Recycling plastic bags has a new “new normal” and it’s called “throw it away,” says the County of Santa Barbara. This goes against everything we’ve internalized about plastics lately. But America’s longtime recycling partner, China, has decided it’s done with being sent garbage disguised as recyclables. It now wants “clean” recycling, or paper, plastic, and metal unadulterated with water, oils, or just plain crud — and other countries have followed suit. Plastic bags are interfering with the “new clean,” and Santa Barbara County is rolling with the punches with some new recycling rules.
The entrails from MarBorg and E.J. Harrison’s blue recycle bins go to Gold Coast Recycling in Ventura, where magnets and screens do initial sorting. The rest is done by hand. Workers pull off the line plastic bags and plastic wrap — because their recycle market has vanished and they must be thrown into the landfill — and the bags “snag and pull things off the line that should be recycled, like cans and cardboard. It takes time and energy to sort it out,” explained Carlyle Johnston with county Public Works. That’s why Santa Barbarans are now being asked to put plastic wrap (like food coverings) and plastic bags into the brown trash bins.
The county hasn’t been able to send its plastic bags to China for recycling for several years, said Johnston. So much used plastic is on the world market that China decided to choose its environment over its recycling economy, he said, and set its standards very high to limit what it would accept. This was in part because 60,000 small do-it-yourself recycling entrepreneurs were ruining local ecosystems with toxins, he said. Other countries joined China’s demand that recyclable items must be less contaminated with trash, or cleaner, than they had been. With the looming trade war, the rules tighten and relax as market conditions change on a daily basis, so Santa Barbara County is taking it one step at a time. It’s an uphill battle.