knowledge,

and knowledge based on the understanding that we are all brothers and sisters in a global

community. Not only must we keep our own home country clean, but we must also keep our

trash from filling up the homes of our neighbors. Let’s bring Poly and Pasadena together to

repair the recycling system!