"I just want to say one word to you. Just one word . . . Plastics."
That line from Mike Nichols' 1967 film, The Graduate, became a classic put- down of the Establishment, but 22 years later plastics are no joke. Mounds of plastic-foam cups and empty soda bottles clutter roadsides and choke waterways. Though the U.S. faces a staggering excess of all forms of solid waste, plastic refuse is especially onerous: all but invulnerable to deterioration, the debris can last for centuries. What's more, a mere 1% of all plastic waste is being recycled, in contrast to 25% of used aluminum.
To improve that sorry performance, an unlikely coalition of ecologists and businessmen, nature lovers and profit seekers, has embarked on a campaign to give plastic foam and other plastics a second life. About 130 companies, ranging from blue-chip behemoths such as Du Pont and Dow Chemical to smaller firms like Wisconsin's Midwest Plastic Materials and Iowa-based Hammer's Plastic Recycling, are involved in reincarnating used plastics. Some 20 new firms are entering the business each year, according to the Council for Solid Waste Solutions, a Washington-based trade association.
An outburst of altruism? Not exactly. Companies are sensibly responding to political pressures, as more and more communities enact environmental laws mandating recycling programs. Some 20 states are considering some kind of ban or restriction on nonrecycled plastics. Minneapolis and St. Paul have already passed laws that, beginning in 1990, will prohibit nondegradable and nonrecyclable plastic food containers, and a similar law will take effect this summer in Suffolk County, New York. Says John McDonald, director of environmental affairs at Continental Can, which uses recycled plastic to make detergent bottles: "We're trying to stay ahead of the issue."
The cause got a big boost last month with Du Pont's announcement that it would form a joint venture with Waste Management to build the country's largest plastic-recycling operation. The facility, which will open in 1990, will separate and clean 40 million lbs. of the material a year. But that will only dent the problem: the U.S. annually produces 1.6 billion lbs. of plastic soda, milk and water bottles, enough to fill a line of dump trucks stretching from New York City to Cleveland.
In other corporate pair-offs, Dow Chemical and Domtar, a Canadian paper manufacturer, are setting up a recycling operation that will include several large plants. Next month Mobil and GENPAK, a food-packaging manufacturer in Glens Falls, N.Y., will inaugurate the first recycling plant in the U.S. that will handle fast-food containers and other products made of polystyrene foam. The firms will transform the plastic into pea-size pellets that can be used in wall insulation and industrial packaging.
Recycling has another appeal to companies that use plastic: it is relatively cheap. Second-generation plastic costs 40 cents per lb., about 20 cents less than new, pure plastic. "Recycling is simply a good business opportunity," says Du Pont spokesman Paul Wyche.