So what happens to all the plastic they collect? How is it collected?
Here’s where things get sad, murky, ridiculous and shameful. In the Philippines, where PCX operates, people are hired to collect plastic for very little money.
After a gruelling day paddling along the San Juan River though downtown Manila, Boyet Tingson draws up his fibreglass boat at a shipping container on the concrete bank where Lorme Villarba and her husband Tony weigh his day’s catch.
Tingson, a 49-year-old father of four, is fishing for plastic. The bottles, bags and other refuse he has collected will today earn him 156 Philippines pesos, less than $3—just enough to see his family through their next meal.
The container is supplied by PCX, or Plastic Credit Exchange, a Philippines-based plastic offsetting company. By collecting and disposing of plastic refuse it generates credits that some of the world’s biggest companies like Nestlé, Colgate-Palmolive and Pepsi Cola Products Philippines can then claim to be ‘cancelling out’ the waste they generate.
What happens to the plastic collected by people like Tingson? Turns out around 80% of it is burned to fuel cement factories. Yes, you read that correctly, plastic waste is being burned.
Burning plastic releases more carbon dioxide into the air than coal fired plants along with chlorine, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, heavy metals like lead, mercury, arsenic and carcinogens like dioxins. And most of these plants are in poorer neighborhoods.
Companies like Nestle, L’Oreal and Pepsi can choose to pay more for recycling the plastic, but go the cheaper route at $115 per credit for burning the plastic waste. Recycling credits, according to Bloomberg, can be 6 times as higher as credits for burning plastic. Nestle, L’Oreal and Pepsi can certainly afford it.
Verra, which operates out of Washington D.C, also burns plastic waste as part of their offsetting packages.
