by Alexander Wilson

Abstract

The system for composting Polylactic Acid (PLA) corn plastics requires the same fundamental behaviors of citizens as traditional recycling: sort, collect, and dispose of materials in the designated bins. Facing a global oil crisis, conventional Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) plastics, which compose the packaging of ubiquitous bottled water, is not sustainable at current recycling rates. Changes should be made at all levels, including individual behaviors, municipal governments, and state legislatures, with the ultimate goal of obtaining zero waste in a closed cycle of recyclable materials.

Introduction

Some 141 million tons of conventional Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) plastics were disposed of in the waste stream in 2006 alone (CRI). The bottled spring water that has become a staple of American culture is not sustainable at national recycling rates.

In 2002, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awarded Cargill Dow (“NatureWorks” today) a Greener Reaction Conditions Award for the “green” processes used to manufacture PLA (Polylactic Acid) corn plastic (EPA 2002). The corn plastic itself reached market in late 2006, when the Wal-Mart corporation adopted the technology for various food packaging. Corporate and environmental interests alike heralded corn plastics as the solution to the PET plastics that clogged America’s landfills in the form of clear water bottles. With government backing, proponents of corn plastics argue that expenses are spared on petroleum and on resources otherwise spent in the collection of conventional plastics.

Corn plastics, however, have met a larger, lukewarm response from recycling cooperatives and environmental groups whose doubts about the material’s “biodegradable” pedigree have contributed to the material’s stunted growth. Together these groups share the practical concern that consumers will mix corn plastics with conventional plastics, thereby contaminating loads and corrupting the recovery processes for both materials. Another concern is that bottles decompose prematurely. In the rush to “green” their public images, companies have hastily adopted several so-called “environmentally friendly” practices in recent years. Some of these mechanisms are less-than-elaborate facades, and even legitimate scientific advances have unintended consequences. Thus, the corn plastics revolution must be scrutinized.

The energy benefits of corn plastics would seem to justify their means. However, “compostable” corn plastics require constant 140-degree heat, a condition offered in merely 113 facilities nationwide. Getting materials to these scarce sites is a muddier logistical problem than training people to recycle using existing, prevalent infrastructure. Roughly half of U.S. communities participate in recycling programs (EPA 2007), yet in 2006, 141 billion beverage containers were trashed, a trend that persisted into the following year (CRI). So long as emergent technologies are placed in the hands of humans, the potential to corrupt and pervert their intended purposes is boundless. Recycling is a people problem that the technological solution of corn plastics fails to address. At its most egregious, this fix is an extra obstacle to the best solution: people taking ownership of their own actions. Practically speaking, there are measures to be taken to sure up existing infrastructure, and to make a closed system in which PET plastic resources contribute zero waste to the municipal solid waste stream (MSW) in communities nationwide.

The Inadequacies of Municipal Programs

There is a dark reality to the idea that a “fool-proof” solution to America’s recycling problem can be chemically engineered. Embracing such technology is, in a sense, acknowledging the futility of human endeavors. Engineering solutions take decision-making power out of the hands of ordinary citizens whose lives are increasingly, and often unquestioningly, impacted by an onslaught of new technologies.

Recycling systems were a latecomer to the twentieth century as a product of the Environmental movement, and have not come far since their inception. Originating on a small scale in the late 1970’s, these basic waste management systems were ill-equipped to deal with the cultural phenomenon of bottled water that bloomed in the U.S. According to Beverage Marketing Corporation estimates, bottled water consumption increased by a multiple of 25 from 1976 to 2007, from 354 million gallons to more than 9 billion gallons (Beverage Marketing Corporation via Cormier, New Internationalist, 2008). Today, about a fifth of North Americans rely exclusively on bottled water (Cormier).

Individual households are the source of the municipal solid waste stream (MSW) that is ultimately landfilled or incinerated en masse: some 70% of the MSW (Spiegelman). EPA reports that some 31 million tons of plastics—12.1% of total waste generation—were discharged into the MSW in 2007, about 14 million of which was containers and packaging. In contrast, the agency estimates that about 2.1 million tons of plastics—6.8% of total plastic manufactured—are recovered by recycling. If the U.S. can improve on the rate at which PET bottles are recycled (a 37% rate of recovery), there is an annually-unmet, high industry demand for recovered PET to be used in bottle production (EPA 2007). The EPA-sponsored Resource Conservation Challenge (RCC) appeals to consumers to meet a nationwide recycling rate of 35% by 2010.

Intervention is needed at the lowest levels of government. Municipal officials are in perhaps the best situation to understand the needs of their neighbors and constituents. The research of scientific surveys demonstrates that to perpetuate the “one-size fits all” approach to recycling is to accept failure:

There is reason to believe that great recycling potential exists in virtually every demographic group if its resources, needs, capacities, and concerns are understood. But instead of tailoring campaigns for specific communities, municipalities often applied recycling programs city-wide—for simplicity, to avoid charges of discrimination, and because of a lack of reliable information about the needs of different groups.
(Howenstine 90).

This same study found that, as a result of poor policy-making, recycling rates fluctuated wildly among adjacent Chicago neighborhoods. However, no study has conclusively drawn correlation between the different social strata and their recycling habits.

Navigating the Waste Stream

Conventional recycling systems rely on a top-down process; manufacturers deliver their products to consumers, who (ideally) sort and dispose of materials appropriately. This seemingly elementary system—education programs begin in grade school—with considerably many variables, has a wide potential to fail, however. Abundant research states the problem: “Collecting, washing, sorting, and storing require time, effort, organization, space, and/or a vehicle; non-recyclers report that recycling is ‘too messy’” (Richard Day). The big difference between recyclers and non-recyclers is that people don’t know what to collect (Howenstine 6). The general rule deduced: people can’t handle recycling.

The New York Times reported, in May of 2008, that the gulf between recycling and conventional waste costs is narrowing as the expense of dumping at maxed-out landfills rises. Of NYC recycling rates, which peaked at 20% of the MSW and hover around 17% , deputy sanitation commissioner Vito A. Turso said, “There are plenty of other things on the metal, plastic, paper and glass side that can be recycled, and if people were more ambitious about recycling those materials, there would be less in the waste stream” (DePalma).

Gumming Up the Works

PLA corn plastics are infamously advertised to biodegrade at 140-degrees sustained heat. This is significant for three reasons: (1) confused consumers wrongly believe that they can compost the bottles at home; (2) corn plastic water bottles have been found to partially decompose before the end of their shelf-lives in rare cases when the bottles temporarily attain this temperature; (3) the contaminating corn plastic recyclants damage machinery and adulterate admixtures when, during the recycling process, conventional PET plastics are heated in the cleaning and drying stages. Perhaps the most damning statistic is that as little as one bottle in 1,000 can contaminate a load of conventional PET plastics in the recycling process (Learn).

Curbside recycling collection is “an educational nightmare,” according to Jerry Bartlett, vice president of the Cedar Grove composting plant, near Seattle, where recycling rates are among the highest in the country. “In order for the composting system to function,” Bartlett said, “residents must separate recyclable plastics from PLAs; NatureWorks contracted to accept 40,000-pound truckloads of PLAs, but has received none to date because ‘recyclers don’t separate PLA’” (Learn). Even the most progressive municipalities aren’t equipped to grapple with corn plastics. Furthermore, states that have enjoyed 66-96% recycling rates due to effective “Bottle Bills,” (discussed below) are most prominently threatened by corn plastic diffusion.

Legislative Measures

Municipalities and states nationwide have tried a variety of measures to encourage citizen recycling. Some have enacted economic incentives both positive, coming in the form of rewards and refunds to consumers, and negative, in the form of fines. Appeals to the altruistic duties of social responsibility and conservation are also popular historically, reinforced by grade school curriculums. And in the more progressive municipalities, “block captains” embarrass their non-recycling neighbors in door-to-door recycling campaigns.

Container-deposit Legislation (CDL), which makes producers and consumers equally responsible for collecting waste, is a trend on the cusp of widespread adoption. These so-called “Bottle Bills” encourage private infrastructures, owned by distributors and retailers alike, for waste management. Distributors pay a minimum refundable deposit, usually 5-10 cents, on the (glass and aluminum) beverage containers that consumers return to drop-sites and collection facilities. Among eleven states (California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Vermont) that utilize CDL, the recovery rate for beverage containers is 66-96%. These means have succeeded in meeting the goal; says an Aluminum Association spokesperson, “States that have deposit programs have the highest can recycling rates, on average at 74% or higher, while the recycling rate in non-deposits states is around 38%” (CRI, 2008). CDL is an effective—albeit focused—collection method that targets problem areas, such as litter and the use of beverage containers outside homes, where conventional source-collection methods are not possible.

Recycling is big money, and state legislatures are getting hip to this revenue source. Currently, corporate interests trump public interests. Because it is cheaper to manufacture “virgin” bottles from petroleum than from recycled PET, the bottle-lobby campaigns virulently against bottle bills. Several states, including Connecticut and New York, are currently seeking to capture the collection successes of aluminum and glass by expanding bottle bill legislation to include plastic beverage containers. In Connecticut, legislators have proposed that distributors be required to track profits from container deposits in separate accounts that are then surrendered to the state. If passed, the law would collect considerable revenues for the state, making Connecticut’s CDL program an attractive model for other states. These funds could be used to expand collection and sorting programs, thereby increasing recoverable PET supply, and in turn to lower costs to bottle producers.

Production-Side Thinking

It is also important to consider corporate America’s place. Throughout much of the U.S. today, the production cycle—and the responsibility of the manufacturers—of consumable goods ends when those products are plucked from the shelves.

Corporate producers are largely overlooked for the role they play in the recycling of consumer products. Current recycling systems are production-side oriented[YUN2], meaning that the onus (collection, disposal, and transportation costs) to recycle is placed on the consumers of certain goods. Manufacturers, on the other hand, are free to determine production standards and packaging materials with little consideration given to the materials’ end destinations. Market forces have occasionally shaped the plastics industry to the benefit of the environment. “Source Reduction,” policies aimed at industry and encouraged at various levels of government, present clear economic and environmental incentives. One trend of these initiatives, termed “lightweighting,” has reduced the amount of materials in products over time; for example, today’s milk jugs are 30% lighter than those of twenty years ago (EPA). However successful, current public opinion suggests that producers should take greater and more direct interests in the wastage problem. As mentioned above, few programs like statewide Bottle Bills attempt to shift this burden back to producers by holding distributors monetarily responsible for collection.

Conclusion

A coalition of major recycling interests petitioned NatureWorks, the premier manufacturer of corn plastic, to postpone production and distribution of its corn plastics. The gist of the Memorandum was a call to plan the logistics of corn plastic collection and disposal before the blitz of products fell into the hands of unwitting consumers. NatureWorks neither complied nor answered. Thus, assuming that the government fails to impose a ban, it appears that corn plastics will test their weight on the American market. Should the bottle bill proposal being currently undertaken in Connecticut (and tentatively New York State) demonstrate a significant revenue potential, perhaps municipal and state governments nationwide will enact their own CDL to capture recycling monies. In the meantime, it remains to be seen whether small scale market forces will propel these products into competition with PET plastics. Ultimately, it is important to remember that ordinary people determine the success or failure of recycling phenomena.

It is the opinion of this chapter's study that corn plastics are an inelegant solution to the materials wastage problem. The efficacy of a corn plastics recycling system depends on citizens diversely shaped by socio-economic, ethnic, educational, and political conditions--perhaps the foremost factor is their past recycling experiences. Thus far, no recycling system in the United States has reached a zero waste mark; until this communication gap is bridged, corn plastics may flounder, gumming up the works and leaching the patience of the eager and willing recycling newbie.