*This piece was originally written and published by Point of Information, the original piece and its responses can be viewed here*
Even if you’re not really concerned about the environment, you’re probably a person who does the bare minimum: you recycle. You put out anything that’s cardboard, plastic, or glass, and that constitutes you doing your bit for the planet. You are a vaguely decent human being, well done.
Except, you’re not – doing your bit for the environment I mean. Recycling is one of the biggest shams in society, it doesn’t happen nearly as much, or how you think.
The majority of what you put into the recycling bin won’t actually get recycled. This is for a number of reasons, which all started way back in the 1970s. The late 70s was the time when single-use plastics were starting really to take a hold on the market. Because of this, came the introduction of recycling household waste. As this became more and more popular, single-stream recycling was introduced; you no longer have to separate your recycling.
What’s more, recycling plants are businesses, not charities. As a result, they won’t recycle anything that won’t return a profit, nor will they implement expensive, arduous sorting processes to make sure they catch everything they possibly can to recycle. Single-stream systems may increase participation, but they cost an average of $3 per ton more to maintain than dual-stream systems. Furthermore, any slip-ups can cause fatal damage to machines. Rather than risk it, batches of perfectly adequate recycling are thrown away because it potentially has one wrong material in it.
At the moment, the average contamination rate is roughly 25%. This means that one in four items put in the recycling bin will not be recycled. Germany’s recycling system is considered to be the best in the world, and yet they are still unable to recycle 30% of their waste. Nowhere near Germany’s standards, 53 out of 123 London councils incinerated more than half the household rubbish they collected, Westminster burning 82%! Out of the 8.3 billion tonnes of virgin plastic produced worldwide, only 9% has been recycled.
Thus, it becomes increasingly apparent that our worldwide recycling infrastructure is fundamentally, woefully even, inadequate.
This has been hugely exacerbated in recent years by China introducing its new ‘National Sword’ policy. In one fell swoop, China banned 24 types of waste from entering the country. This was after 25 years of accepting two-thirds of the world’s plastic waste. For recyclers across the world, this was a huge blow. It caused the price of cardboard to half in under a year and the price of plastics to plummet to the point that some recyclers don’t see it as worth recycling. Since this new legislation, China’s plastic imports have dropped by 99% and the UK, along with the rest of the world, have had to find different dumping grounds.
In 2018 alone, the UK exported 611,000 tonnes of plastic to other countries; out of sight, out of mind. Part of the reason we export such a large amount of our waste is that it removes culpability for how it is dealt with. More than half of the packaging designated for ‘recycling’ is sent abroad, where there is no guarantee it will be processed. In fact, it will usually end up in landfills or being burned, both of which contribute heavily to air pollution. This is just another example of how the West sidesteps its environmental responsibility and keeps living the luxurious life it wants to.
Another problem I have with recycling is the onus it puts on the consumer. Granted, the market is slowly responding to calls for plastic-free shopping. However, the reality is that plastic packaging is unavoidable; I guess I could fork out a small mortage for zero-waste shopping, but I don’t think my parents would be happy with that on my student loan!
When single-use plastics were first introduced to the market in the 1970s, there was an initial kickback as this concept of disposability was pretty unheard of. As an attempt to normalise consumerism and disposability, Keep America Beautiful put out a famous ad featuring a Native American (played by a white guy) shedding a tear as he watches a passerby litter out of his car window. The message “People started pollution. People can stop it”, effectively refocused scrutiny from the producer to the consumer.
Turns out, of course, Keep America Beautiful was a front for a lobby group made up of representatives from major beverage companies. Their aim was to distract from the fear concerning the environment whilst they switched from glass bottles to plastic. Nevertheless, the neoliberal emphasis on individualism has been unshakeable.
Look at the success of the #BanPlasticStraws movement, with companies such as McDonald’s moving to paper straws. Ironically, not only are these paper straws hard and often impossible to recycle, but plastic straws only make up 0.03% of ocean plastic. In comparison, 46% of plastic found in the ocean is from fishing nets.
Yet, where is the widespread campaign against mass fishing practices? Where is the outrage that we, on average, are swallowing a credit card’s worth of microplastics a week? These don’t fit the individualist narrative.
Now I’m not trying to say that recycling is inherently evil. Of course, as a concept it is brilliant. The benefits of recycling can be seen in how recycling aluminium cans saves 95% of the energy to make new cans; recycling steel and tin can saves up to 74%; recycling paper saves about 60%, and recycling plastic and glass saves about one-third of the energy compared to making the equivalent from virgin materials.
However, this does not solve the problem that, apart from glass and metals, these materials have an expiry date; many can only be recycled a couple of times before being unusable. The average virgin paper can be recycled five to seven times before being too degraded for new paper. Plastic that can be recycled, usually only lasts one or two rounds before being defunct.
From this, it is clear that recycling itself is not the root problem, but merely a symptom of a greater issue. A combination of our consumerism culture and the focus on the individual has meant that we have built a recycling system unable to meet the demands of our modern, wasteful society.