Recycling is not the solution

We need to stop “recycling”?

Recycling is not the solution, and the recycling narrative is damaging to where we need to be. 

Bold words, I know, especially in the same week as Global Recycling Day.

But hear me out. 

Recycling is better than landfill (when it doesn’t end up in landfill)

Yes, recycling, despite its shortcomings which I will explain, is greener than landfill or reckless littering, allowing waste to be washed into our waterways. 

I was born at the start of the recycling revolution, in the late 70’s (surprising I know!). Throughout my childhood in the 80s and 90s the narrative of recycling was one that was pushed in everything from badges to sing-a-longs and celebrity voiced ads. 

1980s recycling badge and advertisement 

Indeed, this 1980s rhetoric continued into the propaganda of the 2000s. Remember the classic advert by RecycleNow, where Eddie Izzard asks us to make sure we recycle our aluminium cans, because in just 6 weeks they could be turned into a car, train or aeroplane and therefore save the planet? Today, the irony of this is palpable. All I can think when watching this ad is, “lets fuel our bodies with unhealthy sodas and then recycle the cans so that we can pollute our planet with fossil fuels”.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0TE2xLqRZg 

In these ads, recycling seemed so easy, that the propaganda worked. Today, over 95% of people say they “actively recycle”. The same British consumer survey showed that despite generations of recycling publicity, most people have no idea where their recycling ends up. Of the 1,400 consumers surveyed, 85 percent believe their material ends up at a recycling centre. 

Only 17 percent of those surveyed believe their material goes straight to landfill or ends up being landfilled after reaching the recycling centre.

These people seem to be the better informed. By one estimate, of the 8.3 billion-plus tons of plastic that humans have produced, the vast majority, around 6.3 billion tons weren’t recycled.

This mass lack of awareness is the danger. People are “wishful-recyclers”, optimistically believing that non-recyclable, disposable materials can be put in the recycle bin and miraculously reused. Unfortunately belief is not enough and in this case does more harm than good.

Virtue signalling does not save the planet  

I maintain that the individual who disposed of that milk carton floating in the ocean did not intend for that to happen. 

We have too long pushed the recycling message as being the solution to all our waste woes, we have conveniently ignored the plain futility of the effort.

The recycling narrative allows consumers and producers alike to avoid their responsibility. How many packages do we now see with 100% recyclable emblazoned on one part of the label, but conveniently not on the twist top? How many adverts do we see telling us of the “all natural” credentials of a product? 

I dare to venture that producers are not doing this from love of the planet, moreso as a marketing tool. This packaging virtue signalling has become a requirement from consumers. These messages drive consumption and ultimately create more waste. 

Producers have no control over whether that packaging is recycled. Granted, they have put some effort into ensuring that they reduce plastics, or that the plastic packaging they do use is either produced from, or the result is, 100% recyclable. This does not mean that it won’t end up in the ocean. The producers have abdicated their responsibility for that packaging onto the consumer. They have an out, they can say they have played their part; they have made a product that can be recycled. However, does this go far enough? In my view no, by no means. Producers need to be held responsible for the lifecycle of their products.

We as consumers also abdicate our own responsibility, feeling good that we are avoiding the “badly packaged” products, being moralistic about the fact we only buy products with packaging that is 100% recyclable, patting ourselves on the back that we “do our best” to follow the council’s waste policy, separating out the recycling, perhaps even ensuring it is clean and ready for the imagined recycling plant in the Emerald city to make our waste back into useful products again. 

Our councils who collect our waste, sell it on to commercial companies to deal with and then talk about how 100% of recycling waste has been recycled, feed into this, strengthening the view that recycling is the saviour of our planet. Here’s a message from my local council - https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/hull-east-yorkshire-news/hull-people-best-country-recycling-931041

Recycling or downcycling?

The recycling process is not a clean one in itself. Here’s a basic overview of how it works. 

The items have to be collected and transported, by trucks burning fossil fuels, to a sorting and processing plant where they are reduced to pellets, which requires power to operate, then taken to specialist plastics companies, again by trucks, where the plant then heats those pellets and creates them into new products, again using fossil fuels. 

The recycling process creates waste products itself, waste that is often just as damaging or more damaging than the plastics in the first place. The VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds) and fumes produced have an unknown effect. Some studies suggest that VOC leaking into the environment, becoming part of the food chain is of significant concern that we simply don’t know enough about. 

The commerciality of recycling also plays a significant role. Recycling companies want the items that can easily be sorted, where the different polymers can be identified and automatically batched for recycling. Often smaller items, bottle tops, film lids, plastic ties and other items are simply too small to be handled and are discarded. 

Plastics are never fully recycled, they are actually downcycled. The resulting product from the recycling process is always of lesser quality than the original polymers. The product is then often not recyclable and ultimately ends its life in landfill. 

The circular economy solution 

The recycling narrative is obviously a complex one, there are many facets to consider, but in my opinion selling it as the saviour of our world is untruthful at best and deliberately obstructive at worst. 

When it comes to a better approach, the British and EU green targets designed to reduce waste and carbon emissions by 2050 are a good place to start.

Consider the message of “reduce, reuse, recycle”. This message is commonplace, part of the vernacular. It’s pivotal we not only see it, say it but put it into action. 

I propose we act on this as follows, 50% focus on reduction, 40% focus on reuse and 10% focus on recycling. 

The solution to reduce, reduce, reduce, reuse, reuse, reuse and then finally recycle when the product requires investment and fundamental change to the supply chain and consumer behaviour. The technology exists to make this possible, there’s a collective will to save the planet but we need education, incentives and action towards a circular economy.

We made this work 30 or 40 years ago. Before convenience culture reigned, we returned pop bottles to the store and got our 5 pence back, we had milk delivered in glass bottles which were reused time and time again. We have lost this. Convenience and wishful-recycling has allowed us to forget about the consequences of our actions, consequences that we don’t need to be David Attenborough or a member of Green Peace to understand. 

There is a real shift happening, the circular economy model is turning from fantasy into reality. Technology has been developed, by me and others like me to make it happen, technology that’s not only commercially viable, but commercially attractive. 

Rather than Global Recycling Day, this week I celebrated World Sparrow Day, March 20th. 

The humble sparrow, such a common site in our gardens, reuse their nests for life. 

Be more like a sparrow…