In theory, everything is recyclable. I could recycle a building, an airplane, a DVD, a camera … or even my toothbrush. For something recyclable to be truly recycled, someone must take that something and want to turn it into something new. That is exactly where the problem with the concept of recycling lies.
In 1988-89 I was one of those college students who advocated the need for recycling. However, I imagined that the people who were doing all the things that were filling the landfills would buy back all the things they made and turn them into new things. So when recycling started, I thought for many years that that was exactly what was happening. Then came the little triangle under all kinds of containers and I thought, “Wow, we were so successful! Power to the people.”
Then a few years ago, let’s say five, I realized that we weren’t as smart as we thought when everyone pushed for recycling on behalf of our planet. We never insist that the companies that make the things that end up in landfills commit to recovering the waste they created. Instead, what happened was that it became a waste of society. In some places the plastics industry contributes to cover a small part of the running costs of recycling depots, in other places recycling depots are funded through tax systems. Recycling depots are largely dependent on financing their operation through our taxes. In very few places do manufacturers that make plastic, glass or Styrofoam buy what they put on the market. All the waste that comes from the profits that your companies generate becomes a problem for society.
Recycling bins are like purgatory or, if you prefer, a Dr. Seuss reference: ‘the waiting room’.
We diligently select our approved ‘recyclables’ in our small communities to ensure we minimize what we send to landfill. We carefully place the blue (or other colored) boxes with a sense of content that we join with others to do our part to save the planet. A wonderful truck arrives and takes our things to the local recycling paradise, where we believe the angels are working hard to magically turn everything we send in our blue boxes into something wonderful and new in our communities. Perhaps a fairy godmother helps out from time to time and waves a wand with a Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo and jovially exclaims, ‘Food container you will turn to foil! Bottles you will become rugs. “
(Okay, I know I’m mixing Cinderella, religion, and Dr. Seuss. I’m aiming for a mass appeal: children, generation x, the elderly).
Now I like that most people have decent brains. It’s overloaded sometimes, but I like to think I’m pretty smart. One day I woke up and realized that “Hmm … I don’t think things in the blue box go to recycling heaven in my own community.” It was like waking up and doubting the existence of God. The very idea that the things I carefully put in my blue box wouldn’t reappear on my neighborhood grocery store shelves with the fancy triangles was chilling.
With a little research, I soon discovered: something is only recycled if someone somewhere in the world is willing to buy that product, and tons of it, from recycling bins and then turn it into something else. The following sad truth: that “someone”, when found, was rarely in the same community where the recycling took place. Sometimes they weren’t even in the same country!
So …..
You should be a smart shopper when a manufacturer claims that you should buy their product because it is “recyclable” or made from “recycled materials.” Before buying, call the manufacturer and ask where it is recycled; exactly how much of that same product they buy back, and if they don’t, then who and where buys it back to turn it into something; and lastly, how much recycled content is in your product. Many ‘recycled content’ products have less than 20% recycled materials. Its product still relies heavily on continuous oil extraction for virgin supplies to make the plastic.
Recycling is a great solution. I was behind it. In theory, you can minimize what we send to a landfill. However, after twenty years of practice in recycling, it is high time that we reassess the success the plastics industry has had in reducing their waste relative to the profits they have made at the expense of our planet. The plastic and polystyrene industry has more than fifty years of profit on this planet and close to twenty of them to clean up its mess through recycling efforts supported in many communities through public taxes.
Plastics are now manufactured and exported in communities around the world where there is no luxury of a tax base to cushion the expense of a recycling depot. It is no longer acceptable to say that littering is the problem. The problem is in what we do, how we do it, what it is made of and what we can do locally when we are done with our things. This emperor needs new clothes.
