What Happens to Our Plastic Waste?
Updated: Aug 20
In 2020, companies produced an average of 5.91 kg/m² of waste per year, an increase of 3% compared with 2019. The health crisis was partly responsible for this rise. For hygiene reasons, many companies chose to favour single-use products and therefore plastic.
Plastic is convenient, but it generates a considerable amount of waste. In nearly 50 years, we have produced close to 8 billion tonnes of plastic, more than 6 billion tonnes of which have now become waste.
How is our plastic waste treated, and what alternatives are available?
How long does plastic waste take to break down in nature?
People often mistakenly believe that all plastics can be recycled. In reality, the situation is much more complicated, and a large amount of plastic waste unfortunately ends up in the environment.
Plastic is not biodegradable. On the contrary, it can take an extremely long time to disappear when left in nature.
To give you an idea, here is the average decomposition time of some common plastic items:
Lighter: 100 years
Plastic bag: 450 years
Plastic bottle: between 100 and 1,000 years
Bank card: 1,000 years
How is plastic waste treated?
As mentioned above, plastic waste is actually recycled very little. Only 10% is recycled, and just 2% is recycled twice. So if it is not recycled, what happens to it?
40% of plastic waste is sent to landfill: in France, landfill sites are regulated and controlled to prevent pollutants from leaking into the environment. However, in some parts of the world, landfills are huge open-air dumping grounds and cause significant damage to ecosystems.
30% of plastic waste is dumped in nature or in illegal landfill sites. Unfortunately, much of this waste eventually ends up in the oceans. There is even an enormous accumulation of waste in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Nicknamed the “7th continent”, this mass of waste covers an area roughly three times the size of France.
So 70% of plastic packaging is either stored in landfill or discarded in the environment. What happens to the remaining 30%?
15% of waste is incinerated: however, waste incineration generates a significant amount of air pollution. After being burned, around 30% of the original volume of waste remains. This solid and highly toxic residue, known as bottom ash, must then be disposed of at a hazardous waste storage facility. In other words, another landfill.
Finally, the remaining 15% of plastic waste is sent to sorting centres, where some of it can be recycled.
Why is the percentage of recycled waste so low?
Although recycling systems work relatively well in France, this is unfortunately not the case everywhere in the world. Even in regions where waste sorting is well organised, waste still needs to be placed in the correct bins so that it can be directed to the appropriate recycling streams.
Unfortunately, this does not always happen.
Another issue is that materials become less durable each time they are recycled. So even recyclable plastic cannot actually be recycled indefinitely. Recycling remains a good way to give waste a second life, but it is not an end in itself.
Alternatives to plastic
If we continue at the same pace, the amount of plastic waste requiring treatment could double by 2050. It is therefore becoming increasingly urgent to reduce our plastic consumption.
Fortunately, there are many alternatives to single-use products. Here are a few examples:
Bring your own shopping bags instead of using plastic bags provided by stores.
Replace plastic water bottles with stainless steel reusable bottles.
Use reusable food containers or beeswax wraps instead of plastic food wrap.
You can also find eco-friendly products on the zero-waste website The Trust Society. The Trust Society offers a wide range of sustainable, Made in France products designed to help you reduce your plastic waste easily in everyday life. Solid shampoos, toothpaste in jars, solid dish soap and more, for both beginners and those already committed to zero-waste living.
You’re bound to find something that suits you!
And finally, one last solution — and certainly not the least important: Auum. To replace plastic cups in companies, Auum developed auum-S, a high-performance cleaning machine, supplied with reusable glass containers and capable of cleaning them thoroughly in just 10 seconds using only 2cl of water.
