Turning waste into wealth

"What we are doing is changing people's old habitswe want them to keep at home for a while the rubbish they used to throw out, and ship it to us. Getting people to care about recycling is our biggest challenge," Szaky said.

"Since we are already recycling the 'non-recyclables', there's no direct financial benefits there for them. So one of the most important things that we do here is to educate - we raise awareness of the issue, and let people know that the environment is worth the cost," he said.

The company also offers incentives as rewards. For example, consumers can gain TerraCycle points based on how much they have recycled, and convert the points into charitable cash donations.

"But it's the education part that we are focusing on the most," he stressed.

But changing people's habits through education may take too long to address the critical pollution issues, according to Liu Xuesong with Incom Recycle. She urged the authorities to make top-down designs with legal instruments to determine producers' responsibilities in the recycling process.

"To our knowledge, more than 50 countries and regions around the world have been implementing laws and regulations to establish the recycling obligations of the producers," she said.

In countries such as Germany, Australia and Lithuania, a deposit is taken from consumers when a product with recyclable single-use packaging material is sold, and the deposit is returned to the consumers when the soda bottles, tin cans or boxes are given back for recycling.

"It has been proven as the most effective way in raising the recycling rate to an average of 95 percent in these countries," said Liu.

Earlier this year, the European Union announced a strategy to make all plastic packaging in the EU recyclable by 2030. Multinationals often criticized for producing huge amounts of packaging waste like Coca-Cola, P&G and Colgate have since announced commitments to 100 percent recyclable packaging by 2030. Other leading brands, retailers and packaging companies including evian, L'Oreal, Mars, PepsiCo, McDonald's, Unilever and Walmart promised to work towards 100 percent reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging by 2025 or earlier.

"The producers should take their social responsibilities and play a major part in recycling their packaging waste," she said. "Once the recycling rate goes up, we have the technology and capacity to turn the waste back into valuable resources, and the plastic pollution would stop growing worse."

Incom Recycle has partnered with Coca-Cola to recycle its packaging waste in China.

Another challenge is to change society's bias against recycling professionals and to attract talented individuals, said Gui.

"Many well-prepared talented individuals wouldn't consider recycling as a vocational choice, and those experienced collectors are used to working on their own... It will take time for this long-existing sector to recognize our modern values," she said.

"The future of the sector lies in the intelligent transformation of old practices," said Gui, who has a master's degree in information engineering.

"An intelligent recycling and reuse system is the inevitable trend. The entire process, from where the waste is produced, to the circulation in the middle, and to the waste processing companies, should be monitored, supervised and properly deployed," she said.