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Does recycling actually help the climate? (it's a relatively minor act, with the notable exception of metals recycling)
(yaleclimateconnections.org)
There are a lot of problems with recycling, thanks largely to laziness and capitalism.
- Plastic recycling is largely a marketing ploy. Oil companies (after all, most plastics are made of oil) and chemical companies saw that plastic waste was a huge issue that might stop people from adopting plastic. So they created a myth that it could easily be recycled and started marketing efforts to blame consumers for waste by not recycling. They still don’t know how to recycle some plastics, if they can it’s more expensive than new, and those that are get turned into lesser quality products that usually can’t be recycled again
- We adopted single stream recycling to make it easier, but it just leads to massive contamination, which goes to the landfill. Furthermore, we also have to put forth a lot of effort to sort what isn’t contaminated.
- Marketing, while promoting recycling, has also encouraged “wishcycling” where non-recyclable items are put in recycling because people wish they were and figure that recyclers will find a way.
My city, after getting so much contamination, lost its contract for recycling and just tossed everything put in blue bins. They have since reintroduced it, but making it opt in and providing stickers for the bins to make it clear what is and isn’t recyclable. Contamination has gone way down.
