Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork

Chapter 4: The toxic cradle of productionSecond, even when the grades are compatible, the structure of the polymer is degradedby recycling through the production process. For practical purposes, new packagingsuch as PET bottles cannot contain more than 15 to 25% of recycled material.Moreover, bottles with recycled content cannot be recycled a second time to producea third bottle. This compounds the problem of sorting for recycling. Most plasticrecycling is therefore ‘down-cycling’ into products such as plastic pallets where thepurity of the polymer is less of an issue. This saves on other materials, such as wood forpallets, and it delays dumping for the life time of the new product but it has no effecton the use of ‘virgin’ resins in packaging.Finally, industry recycling programmes in fact served a different purpose. Coupledwith PR, they gave the impression that the production of virgin plastic and the amountof waste going to the overflowing dumps was being reduced. The intention was toovercome consumer and regulatory resistance and the outcome was an increase inproduction, consumption and dumping.The South African industry is mimicking the message, saying that “where the polymerlogo is not present, it is much more likely in South Africa that the spent / waste item,will end up in landfill and that’s just not an acceptable option anymore”. 83 To thecontrary, it is highly likely that the item will end up in the dump irrespective of thepolymer logo and even in the unlikely event that the consumer finds a recycler. Theintention of expanding waste is evident in the next sentence: “We need to recoveras much as we can for recycling or energy recover” [sic]. The packaging and plasticsindustries are explicit in their promotion of incineration and, as is shown elsewhere,incineration demands the waste that feeds it.In the energy sector, plastic and paper are known as ‘non-energy’ because they areproduced from energy resources. Plastic has a much higher energy content than paperand, in the view of eThekwini waste managers [IWMP 2004], the South African wastestream does not have a high enough proportion of plastic to make energy productionfrom waste incineration viable. The reason given is that most South Africans are poor.It may also be hoped that the plastic bag regulations, in so far as they have beensuccessful, have further reduced plastics in the waste stream.83 PFSA website at www.plasfed.co.zaWasting the Nation - groundWork - 117 -