
America Finally Admits Recycling Doesn’t Work - vinnyglennon
https://fee.org/articles/america-finally-admits-recycling-doesn-t-work/
======
BenSS
The way we currently do it doesn't work, but that doesn't mean that it's not a
worthwhile thing to do!

If we were all slightly less lazy and were willing to separate things more
like other countries, it would work much better. Or, be willing to pay the
true costs of many of the materials.

~~~
mutt2016
Yes, this means it's not worthwhile in most cases. Kitchen garbage, for
instance is not worth while.

Reuse and reduce still matter

------
tfmatt
Is this website biased towards any political ideology? A pop up had some
political verbiage but I closed it before reading. Seems like a charged
article.

~~~
andrepd
It is Koch bros funded, so make of that what you will.

~~~
Latteland
Since it's from a group with a known idealogical basis, it's not going to be
an open minded discussion. But the next question is why wouldn't they like
recycling? They seem to make a lot of manufactured chemical and plastic
products, do they want you to not recycle because they sell you less new
plastics?

It does seems like round 1 of us recycling in the 21st century is going to
need big changes so we can get a scheme that will actually work for recycling.

~~~
depressed
I have no particular basis for saying this, but it feels like it was written
as part of a larger attempt to discredit the environmental movement as a
while.

------
kilo_bravo_3
Wide-spectrum recycling efforts in the United States has only been in practice
for about 20 years. Earlier metal and glass recycling efforts existed prior to
that but the widespread implementation of plastic recycling programs is only a
couple of decades old.

20 years is not a long time to solve such a difficult problem. 20 years after
the invention of the transistor the first microprocessor had not been
invented-- and determining how to handle millions of tons of plastics is a lot
harder than figuring out how to shrink down a transistor.

One of the problems with recycling programs is that most of the outputs of
electronics and plastic recycling are in foreign countries, countries that
cannot cope with the ecological impacts of being the dumping grounds of US and
EU recycling shipments.

One simple way to decrease the costs and increase the effectiveness of
recycling efforts is to require that packaging be made of easily-recyclable
materials.

Assertions about an activity like recycling based on an economic argument
makes as much sense as applying capital-M Market theories to healthcare,
nutrition, and environmentalism.

In places where capital-M Market theories are applied to those areas, what
occurs is that the rich enjoy outstanding healthcare while the poor are
discharged from emergency rooms onto the streets in hospital gowns and
slippers after being stabilized, people die ten years sooner than those in
equally-industrialized nations because they are addicted to high fructose corn
syrup, and fracking firms poison West Virginian watersheds because jobs trump
the need for clean water.

Plastics and e-waste are difficult to recycle, and absent massive investment
in research and development will likely be difficult to recycle so long as
there is an infinite variety of them and potential consumers are on the other
side of the globe.

People who argue from economics will continue to do so like cult members
convinced of the infallibility of their prophets as a metaphorical line of
misery and destruction keeps rising and engulfing the less fortunate, so long
as the line does not rise to their level.

But it will, and when it does the "job creators" will realize that you can
neither eat nor breathe an investment portfolio.

One day, humanity's addiction to plastics and the near-perpetual problems they
create (the persistent presence of microplastics in sea life and the human
bloodstream being just one) will be seen as a mistake as grave as leaded
gasoline.

~~~
pbecotte
But- recycling is by its nature an economic activity! The whole sales pitch is
"If you recycle, less stuff will have to be manufactured, therefore our
environment will be better off". But- if that statement isn't true, recycling
doesn't actually help the environment. I can certainly see the argument that
medical care probably shouldn't be a market driven activity. However, if
recycling doesn't make economic sense there is no virtue to it!

------
Hnrobert42
I find the evidence provided by this article is far too thin ans anecdotal to
support the claim. If nothing else, it makes no distinction between plastic
recycling and alumimnum recycling, for example.

If the Koch connection is true, I would infer the agenda is to spread FUD
about recycling. I can’t imagine the motivation for that. Perhaps that Koch
industries own Georgia-Pacific and Koch-Minerals, both of which profit from
increased raw natural resource consumption.

------
salmonellaeater
The root of the problem is that the environmental costs of producing
difficult-to-recycle plastic are not being paid by the manufacturers. A
solution is to make manufacturers internalize those costs: require a deposit
or fee for every gram of plastic manufactured or imported. Scale the fee to
cover the actual cost of recycling.

Manufacturers that start to use more environmentally-friendly materials will
have lower costs, and will be able to sell their products at a lower price,
leading to more market share. There will still be some use of difficult- or
impossible-to-recycle plastics, but we as a society can express our distaste
for storing garbage by adjusting the fees.

------
quaffapint
Recycling can work for certain things like paper, especially corrugated
cardboard. The most ridiculous thing was back in the 80s when the decision was
made that cutting down trees for paper bags was a bad thing and to use plastic
bags instead. So instead of using a renewable resource we are stuck with
plastic bags that end up everywhere and jam up recycling machines. Let's at
least go back to paper or use more multi-use bags.

------
diek00
Ummm how about this concept, from recent headlines China is refusing to accept
it because it the recyclables are filthy. That tells me many people are not
actually recycling they are just separating items. When you go return beer
bottles to a deposit location, most refuse to take them if they are filthy...
it is common sense!

------
sinuhe69
Funny that recycling in other countries like Germany actually works!
[https://earth911.com/business-policy/recycling-in-
germany/](https://earth911.com/business-policy/recycling-in-germany/)

------
vinnyglennon
People giving up plastics for a period of time rather than chocolate(ie Lent
in Ireland) led by the government may be a much better solution than endlessly
recycling according to dogma. Reduce and reuse is more disruptive to people's
daily habits and materialistic standards, and is a hard choice for some to
make.

An alternative is compostable packaging for everything - practically though
I'm not sure it's feasible. We need far better waste capture for co-firing,
landfill, or integration into substrates in construction.

Recycling is nice as it is indeed feel good. And flawed as directs efforts
from what might be actually required for the public to do.

------
patrickxb
I think there are a lot more parts of "recycling" that are working besides
putting recycling products in a separate trash can.

In Chicago now, you have to pay for bags (plastic or paper) at any major
store. It's 7 cents per bag. I have no numbers on how effective it has been,
but everywhere I go, I rarely see anyone getting the bags from the stores.

Programs like this and NYC's styrofoam ban seem to be very effective in the
"reduce/reuse" portions of reduce, reuse, recycle. Can/bottle deposits are
effective too. I doubt very many cans in NYC aren't recycled.

------
anyseguy
Recycling does indeed work, as proven by the last few billion years on this
planet - literally everything that ever was on the Earth is either still
around or has been recycled over and over. It is the concept of 'waste' \-
introduced by a recently arrived species - that doesn't work. Unless there is
some infinitely expandable place to put it, producing ANY amount of unusable
or unrecyclable waste that accumulates will at some point in the future become
a problem. This is math that even the most rabid Koch bros follower can't
argue with.

------
mcv
In the 1980s, recycling of compostables ("GFT", for vegetables, fruit and
garden waste) become common in Netherland. Amsterdam abandoned it again during
the 1990s, I think, mostly because the quality of the GFT waste was too low.

We're recycling plenty of other stuff, though: paper, glass, and plastic,
mostly. Plastic is fairly recent, but the others are old, so I assume they
work.

------
siffland
If people want to do more to help the environment then they can use reusable
stuff. I know poeple who use paper plates and plasitc forks for EVERYTHING.
Bring your own bags to the store instead of getting plastic. There are other
methods to reduce ones individual waste.

i really have no point except we can find other ways.

~~~
prolepunk
I believe that it's not up to individual consumers to fix that problem.

Manufacturers made plastic bags, plastic cutlery, plastic packaging and then
push the responsibility to the consumers to recycle. Also this lobby would
prevent any efforts that would ban any of this, or even less likely -- factor
in environmental impact into the price of goods.

Individuals are culpable, but industry is a villain in this story.

~~~
mreome
All human organizations... industry, government, society, depend on individual
accountability. Unless individual consumers demand change, either through
their choices in what and how they consume, or by legal means in who/how they
vote into government, nothing will change.

------
mcknz
The Foundation for Economic Education is listed as a partner organization of
the Charles Koch Institute.

~~~
svachalek
The tone of it ("recycling always sucked but now we're finally over it") is
definitely different than what you'd read in a liberal paper, but the general
facts of it are not much in dispute. I'm all about saving the environment, but
recycling programs for years have been more about feeling green than being
green.

Hopefully we don't all decide to keep going the way we have, except throw more
in the dump, and instead focus more on the reduce/reuse/repair side of things
and find ways to make the economics line up with the desired outcomes.

~~~
Hnrobert42
I disagree. While some of the statements in the article are factual, the
conclusions are not supported by those facts.

------
Theory5
They take a bit from PopSci, but miss the conclusion... maybe they need to
check their own facts...

------
SeanLuke
It's worth considering the source of this article.

