What to Do With All of the Plastic?

Have you noticed how much plastic we are surrounded by? It’s in our clothing, in our water, in our homes – wrapped around our food. Once you start looking for it, it’s everywhere. Plastic can be quite useful. What do we do with it when we are finished using it? We can through it in the trash or recycle it. Some plastic is made from plants and can be composted! How do we compost this plastic? Does it go into the dirt in the yard and break down? Can we put it in a potted plant and watch it turn into dirt? Well, not quite. The plastic that we are seeing advertised as compostable needs to be sent to an industrial composting facility. In my municipality, some plant-based plastics can go into our yard debris container and sent to an industrial composting facility to be turned back into soil.

It’s complicated! So complicated, that many of us just can’t process it. We often times either decide not to recycle at all or are told, “When in doubt, throw it out!” It seems to be worse to contaminate our recycling, then to send it to the landfill. Why not just burry it? Burn it? What is the best and most responsible way to dispose of all of the plastic that comes into our hands?

It depends.

Yes, it is complicated. It’s a challenge. Let’s not give up on finding solutions. We can’t afford to avoid this problem. We do need massive infrastructure updates and changes. We need to educate and be educated on this topic. We need to insist on changes in our commerce, to change the demand for a product that never goes away, that only breaks down into tiny micro-plastic pollution. Let’s not wait for someone else to solve this problem. Let’s do something. Let’s take action!