While reading this month’s feature on sustainability in ophthalmology (p. 48), it was encouraging to see what the specialty is doing to “go green.” Unfortunately, multiple recent reports call into question the validity of plastic recycling and, even worse, suggest that the by-products of recycling plastics may be doing harm to us. One step forward, two steps back.

In one scathing report, released in February by The Center for Climate Integrity,¹ the authors note that, “The vast majority of these plastics cannot be ‘recycled’—meaning they cannot be collected, processed, and remanufactured into new products.² As of 2021, the U.S. recycling rate for plastic is estimated to be only 5 to 6 percent ... .³ Despite decades of industry promises, plastic recycling has failed to become a reality due to long-known technical and economic limitations.”⁴

To make matters worse, plastic recycling plants appear to be releasing microplastics (MP), which have been proven to be a danger to marine life and may cause health problems in humans. A recent article in the online U.K. journal Quillette, authored by Review alum, Frank Celia, took a closer look at the problem. 

The report describes a recent journal article that measured the amount of MP released by a recycling facility in the U.K.⁵ The researchers were surprised to find that the facility was releasing 75 billion particles of MP per cubic meter. Even with a new filtration system in place, the discharge amounted to 1,366 metric tons per year. “More troubling was the size of the microplastics ...” the article states. “... In some samples, they found 95 percent of particles were under ten microns (the size of a human blood cell) and 85 percent were under five microns. Ingesting particles smaller than 10 microns is known to be hazardous to marine life, and scientists believe it may pose risks to humans as well. Further, Brown believes that numerous particles smaller than 1.6 microns—many of which are nanoplastics—probably eluded measurement altogether.”⁵ They also found high levels of MP in the air around the plant of a size that can enter the lungs and cause disease. Finally, in one of the more shocking figures discussed in the article, on a global scale, plastic recycling could be releasing 2 million tons of MP waste per year, which would represent two-thirds of the global total.

Obviously, I have no ready answer for the problem, though continuing on the current course doesn’t seem viable. Ultimately, as one report says, the petrochemical bloc will need to stop backing plastic recycling and allow us to move to other solutions that are “currently out of reach.” Otherwise, we just get recycled promises.

— Walter Bethke
Editor in Chief

^{1. Allen D, Linsley C, Spoelman N, Johl A. The fraud of plastic recycling. https://climateintegrity.org/uploads/media/Fraud-of-Plastic-Recycling-2024.pdf.} 

^{2. U.S. EPA, The U.S. Recycling System. https://www.epa.gov/circulareconomy/us-recycling-system.}

^{3. Beyond Plastics & The Last Beach Cleanup, The Real Truth About the U.S. Plastics Recycling Rate 3 (2022). https://tinyurl.com/mvy2w9xh.}

^{4. Circular Claims Fall Flat: Comprehensive U.S. Survey of Plastics Recyclability 7 (2020). https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/}

^{Greenpeace-Report-Circular-Claims-Fall-Flat.pdf.}

^{5. Celia F. Recycling plastics is a dangerous waste of time. https://quillette.com/2024/06/17/recycling-plastic-is-a-dangerous-waste-of-time-microplastics-health/.}