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In theory, everything is recyclable. I could give back the building, the plane, the DVD, the camera … and even the toothbrush. For something recyclable to actually be recycled, someone has to take it and turn it into something new. This is where the concept of recycling lies.
In 1988-89, I was one of those students who advocated recycling. But I imagined people who did whatever filled the landfills would buy back whatever they produced and turn it back into new. So when recycling started, for many years I thought it was happening. Then there was a nice little triangle underneath all sorts of containers and I thought, “Wow, we were really successful! Power for the people ”.
Then a few years ago, let’s say five, I realized that we weren’t as smart as we thought when we were all lobbying for recycling on behalf of our planet. We have never insisted that the companies that produce the things that end up in landfill should undertake to take back the waste they have generated. Instead, society has become a waste that needs to be dealt with. In some places the plastics industry contributes to a small part of the cost of operating recycling yards, in other sites the recycling yards receive funding through toll systems. To a large extent, recycling yards are largely dependent on the financing of their activities from our taxes. In very few places, producers of plastic, glass and polystyrene buy back what they put on the market. All waste that comes from the profits generated by their companies becomes a problem for society.
Recycling points are like purgatory, or if you prefer the Dr. Seuss reference: “the waiting room.”
We carefully select our approved ‘Recyclable Materials’ in our small communities to make sure we minimize what we send to landfill. We release blue boxes (or other colors) carefully, feeling content to join others in our work to save the planet. A gorgeous truck arrives and takes our stuff to a local recycling paradise where we believe angels work hard, magically turning everything we shipped in our blue boxes into something wonderful and new for our communities. Maybe the fairy godmother helps from time to time and waves the Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo magic wand and jovially shouts: “The food container will become aluminum foil! The bottles will become carpets. “
(OK, I know I’m mixing Cinderella, religion, and Dr. Seuss. I’m targeting mass appeal – kids, gen-x, elders.)
Now I like the fact that most people have a decent brain. It’s overloaded at times, but I like to think I’m pretty smart. One day I woke up and realized, “Hmm … I don’t think the things in the blue box go to heaven in my own community.” It was like waking up and doubting God’s existence. The mere thought that the things I had carefully put into my blue box hadn’t reappeared on the shelves in my neighborhood grocery store with fancy triangles shook the ground.
After a bit of research, I quickly discovered: something is only recycled when someone somewhere in the world wants to buy that product, and tons of it, from recycling warehouses, and then turn it into something else. Another sad truth: that when they found them, the “someone” was rarely in the same community where recycling took place. Sometimes they weren’t even in the same country!
So…..
You must be an experienced customer when a manufacturer says 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; how much of the exact same product they buy back, and if not, who and where will buy it back to turn it into something; and finally, how much recycled material is in their product. Many products with “recycled content” have less than 20% recycled content. Their product still largely depends on the continuous extraction of crude oil in order to obtain its primary resources for the production of plastic.
Recycling is a great solution. I was for it all. Theoretically, it can minimize what we send to the landfill. However, after twenty years of practice in recycling, it is time for us to reassess how successfully the plastics industry has been successful in reducing waste against the gains it has made at the expense of our planet. The plastics and polystyrene industries have been profitable on the planet for over fifty years, with nearly twenty of them aiming to clean up their clutter through recycling efforts supported in many communities through public taxes.
Today, plastics are produced and exported in communities around the world where there is no luxury in the form of a tax base to offset recycling composition costs. It can no longer be said that littering is the problem. The problem is what we do, how we do it, what it’s made of and what we can do locally when we’re done with our stuff. This emperor needs new clothes.
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Source by Kathleen Boylan