Recycling: Is it BS?

This week, I shared a link on Instagram to the most recent episode of the 'How to Save a Planet' podcast, called "Recycling! Is it BS?". I'm a huge fan of podcasts in general, and of this podcast especially - but as I learned from your responses, not everyone is into them! I think the skinny on recycling is super important to know, so I've taken notes (Nenna, this one's for you!). Below is my CliffNotes version of the episode, including links to many external sources that were mentioned in the episode. If you're interested in listening, check out the full episode here.

---

Recycling isn't just a waste issue; it's also a climate issue.

We often think of recycling as a waste issue, but it's also a climate issue. Making new stuff requires a lot of energy, especially in the form of electric power. Electricity is the second leading source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the US. Unsurprisingly, recycling existing materials generally takes less energy. In comparison, that savings of GHG emissions makes recycling a a better choice for the climate than creating something brand-new, at least in the short term.

So what IS recycling?

In its basic definition, recycling means taking something, breaking it down, and turning it back into the same thing. For example, turning an old soda bottle into a new soda bottle is recycling.

But turning that same soda bottle into a fleece jacket, or a carpet, is not recycling. This is called downcycling, because it would be extremely difficult to extract the plastic from that finished product to make into another jacket or carpet. While its creative, downcycling is less ideal than recycling because it effectively ends the useful life of that material (by making it difficult to extract and reuse).

What can we recycle?

The OG: Aluminum

Extracting virgin aluminum is extremely energy-intensive, but recycling aluminum has a big impact to GHG emissions: a recycled aluminum can has a 95% smaller carbon footprint than making a virgin aluminum can. Aluminum can be recycled infinitely, in what’s called “closed loop” recycling, meaning that nothing (besides heat) needs to be added to recycle the can.

Verdict: recycle those cans!

Glass

Untreated glass (think 'everyday' use glass: beer and kombucha bottles, pickle jars, etc.) are like metals, in that they can be recycled infinitely (treated glass like Pyrex or windshields can’t be recycled because they’ve been treated to withstand heat and breakage). There's good reason to recycle glass: making virgin glass is much more energy-intensive, and there is a global shortage in the sand that’s used to make glass.

Verdict: throw those glass bottles in the bin (recycling bin, that is).

Paper

Bottom line: recycling paper cuts emissions. Why? Because paper, as you smart folks know, is made of trees, which recycle carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. So part of the impact of recycling paper is that you leave other trees standing. But the impact is still big: for example, if an office uses 100 tons of copy paper a year, and recycles half of it (50 tons), they would reduce emissions by about 60%, from 109 metric tons of carbon dioxide to 40 tons.

You can’t recycle paper forever, partly because we write on it with ink, which necessitates the use of chemicals to remove the inks and return the paper to a pulp. Paper can only be recycled about 5-7 times before it reaches the end of its life, but that life is still glorious - recycled paper can come back as a high-quality paper. The paper recycling rate in the US is about 70%, so we’re pretty good at it.

Verdict: let's keep a good thing going - recycle the paper!

The Villain: Plastic

Ah...now we get to the real reason you're here: plastic, the villain in the recycling bin. Globally, we make about 300 million tons of plastic waste per year, of which between 5-14 million tons ends up in the ocean. Plastic is everywhere – in rain water, in the Arctic, on top of Everest, in the rainforest.

Can we recycle plastic? The answer is…not really. Go back to the idea of ‘what is recycling’ – breaking down and reusing. Plastic cannot undergo “closed loop” recycling. For example, take common polyethylene terephthalate (or PET) plastic, which comprises a regular soda bottle. A PET bottle is recycled via melting, but doing so is hard to get right, and when it's reheated, it gets weaker every time. PET bottles also require virgin plastic to be added, to make it strong enough to reuse. So rather than recycle these bottles, we down-cycle them, turning them into other goods which effectively ends the lifecycle of that plastic. And that’s just PET. Other plastics are worse: rigid plastics and soft plastics all have varying abilities to be recycled.

And that little recycling icon on your plastic package? It's basically B.S. The plastics industry lobbied to have it on containers, even if they’re not actually recyclable. The number tells you the grade of plastic it is, but the symbol itself is just meant to mollify consumers.

And it gets worse.

Globally, companies make 150 million tons of single-use plastic (half of the global total), called low-density polyethylene, which is really hard to recycle. This includes film plastic that comes on packages, bubble wrap, plastic bags, etc. It actually gums up the sorting machines at recycling facilities, and has to be manually removed from the machine. People still put single use plastics into their bins, hoping to absolve the guilt of wasting something. But honestly, you're better off just throwing them in the landfill trash.

Plastics were designed by the plastics industry to be thrown away.

The fact that plastics are so expendable is by design. As the podcast noted:

“[Plastics] were at first constructed to be a durable good that would replace more expensive materials. But by the mid-1960s , that had changed – not on the part of the consumer, but industry.

In 1956, Lloyd Stouffer, who was the editor of Modern Packaging magazine, said at a a plastics conference that 'the future of plastics is in the trash can'. At the time, he was commenting on the rise of single-use disposable plastic, and he was a big cheerleader for this trend. Seven years later, he wrote this essay as part of the National Plastics Conference in 1963, where he talked about the progress the industry had made since his initial comment…he said:

'What I had said in the talk is that it was time for the industry to stop thinking about reuse packages, and start concentrating on single use…for the package that is used once and thrown away, like a tin can or a paper carton, represents not a one-shot market for a few thousand units, but an every day recurring market measured by the billions of units…your future does indeed lie in the trash can. It is a measure of your progress in packaging in the last seven years that this remark will no longer raise any eyebrows. You're filling the trash cans, the rubbish dumps and the incinerators, with literally billions of plastic bottles; plastic jugs; plastic tubes, blisters and skin packs; plastic bags and films and cheap packages; and now, even plastic cans.'”

Yikes. So making plastics disposable was a deliberate decision. And then the plastics industry had to teach consumers how to use them – to throw them away as a one-use product, rather than hold on to them and reuse them. The plastics industry had to teach people to throw this stuff out…and we learned it.

That created another issue: litter.

People started throwing plastic...everywhere. So the plastics industry now had to teach people: "you have to throw it away, but you have to throw it away the right way". In response to litter, the plastics industry deployed commercials like this racially exploitative example below, which was sponsored by a beverage bottling group. These ads put the onus on consumers and municipalities to pay for the disposal of the waste that the plastics industry had created.

So how guilty should we personally feel about plastic use?

Everything comes in plastic, and the system has been specifically designed to be unsustainable. In some way, you don’t even get to opt out of it – think of the packaging that your mail orders come in: you purchased the durable good, but you didn’t ask for all the plastic it is wrapped, sold, and shipped in. Businesses are not incentivized to choose less wasteful options; in fact their “perverse incentive" is to use the cheapest option – which usually happens to be single-use plastic.

Okay, wait - we were talking GHG emissions. What's the impact here?

The only reason plastic exists is because it’s a cheap by-product of natural gas and oil extraction. It is made from fossil fuels, in fact. And as demand for fossil fuels as a fuel source is waning, businesses are pushing plastic on consumers as a way to prop up demand for that resource, rather than stopping their extraction.

Not only are plastics made of oil, but their manufacturing also emits GHG: “The Center for International and Environmental Law said that in 2019, making and incinerating plastic generated as many emissions as 189 coal-fed power plants."

The Bottom Line: What to do about recycling

Summing up: you can feel pretty good about recycling glass, cans, and paper. But plastics are a whole different story. What can we do with our plastic? And how do we help turn this tidal wave of waste?

1. Remember the two other R’s: Reduce and Reuse. We get so fixated on recycling that we forget the other two, but they have a big impact. The reality is that we just need to be using less stuff!

2. Sign up to take personal action as part of the Break Free From Plastic Campaign

3. Write your representatives regarding the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act. This incredibly important piece of legislation was introduced to the US Congress last year. Among its provisions are requirements for eliminating single-use plastics and mandating product producers collect and recycle their own packaging. Keep an eye out for a future Take Action post on this!

4. Ask companies to change their packaging. If there's a company or product you really love, write to them and ask them to change their packaging!