Today's Friday Faceoff is another "opinion" piece, cobbled together from readings, experience, anecdotes, and my gut. There are roughly 1bajillion opinions about the pros and cons of recycling. But since it's Earth Day, and we may all be wading through more green-focused media and advertising today than usual, I thought I'd take a crack at it. I'm not an expert, for sure, but I can at least give us some things to ponder.
The Typical "Pro" Recycling Arguments:
- Keeps stuff out of landfills (where plastics and metal, but ALSO paper, will essentially never decompose)
- Reduces fossil fuel consumption by using already-harvested materials to make new products, rather than, say, cutting down new trees for paper or refining virgin petroleum to make plastic
- The "Wow! Cool!" factor of buying, I don't know, maybe a purse made out of recycled water bottles....
- Sorting through our piles of stuff to put into the recycling raises our awareness of our garbage output
- In some cases, it's cheaper to make new products out of recycled materials
Typical "Con" Recycling Arguments:
- The separate collection, transportation, and sorting burden alone may be enough to off-set any carbon/fossil fuel reduction gained by recycling the materials
- The chemical pollution created by recycling can be as harmful or worse than producing things from virgin materials
- The whole "recycling" industry is controlled by corrupt companies out to make a profit and it's a racket
- Package markings are misleading, and lull us into a sense of do-gooding by believing all our plastic and glass can be recycled, when in reality very little of it can or will be recycled
- There just aren't really that many things that can be practically made out of recycled material (particularly plastic)
I've been a pretty active paper/glass/aluminum/plastic recycler for a while now. I dutifully carried my Diet Coke cans and recyclable paper home with me to recycle if caught out of recycle-bin range. I rinsed my jars and put them gingerly into the blue bags (Chicago's shameful pretend recycling system of yore) and wished them good luck on their journey to a new life. I imagined that they may be reincarnated as salsa jars or mugs or something pretty.
But every time I drove (yes, DROVE, because Chicago is stupid and neanderthal in its recycling attempts) my recycling to the giant overstuffed dumpsters at the recycling center, I scratched my head and heaved a sigh and wondered if ANY of that ridiculous pile would actually be recycled. I don't have an answer for you about that quandary.
Overall, it looks like recycling is still worth it. Especially for things like paper, glass, and aluminum/metal. Through my light research, I've ended up deciding that REDUCING my plastic intake/output is really the best bet for the sticky, polluting, all-around nastiness of plastic. Check out MyPlasticFreeLife for some inspiration about the process of eliminating plastic from your home.
As my wise friend Jackie and I have discussed many times, the "3 Rs" of Greeny-ness go in a certain order for a reason: FIRST Reduce, THEN Reuse, and THEN Recycle. If I can get into the habit of reducing and reusing first, hopefully I will eventually have fewer bags of recycling as well. A good start.
An update for you, Jill: I read something yesterday that said it is now the 5 Rs - REFUSE (as you've hinted to with your assertion that not buying certain trickier to recycle things is really the key), Reduce, Reuse, REPURPOSE (as you are already doing with your coffee "mug" and sock "cozy"), and then finally, if you cannot find any further use for it, Recycle.
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