Carl Thomas has been surfing for more than 50 years, but his time at the beach has changed recently as a 20-minute walk in the sand has led him to start collecting pockets full of bottle caps.
“We’ve made a mess of it,” he said. “Plastics were a great thing but now it’s coming back in many ways to threaten not only the environment but our well-being as part of our planet.”
Thomas, a senior environmental specialist for the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality in the Tidewater Regional Office, has become more concerned each year as greater amounts of plastic float into Virginia waterways. But now this concern has become even greater as China, previously the largest recycling manufacturer for the nation, has stopped accepting America’s plastic, Thomas said.
Why? Because it’s dirty.
“China didn’t want to become America’s trash can,” Thomas said. “Things like pizza boxes, with impurities that will ruin entire units of recyclables, can’t be recycled because when they’re broken down they will have that oil and grease in it.”
In the Historic Triangle, Thomas said each locality has lists online of what can and can’t be recycled. But many of those lists are contradictory to what the recycling plants list as being appropriate for recycling, which can lead to confusion for residents.
Often people are throwing items into their recycling bins, putting them out on the curb and thinking their job is done, he said.
But there’s much more to the story.
“Some of the challenges occur before people even put them on the step to be picked up,” said Calandra Waters Lake, director of sustainability at William and Mary. “You have to follow what providers say that they can take. If too many people put what they don’t know can be recycled into the bins, then it puts a strain on the recycling company.”
Odd items that might not be recyclable include peanut butter jars and egg cartons and even bottle caps if they’re not attached to the bottles. But each provider has different regulations and residents’ lack of awareness could start to cause an even bigger problem as less is shipped to China and more stays at home.
“We have to be better steward of our households to ensure that whatever we put in the blue bins is going to fit in the requirements,” Thomas said.
TFC Recycling, one of the larger providers for recycling in the area, receives a lot of plastic but they only want what can be marketable, Thomas said. This means recyclables that can be used to make new items.
But a large portion of plastic they receive are classified in categories three through seven, meaning they are a hard plastic. These are plastics like yogurt containers or styrofoam cups.
So when these items are tossed into the bin and taken to the recycling center, they can either cause issues with manufacturing equipment or cause greater amounts of sorting time, Thomas said.
That’s part of the reason China didn’t want to accept waste from the United States anymore and it now puts the problem back onto our own shores, of which Virginia has many.
“In a community that is really tied to water we are seeing greater impact of our waste and our plastics especially,” she said. “So now when we are throwing out our items, we really have to stop and think—what happens to that item when we’re done with it?”