In 1992, Indonesia found out that the plastics it was importing for its recycling enterprises were 40 percent non-recyclable and 10 percent toxic. This prompted its government to ban importation of plastic waste, according to D. L. Lewis and R. Chepesiuk as conveyed through the Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance/Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA).
Plastic waste that is neither re-manufactured nor recycled is land-filled or incinerated, contaminating ground water with leachate or polluting the atmosphere with emissions of dioxins and other harmful substances.
Recycling certain plastics, according to the same source, involves several processes that often create waste water, toxic air emissions, and waste pellets and flakes. Much of these pellets are spilled during loading, transport and unloading, thus finding their way to waste water and eventually to the sea, greatly harming marine life.
Plastics that are not recycled also find their way to the sea. After floating in the waters for about 12 years or so, according to Captain Charles Moore who pilots and heads the oceanographic research vessel Alguita, these non-destructible materials end up in that part of the Pacific Ocean where almost, if not all of the wastes of this planet get deposited.
Microorganisms have broken down all the biodegradable wastes that have ended in this part of the ocean, since time immemorial, into carbon dioxide and water. However, in the very short span of time that plastics have come into being, a mountain has piled and continues to pile up, gravely entangling and poisoning marine life. In turn, human beings either have been feeding on these plastic-poisoned fish or are in ever increasing danger of the lack of seafood supply as the plastic trap is killing many of the sea creatures. Meanwhile, if nothing is done about plastic manufacturing, the trap will continue to build up and expand over this 10 million-square-mile – or a continent-wide – body of water.
"Only elimination of the source of the problem can result in an ocean nearly free from plastic, and the desired result will only be seen by citizens of the third millennium," Moore concluded.
As concerned citizens wage the battle against plastics toward a non-waste producing lifestyle, re-manufacturers of plastic-based items are providing the transition toward what seems now to be a formidable target of totally banning plastics. Many of these re-manufacturers are from the electronics industries, such as in computers, which have become most-sought after commodities that banning their plastics components would be next to impossible for some time to come.
"It is precisely such concerns about the impact of plastics on the environment," said Norbert Grimm, "that have compelled us, re-manufacturers, to seriously pursue such efforts. By re-manufacturing originals, such as empty inkjet cartridges into quality inkjet cartridges, we prevent further manufacturing of new plastic items."
Grimm is president of Printing Images CtC. Inc., a company re-manufacturing empty inkjet and laser printer cartridges into quality cartridges for re-use.
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