The Truth About Plastic Bag Recycling
The case for banning plastic bags
While shopping at Target, Walmart, as well as area grocery stores, you may have seen boxes inviting you to drop off your plastic bags for recycling. This is the WRAP program, which is promoted by the American Chemistry Council, an organization that represents plastic film manufacturers.
But a recent investigation by the ABC 7 Chicago I-Team casts doubt on the effectiveness of WRAP. Chicagoland journalists planted trackers in four bundles of plastic bags, which were brought to Target stores and Walmart stores to drop-off. After four months, one of the bundles made it to a proper facility, two of them wound up in landfills, and the fourth was last located in a facility where plastic bags can’t be recycled. That’s a success rate of 25%. That’s better than ABC’s nationwide investigation, which found that of 46 plastic bag bundles dropped off at stores around the country, only 9% of them definitely made it to a proper facility and 50% of them definitely got tossed in a landfill.
The investigation is part of a large pattern of widespread, consistent, and severe failures in American plastic recycling. Less than 10% of plastic waste is recycled worldwide, in part because it’s much cheaper to make new plastic than to recycle plastic. Plastic bags are especially problematic as they cannot be recycled, only upcycled into decking and park benches. Additionally, when tossed in the recycling bin, they tangle and jam up the recycling equipment, causing work stoppages, or blow from the back of the garbage truck or recycle bins and wind up in our rivers, lakes, and playgrounds. If they do end up in the waste bin, they languish in landfills or are incinerated and end up in our air as particulate matter. Americans use more than 100 billion plastic bags each year for an average of 12 minutes, yet the trashed plastic bag has a life expectancy of up to 1,000 years. This is simply not sustainable.
In 2015, Chicago Mayor Emanuel and the Chicago City Council enacted a .07 cent tax on plastic bags, and a recent FOIA showed the city has amassed in excess of $12M from that tax—that’s a lot of plastic bags. Even worse, the tax is used to balance the budget, not for environmental purposes. So you, the customer, are effectively paying the city money to pollute your water, air and environment.
Ready to do something about it?
The first line of defense is to refuse plastic bags and bring your own! So simple, it’s just a habit you need to form. If you don’t take it, they’ll stop making it—economics 101.
Next step is to recycle the bags (and other film) you do have at your local grocery store and hope they are better players than Target and Walmart.
Finally, speak up, loudly and often! Call or write your alderman, write a letter to the editor, and join LWV Chicago’s Environmental Action Committee in petitioning the Energy and Environment Committee to support a plastic bag ban. This year, in Springfield, we won a ban on polystyrene foam foodware in state facilities, with an eye towards banning it in restaurants and retailers in the next legislative session. We can win a Chicago plastic bag ban, too!
Leave a comment below, or contact the Environmental Action Committee at environment@lwvchicago.org with questions or suggestions.