The state of California is suing ExxonMobil, accusing the company of falsely propagating the belief that plastics were safe to use because they could be recycled. But in the U.S., according to the Washington Post, only 5 to 6% of the plastic produced actually gets recycled. Most plastics, even ones marked by recyclable symbols, are not actually recycled because they vary too much in color and chemical composition.
This begs the question: Why in Oak Park are we residents going to great effort and some expense to wash and rinse plastic containers, discard them in separate blue bins (which cost money and take up space), and then paying LRS, the garbage pickup contractor, for a second truck to drive down our streets and alleys each week picking up recyclables?
Maybe it’s too expensive of a task for Wednesday Journal to investigate. But it would be worthwhile for some investigative body to follow the plastic trash in one Oak Park resident’s blue bin, and see where it actually eventually ends up. How much of it is actually recycled? How much of it is incinerated? How much of it is thrown into a landfill, just like the garbage we throw in the green bins?
It seems a fair demand to make of the recycling company that the village hires to pick up and carry away all our plastic: Prove how much of it actually gets recycled.
In short, are the blue bins worth their cost and trouble? Or when it comes to plastics, is recycling just a scam? We feel like we’re doing our bit to save the environment, but actually we’re not. In fact, we’re using more plastic than we might if we knew they weren’t actually being recycled.
And conned as we have been by the plastics industry, we’re spending a lot of extra money and effort on a fool’s errand to recycle it.
Mark Wallace
Oak Park