{"id":18742,"date":"2018-01-05T05:05:16","date_gmt":"2018-01-05T10:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quantumlifecycle.com\/staging\/plastics-a-recycling-challenge\/"},"modified":"2023-09-06T16:01:18","modified_gmt":"2023-09-06T20:01:18","slug":"plastics-a-recycling-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quantumlifecycle.com\/en_CA\/blog\/plastics-a-recycling-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"Plastics: A Recycling Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you\u2019re reading this on a laptop, tablet, or smartphone, I\u2019d like to ask you a favour. Take a close look at your device. Rotate it if you can, and notice all the different materials it contains.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe you have a rubber case with a hard ABS plastic insert, a high-impact PC screen cover, a plastic phone body inlayed with plastic switches or buttons, or a laptop with plastic top, composite plastic screen, and matching off-colour keyboard. It\u2019s all plastic, but notably different at the same time. That\u2019s because it <em>is<\/em> different types of plastic you\u2019re seeing &#8211; all mixed together in one consumer item.<\/p>\n<p>This is a big problem from a <a href=\"https:\/\/quantumlifecycle.com\/en_CA\/blog\/ghg-reduction-how-quantum-can-help-you-reach-your-sustainability-goals-while-avoiding-greenwashing\/\">recycling<\/a> perspective for several different reasons, the most significant of which is <em>homogeneity<\/em>: plastics are hard to distinguish from one another. Not only do they all look relatively similar, they all have a similar weight. And that makes plastics difficult to sort.<\/p>\n<p>Why is this a problem, you ask? It\u2019s all a matter of chemistry.<\/p>\n<p>You see, not only are <a href=\"https:\/\/quantumlifecycle.com\/en_CA\/blog\/the-environmental-impact-of-cloud-computing-data-storage\/\">e-waste<\/a> plastics difficult to separate, they can\u2019t be recycled together. They melt at different temperatures, contaminate one another, and even turn to ash. In short, we can\u2019t just dump all our waste plastics into one giant melting pot. Especially since many contain carcinogenic flame retardants &#8211; the kind of stuff people don\u2019t want around.<\/p>\n<p>Manufacturers <em>like<\/em> plastic because it\u2019s cheap, and you can build almost anything with it. But this translates into another problem on the recycling front: there\u2019s no real economic incentive to recover plastics. And the environmental catastrophe this is leading toward is moving too slowly for most people to notice.<\/p>\n<p>Plastics pollution is like a slow-motion tidal wave, just now appearing on the horizon. It won\u2019t be long before people are commenting on the size of the wave, and casually discussing how much damage it might do. But it\u2019s our grandchildren who will inherit its first real impact. And I find it ironic that, just like a real tidal wave, the ecological wave caused by plastic contamination is destroying our physical shores first.<\/p>\n<p>A lot of us worry about the desertification of our planet. Personally, I\u2019m more concerned with <em>plastification <\/em>&#8211; the cumulative effect of polymer contamination in our ecosystem.<\/p>\n<p>For the past 25 years, China has imported the lion\u2019s share of our e-waste plastic. They had few concerns about using industrial age tools to <a href=\"https:\/\/quantumlifecycle.com\/en_CA\/blog\/what-should-you-do-with-old-chargers-cables\/\">recycle<\/a> 21st century technology &#8211; until people started dying, that is. Now that they\u2019ve experienced the effects of intense pollution first-hand, China has banned imports of domestic waste as of 2018 &#8211; including the mixed e-waste polymers that represent 51% of the planet\u2019s waste plastic stream. We\u2019re about to become stuck with a mixed bag of potentially <a href=\"https:\/\/quantumlifecycle.com\/en_CA\/blog\/how-businesses-can-benefit-from-e-waste-certification\/\">toxic materials<\/a> that have no value at all. And the UN is calling this a planetary crisis.<\/p>\n<p>To make matters worse, China has now started buying virgin polymers from US manufacturers to replace the volume lost from recycled plastics. Some $185 billion dollars has been invested so far. Good news for the US economy, bad news for the environment.<\/p>\n<p>The answer to all this is simple, though the implications are incredibly complicated. <strong><em>We need to start producing fully recyclable products.<\/em><\/strong> This may be a monumental task \u2013 an epic mission that stands contrary to modern economics &#8211; but it has a very straightforward first step: we need to start talking about it.<\/p>\n<p>Interested in pollution solutions? Let\u2019s start a conversation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you\u2019re reading this on a laptop, tablet, or smartphone, I\u2019d like to ask you a favour. Take a close look at&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18743,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18742","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-blog","8":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Plastics: A Recycling Challenge - Quantum | ITAD &amp; E-Waste Recycling<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The challenge of recycling plastics is growing as the volume of plastics manufactured increases and China moves to stop accepting plastics from the rest of the world.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/quantumlifecycle.com\/en_CA\/blog\/plastics-a-recycling-challenge\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Plastics: A Recycling Challenge - Quantum | ITAD &amp; E-Waste Recycling\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The challenge of recycling plastics is growing as the volume of plastics manufactured increases and China moves to stop accepting plastics from the rest of the world.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/quantumlifecycle.com\/en_CA\/blog\/plastics-a-recycling-challenge\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Quantum | ITAD &amp; E-Waste Recycling\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-01-05T10:05:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-09-06T20:01:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/quantumlifecycle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Recycled-Plastics.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1800\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Quantum\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Quantum\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/quantumlifecycle.com\/en_CA\/blog\/plastics-a-recycling-challenge\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/quantumlifecycle.com\/en_CA\/blog\/plastics-a-recycling-challenge\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Quantum\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/quantumlifecycle.com\/en_CA\/#\/schema\/person\/fd8bc0f52da5522a3c104f56f3c20c0f\"},\"headline\":\"Plastics: A Recycling Challenge\",\"datePublished\":\"2018-01-05T10:05:16+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-09-06T20:01:18+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/quantumlifecycle.com\/en_CA\/blog\/plastics-a-recycling-challenge\/\"},\"wordCount\":595,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/quantumlifecycle.com\/en_CA\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/quantumlifecycle.com\/en_CA\/blog\/plastics-a-recycling-challenge\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/quantumlifecycle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Recycled-Plastics.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Blog\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-CA\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/quantumlifecycle.com\/en_CA\/blog\/plastics-a-recycling-challenge\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/quantumlifecycle.com\/en_CA\/blog\/plastics-a-recycling-challenge\/\",\"name\":\"Plastics: A Recycling Challenge - Quantum | ITAD &amp; 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