Instead of sending plastics collected during beach cleanups to the territory’s nearly full landfills, a new program will recycle them and see to it that they become something new – in this case, a shampoo bottle. Working in partnership with the recycling company TerraCycle and the consumer goods producer Proctor & Gamble, the Department of Planning and Natural Resources’ Division of Coastal Zone Management is working to collect thousands of pounds of beach plastic to fill one 40-foot container.

Department of Planning and Natural Resources announced on Monday the unveiling of a beach plastic recycling program in the U.S. Virgin Islands, whose aim is to collect and recycle plastics from territorial coastal cleanup efforts. The Division of Coastal Zone Management worked with TerraCycle Inc., the world’s leader in the collection and repurposing of hard-to-recycle post-consumer waste, to bring the program to the USVI.

‘Recycling the unrecyclable’ has become the catch-cry of an organisation which works with brands to educate consumers on how to recycle packaging beyond the traditional realm of cardboard, cans, and bottles. Alison Leader spoke to TerraCycle’s Gemma Kaczerepa.

New Orleans — Organizers of a beach plastics recovery campaign expect to greatly expand collection efforts in the coming months to locations around the world. Recycling company TerraCycle Inc. and Procter & Gamble Co. grabbed headlines earlier this year with a program that captured ocean-destined plastic for use in shampoo bottles being sold in France this year. Now comes word from TerraCycle that this is only the beginning. "This has become a long-term plan for TerraCycle and our partners, even though it's relatively new," said Brett Stevens, vice president of material sales and procurement at the recycling company. The initial project collected about 15 tons of material in Europe, and Stevens said plans are to expand collection efforts to locations such as North America and Asia and significantly increase the amount of plastics captured from the environment. "The collection goals we've set forth in total approach I would say probably 500 to 1,000 tons coming off beaches over the next 12 months. It is very much not a fad. I think that we're investing the staff and resources and building our programs with our partners, making this a long-lasting impact," he said. TerraCycle will work with existing beach cleanup programs to divert collected plastics away from landfill disposal, Stevens said during the Plastics Recycling 2017 conference in New Orleans. "What we have to do is layer our collection efforts today on top of everyone who is already doing beach cleanups. If you are any organization of any size that's doing beach cleanup, we want the plastic from your beach cleanup. We're already engaging them. We have a team that's reaching out in every market," Stevens said. Ted Siegler, a partner with DSM Environmental Services Inc., looks at the ocean plastics issue from an economics perspective. He said current estimates indicated that some 8 million tons of plastics enter the world's oceans every year. That's the equivalent of a garbage truck full of plastic dumping its load into the ocean every minute of every day throughout the year. Siegler indicated that there's basically not enough money available in developing countries to deal with the waste management issues that lead to litter that ultimately ends up in the oceans. So he's calling for the plastics industry to develop a funding mechanism on its own to help pay for proper management of the material. "The problem is the collection infrastructure simply doesn't exist in most of those developing countries. And that's a real problem. Because if the collection infrastructure doesn't exist for solid waste, then we're not going to be able to solve the problem," he said. He suggests a fee of 1 cent per pound of resin produced to help fund management of the issue. "You would begin to stem the discharge of plastic to the environment," he said. "I think it's a lot less costly to do that than to assume someone else is going to solve the problem." Siegler pointed to a program developed by the Ag Container Recycling Council to voluntarily fund recycling of crop protection, animal health and pest control product containers as an example of how a larger ocean plastics initiative could work. "I'm suggesting that it's something we ought to be looking at on a broader scale to solve this problem," he said. Stevens said there is no shortage of consumer packaged goods companies looking to use beach plastics. "I don't see any issue at all on the demand side. We've gotten a lot of inquiries. Not just from CPG companies, but also from packaging companies for those CPG companies," he said. "Everybody loves the story. They'd love to be able to help and use this material in their finished products." Make no mistake, however, that using beach plastics is much more expensive than virgin resin or even traditional recycled resin. That's why a company has to leverage the story behind use of beach plastics to gain interest to help drive sales. "In order for it to make sense economically, you as a brand need to be able to cover that expenditure somewhere else. So if you are getting incremental shelf space, it makes it easier to cover that. If you are just some generic company that's not going to leverage that it's beach plastic, it makes it hard to swallow when it's more expensive than virgin plastic," Stevens said. TerraCycle, he said, is working to expand the program as quickly as possible. "Our goal is to try to get this to critical mass as soon as we can and then keep it there. Some people will say there's only so much plastic out there. I say there's too much plastic out there," Stevens said. "We will find those hotspots around the globe aside from developed areas like the U.S. and Western Europe. There will be areas that are collecting a hundred or two hundred or five hundred times as much plastic as we're seeing in developed markets. And it's just a matter of putting our finger on it and drawing that volume into our possession," he said. The American Chemistry Council has been involved in a variety of efforts to bring attention to the issue over time, said Stewart Harris, director of marine and environmental stewardship at the trade group. "In our view, plastics and other litter in the environment is unacceptable," he said. While the use of plastics creates "significant benefits to society," he said, "the benefits are lost if the plastics end up in our natural environment. "Waste management," Harris said, "is the key to preventing marine debris."

Of the more than 300 million tons of new, virgin plastic produced globally per year, half of it is designed for single use and viewed as disposable. Answering global demands for convenience and access, especially in the industries of food and medicine, plastic has allowed for innovations that bring more products to more people than ever before. But by and large, the innovation stops at invention and does not follow through with end-of-life solutions for these durable, long-lasting materials. Every year, 10–20 million tons of plastic end up in our oceans as a result of linear solutions like landfilling allowing the proliferation of these discarded items into natural ecosystems. Many of us are familiar with the image of soda can rings posing danger to marine animals from a couple decades ago, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. Microplastics create an estimated $13 billion a year in losses from damage to marine ecosystems (not to mention the severe degradation to natural capital suffered by animals and their habitats), as well as financial losses to fisheries and tourism. If things don’t change, we are projected to see more plastics than fish in the ocean by 2050. Changing the perception of “single-use” plastics (and all plastics, for that matter) is needed to create and strengthen systems that will capture these materials for recycling, divert them from landfills, and decrease virgin production in lieu of more regenerative resource structures. Seeing plastic waste for what it is, a nearly-indestructible, highly polluted manmade substance that requires a manmade solution, is the first step to reevaluating our dependence on it as a raw material. Keyword: seeing. One Beach Plastic is the work of two artists that see plastic as an opening into a pinpoint look at consumerism and the whole of human culture. Richard Lang and Judith Selby Lang connect plastic to consumers with works of art that will, inevitably, stand the test of time. Plastic cannot biodegrade, and it does not dissolve or get absorbed by the environment naturally—it is made to last forever, and inevitably causes damage. Through its blog platform, active social media presence, and, notably, a short narrated by actor Jeff Bridges on its homepage, the worldwide Plastic Pollution Coalition aims to create awareness around our interactions with plastic in order to alter our habits, from picking up trash on the beach, divesting from single-use items and questioning where our trash is being taken. Similarly, the environmental 501(c)3 Plastic Oceans Foundation released its 2013 documentary feature film A Plastic Ocean to change the minds of anyone who thought that plastic pollution wasn’t a big deal. Images of animals suffering and of children up to their ankles in refuse make plain the scourge of disposable plastics using a medium that people can easily access and understand. A vehicle for social change, the film tells a story that provides a greater awareness of the complex problem of plastic pollution, and the very simple part that the viewer can play to steer the story’s course. While we work to change people’s perspectives enough to prevent the compounding of an already large-scale problem, we must also work from the other end and change the perspectives of manufacturers and major brands regarding post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic as a viable option for production. Why aren’t we recycling more than the 9 percent of the plastic recovered in the U.S.? Because it is not economical due to the lack of demand for these materials in the current market. Viewing plastics as something other than disposable is to bring value to their component material parts. TerraCycle’s recent partnership with Proctor and Gamble to put out a fully recyclable shampoo bottle made from beach plastic (difficult-to-recycle for its exposure to contaminants and UV light, depreciation, and mixed material makeup) for Head and Shoulders creates a market for recycled materials, viewing them as more sustainable, economically and environmentally, than producing additional plastics. Whether single-use, disposable and/or “highly recyclable,” the average time it takes for most plastics to decompose is 450 years, with some plastics that we use in everyday life (like plastic shopping bags or plastic bottles) projected to take up to 1000. The fact is that plastic is not disposable at all, and changing the perception of plastic for consumers starts with the story that manufacturers, major brands, governments and social agents tell.

In Zusammenarbeit mit den Recycling-Spezialisten TerraCycle und SUEZ wird diese Innovation erstmals diesen Sommer in Frankreich ermöglicht, wo eine limitierte Auflage der Head & Shoulders Flasche für Kunden in der führenden Einzelhandelskette Carrefour erhältlich sein wird. Dies wird der weltweit größte Produktionslauf recycelter Flaschen aus Strand-Plastik, und damit ein wichtiger Schritt in der Etablierung einer einzigartigen Zulieferkette unterstützt durch tausende Freiwillige und hunderte Umweltschutzvereine, die das an Stränden angespülte Plastik sammeln.

P&G expects to manufacture up to 170,000 of their special edition shampoo bottle, produced in collaboration with recycling business TerraCycle and waste management firm Suez.