Questioning the reality of plastic recycling in Japan

If you do an internet search for Japan’s plastic recycling rate, you will find an impressive figure of around 85% (as of 2019). Those of us who live here can pat ourselves on the back for the efforts we make in recycling the PET bottles of green tea and other products that we buy. Manufacturers help us feel good about this, too. We imagine the bottles being reborn to once again serve us tea. But the karma of the fossil fuel that plastic is made from means that, in actuality, it typically returns to a far lower level of reuse.

“Recycling” only means that the material is used again in the cycle of production. The method that tends to come to mind first is when plastic is recycled back into plastic. This is known as material recycling. It makes up less than 25% of all recycled plastic in Japan.So, what about the rest? Chemical recycling refers to applying chemical reactions to break the plastic down into raw materials for industrial use. This accounts for 3% of recycling. The final category, at a whopping 72%, is thermal recycling. This is when plastic waste is used to generate energy to produce other products; it gets burned. Since plastic is made from crude oil and other fossil fuel-based chemicals, it burns well.

Why is burning plastic the most common way of “recycling” it?

A key question here is why is thermal recycling far and away the most used method, not only in Japan, but in the world? In Germany, the leading country in recycling, 61% of plastic waste generated through the consumption of plastic products ends up in power plants for thermal utilization, or “energy recovery.”

One big reason is that it is much easier, and therefore cheaper. Just burning plastic waste at high heat means the various types of plastics do not need to be separated out, which is a task often done by hand. The recycling cost per unit weight of waste is therefore much cheaper than other methods. The method is also said to emit little dioxin.

Plastic is just not suited for recycling

The crux of the matter is that plastic is just not suitable for recycling. “Unlike glass and metal, plastic cannot be repeatedly recycled without quickly degrading in quality,” EcoWatch writes on the World Economic Forum’s website. Many types of plastics, it says, “are labeled as recyclable when they are not.” Typically, it costs more money and requires more energy to recycle plastic than to make it from raw materials, which contributes to the low recycling rates.

We know that the use of plastic is not good for the environment. As well as maintaining the use of fossil fuels, plastic bottles take more than 450 years to degrade, EcoWatch says. Yet, the consumption of PET beverage bottles continues to increase in Japan, rising from just under 119 tons of plastic a year in 1995 to almost 572 tons in 2014. Is the recycling myth just encouraging us to continue to consume it?

Worldwide, plastic is being recycled at an even lower rate than previously estimated, EcoWatch says. A widely assumed rate of 9% for plastic waste recycling in the U.S. is, at best, actually 6%, it says.

Why are our efforts on plastic waste not enough?

But, we are trying, right? And so are governments. In June 2019, in Japan, the G20 agreed on the “Osaka Blue Ocean Vision” that aims to reduce additional pollution from marine plastic waste to zero by 2050. Among large corporations, Japan’s Skylark Holdings has already stopped using plastic straws at its restaurants, and Starbucks is trying to reduce the use of takeaway plastic cups. But no large company has yet managed to completely end its usage of single-use-plastic in Japan.

In other words, positive changes are happening, but it is just tinkering at the edges. What we need is structural change. And that, requires action from government, as well as large companies.

But here is a key piece in the puzzle of why we still love plastic. Twenty global firms produce 50% of the single-use plastic waste in the world. Among the top 10 banks financing these companies and enabling that production are three Japanese ones: Mitsubishi UFJ, SMBC, and Mizuho.

There is little motivation for those who profit from the status-quo to change it. That puts the onus on us to push governments to regulate the new production of polymer and other materials used for single-use plastic. Passively accepting the current linear economic systems is equivalent to supporting them. It ensures the continuation of the vicious cycle of producing and consuming more and more plastic and polluting the air, the water, and our bodies.

What can we do to end the vicious cycle of plastic?

In order to put pressure on policymakers, create petitions and join organizations like Climate Youth Japan, which allow you to talk with policymakers at their conferences. In our daily lives, we should not rely on recycling and instead end our own use of single-use plastic, in particular. You can avoid one-time-use packages, such as wrapping for vegetables and plastic cups for coffee from convenience stores, by carrying your own multiple-use containers and a cup, for example.

When the use of plastic can’t be avoided, make recycling as effective as you can by carefully separating the different types of plastic. Much plastic ends up being burned due to poor separation and contamination with other materials. For example, plastic that is not clean, or still has labels on it cannot be used for material recycling. So, pay a bit of attention and take a moment to double-check before throwing plastic into the trash.

Why is thermal recycling far and away the most used method? Because we have allowed it to be. Now that we know better, let’s create a better way.