Recycling sucks. You have to dismantle products and packaging, cut cardboard into little squares no more than 20cm X 20cm, sort glass bottles by colour, remove the labels, or else it won't be (expensively) collected. You can also go drop it off yourself, but you have to pay for the pleasure, and own or rent a vehicle.
Even after all of that, a majority of what is supposed to be recycled ends up being "recycled" into electricity, by an incinerator. That's the case in this neck of the woods, at any rate.
Recycling treats a symptom, not a disease. We allow the production of wasteful packaging, we accept planned obsolescence, and we dispose of things that could be yet used for a long time to come.
A better solution would be to impose the cost of disposal on manufacturers - this already happens to a degree with WEEE, but try actually getting a manufacturer to collect - it's made deliberately difficult as they'd rather you just fly-tip and save them the expense - even though you paid for that service as part of your purchase.
Another better solution would be to pass goods on whole for re-use rather than recycling wherever possible, which has gained some traction through things like freecycle and eBay, but is still a minority case. This behaviour could be encouraged by governments, but is instead actively discouraged, as it hurts sales of new goods, and therefore tax revenues.
As per usual, we'll only change when forced to - by which point it'll be too late. People will use 300 year old toasters in the future, and weep for our wastefulnes.
I do what I can, buy very little new (all of my furniture is pre 1960), dumpster dive, pass things I no longer want or need on, but it's still not enough.
Every single Japanese home separates their trash into: (1) burnable trash, (2) plastic, (3) paper-pack, (4) PET bottles, (5) cans, (6) glass bottles, (7) cardboard, (8) broken glass, metal, etc., and (9) large items such as furniture.
When I first moved to Japan, I thought it was crazy how many rules there were about separating garbage. It was inconceivable to me that people took the time and effort to ensure that the plastic bits from product packaging go into one bin, and the paper bits into another.
The first time I had to wash a plastic food container and leave it out to dry so that I could throw it away clean, I balked. No one could possibly put up with this nonsense.
Guess what? It's been over a year now since I moved to Japan, and the garbage routine is a completely invisible part of my life. You get into the habit. It feels good to do your part. Everyone else is doing their part, too.
Is Japan the perfect (or even the most effective) country in terms of recycling and waste management? Not at all. Is it by far the cleanest place that I've ever lived in (including USA and Europe)? Absolutely, yes.
I'm not suggesting that Japan has the answer. I'm just observing that a sorting effort made from the bottom up distributes the work and avoids the expense of sorting later. Until I'd seen it in action, I would never have believed that people would tolerate such a confusing and onerous system.
Why not impose the full cost of disposal on people that throw things away? If the prices covered the real costs, and they were reasonably known and understandable, people buying stuff could make their own decisions about the best tradeoffs to make between all the various things you mention.
Recycling and reusing are great, but there are real costs to both. I've got a bunch of CDs that I don't really want anymore. I'm certainly not ever likely to use them, given Spotify and the like. But I feel bad enough about just throwing them away that I've just held on to them. I fantasize about giving them away to someone but realistically that would be such a pain in the ass that I almost certainly will never bother. [Now I'm motivated to throw them away!] Just the cost of someone driving to where I live and, maybe, take them from me – for free – has both non-zero environmental and economic costs!
Throwing things away is fine. Not accounting for all the costs, to everyone, is the real problem.
Disposal is not so complicated in all the countries.
In some you have much looser rules, eg. no labels removal, and [directly] paid collection.
While it's true that solving the causes is radically more effective than treating the symptoms, in the isolated view of the garbage recycling, separation by the consumer is still more effective than having it done after collection.
> We allow the production of wasteful packaging, we accept planned obsolescence,
Regarding planned obsolescence, it seems fairly easy to legislate away - just pass a law that mandates a minimum of 5-10 years warranty for consumer goods (cars, laptops, smartphones, home applicances). This way, the manufacturers will reengineer the devices to last longer.
> You have to dismantle products and packaging, cut cardboard into little squares no more than 20cm X 20cm, sort glass bottles by colour, remove the labels
This doesn't describe recylcing in any place I've lived or seen for a long time. Either all materials go in one big bag/box or at most they are sorted into paper and 'other'.
Some of what you describe I saw with early recycling programs long ago, but I've never heard of 20x20cm squares of cardboard.
In the UK I had two wheelie bins. One was for landfill, the other was for recycling. The recyling bin would take paper, carboard, most plastics, cans, etc. Not glass, which had to be taken to separate bottle banks. Also not some kinds of plastic --- yoghurt pots, mainly.
The extent of pre-sorting needed depends completely on the local recycler company and how modern their systems are.
Where I lived recently, there were no specific guidelines about coloured glass, labels or cardboard dimensions.
In NYC, it's even simpler — only two bins: (1) glass, plastic, metal and cartons (mostly juice containers), and (2) paper and cardboard. By metal, they mean almost anything made of metal, including spray cans and filing cabinets (!).
In my town you just have to sort the plastics from the papers and they will collect it for free every Tuesday. The trash bags on the other hand are very expensive and not very big, I find myself trying to get as much as I can in my recycling to avoid having to buy more.
In fact the first week I moved in I didn't crush or sort anything because my landlord told me that was all I needed to do and they still collected it (even though my landlord was wrong).
Its also worth noting that as a result of this system, every house on my street always has a larger amount of recycling then garbage (we don't use bins so its easier to notice), it would be nice if more places did this.
Make trendy the people like this San Francisco family that lives with almost no garbage.
This is mostly a cobra effect of modern opulence, people had nothing and knew how to reuse. Now we just meh out of the issue and put it aside like morons. There are more and more attempts at reducing waste but it's still shown as niche in TV news and such.
There's a reason that "recycle" comes last in the "reduce, reuse, recycle" catchphrase. There's a frightening amount of food, for example, that could simply not be wasted at all.
But that's the thing: I don't think most people realize that the phrase is a hierarchy. They just think it's a flat list of things you can do. At least that's how I was taught and other places (like the EPA website) imply.
Some companies refuse to give away or discount for items because then people will spend less on food (with that supplier).
Similarly dated electronics doesn't get given away but gets disposed of because otherwise people could avoid buying new items.
Make things have long warranties and companies will introduce party's that wear, blame the customer, and then be sure those parts aren't available anymore.
To do this properly we need to transition away from capitalism; but the most powerful capitalists are the ones with the power to force the transition.
True, for a start they have to through out all food at the end of the day where I work (we get free food for lunch), rather than save any of it for the next day (even if it would have been perfectly fine).
That is most of the food waste, but not the part that is mostly visible, which can't really be avoided, because few people have chickens to feed it to.
I honestly feel recycling is wasted effort. It's largely a way of buying off our existential terror with publicly visible pious busywork. Rubbish which actually makes it to landfill, as a problem, is not the big one or even in the big few. Rubbish that does not, which ends up as polluting litter or in the sea, is a larger problem but one recycling completely doesn't address.
So far as I'm concerned, what a landfill is, is a resource mine we don't yet have the technology or desire to exploit. A bit of futuristic technology, and we could be disassembling it for gold, iron, rare earths, hydrocarbons, etc. It's not gone, but it's put aside. And putting things aside can be fine if you come back for them.
The part about plastics being useless to recycle actually makes a lot of sense, if you live in a place where trash is incinerated for electricity or heat, and you have oil-powered electricity. Making virgin plastic from the oil you saved by burning plastic trash in its stead is better/cheaper/more energy fficient than recycling the plastic trash.
Aluminium is always extremely cost-effective to recycle, because making aluminium from bauxite requires enormous amounts of electricity, but re-smelting aluminium containers is cheap.
I'm surprised that glass was not cost-effective to recycle according to the article. I thought that since it's generally easy to sort and re-smelt, it's be all good. But maybe the raw materials are so cheap that it outweighs the cost of recycling?
The efficiency arguments against glass that I've seen involve the sheer weight of transport (and the gas / cost involved) from use point to plant, amount of breakage that occurs that endangers employees, and the limited cost savings of recycled glass over new glass. Forget where I read it, but apparently much of the recycled glass is ground up and used for fill because of the lack of demand for the post-recycled product.
Traveling through Germany, any grocer I bought a glass bottle from required a deposit that was returned when the bottle was. Shipped back to original producer, then cleaned and refiled.
I agree that we should rehabilitate incineration where it's more efficient than recycling and doesn't produce anything bad (dioxins were a problem at one point). It's certainly better than it ending up in the sea.
I'm no expert, but I think glass has a lot of additives that impact its reuse. Colors for sure, but also strength, clarity, thermal conductivity, and maybe more. But for glass bottles specifically, if people got over being sensitive to the bottle color (both consumers and brand-conscious producers) it would probably be ok to lump the bottles together.
Yeah. The energy cost to just melt sand into glass isn't likely to be significantly different than remelting it for recycled products. And I'm willing to bet that there are plenty of natural silica sources at a higher purity than whatever you get out of the mixed glass recycling tub.
> Making virgin plastic from the oil you saved by burning plastic trash in its stead is better/cheaper/more energy efficient than recycling the plastic trash.
Do you have data on this? I didn't find any cited in the article. If it's true, I would be very interested.
Container deposit schemes are getting some discussion in the comments, so it seems an apt time to mention their history in Australia [1]. SA has had the scheme since '77, and the NT managed to introduce it - then reintroduce it - just in 2013. No other state presently has such a scheme.
The most disturbing part is what happened in NT. The proposed scheme - which had massive community support - was challenged by beverage manufacturers - Coca Cola, Schweppes and Lion - based on some very dubious claims about it being an expensive and ineffective way to recycle.
In other states it has been a political football: parties support the idea when campaigning, then promptly forget about it once in government. The paranoid part of my brain wonders about behind-the-scenes influence of donors on this pattern.
As a side point, in Asia I'm used to experiencing that a beverage bought in a platic bottle must be consumed on premises, so the bottle can be immediately put in a container for collection. That's a lot more satisfying than having to look for a bin because I got thirsty.
I did a thorough economic analysis of littering and discovered that just dropping my crap on the street, at the beach or in the park was far less effort and time than carrying it to the nearest trash can.
A libertarian friend pointed out that if there was economic value to not littering then someone would already be paying to take my trash from my hand as I drop it.
So now I can litter with a clear conscience, as I've proved its better to do so.
I do not disagree with the final conclusion or at least statement of this article, “The ultimate solution, … is better design of products and packaging further upstream to plan better for end of life and avoid the waste issue altogether.”
FWIW, Stanford both does recycling (usually 4 or 5 cans in Tresidder [0]) and post-consumer separates trash into recyclable materials.
Judging from the typical Tragedy of the Commons recyclable contamination disaster at places like Costco, perhaps relying on consumers to put things in the right place is a fool's errand... robotic with human automation at refuse processing points probably is a more efficient way to centralize and drive down the net cost of recycling with scale.
I really only worry about recycling metal. Soda, canned goods, that sort of thing. I've been a bit skeptical of recycling paper since I started recycling, the trees used for paper are plentiful, and are grown as a crop. Plus, as far as I can understand all the same processes that it takes to make paper from tree pulp are also used when recycling paper, so that seems like a neutral process at best.
I wouldn't mind at all if the municipal recycling program took my recycling, sorted it, and routed the less valuable materials straight to the landfill based on current market conditions and analysis of all the criteria mentioned in the OP (cost of new materials, cost to recycle, carbon footprint, etc.). I put it out in one unsorted cart regardless and they have to sort it either way.
It has crossed my mind that they may already do this, either on the sly or per a policy in some terms I haven't read.
If they had more flexibility with the economics, maybe they could stop charging residents $6/month (the fee in my city for recycling pickup) to feel like we're doing the right thing.
Does anyone know about the relative trade-offs of composting and recycling? Many of the trendier environmentally-aware people I see around me seem to prefer composting, including compostable disposable cups, etc.
But it's not clear to me that composting would be better. What is the chemical composition of this compost of somewhat random materials? Is it safe? Is there waste? Is it usable as quality compost? Does it get used? How much demand is there? etc.
You also need to look at fuel costs of transportation. I compost all my food waste, and use the compost to grow vegetables. The council could also take my food waste, but the nearest municipal composter is apparently about 20 miles away.
One big advantage to composting is that little bits of food clinging to the container are a feature, not a bug.
So it saves a lot of water and (if hot water is needed) energy over washing and recycling paper or (with PLA and such) plastic.
The composting facilities I'm aware of are for-profit, but they typically get paid at both ends of the business (http://cedar-grove.com/about-us/faq/).
Why is recycling almost a religious issue for some people? How has reduce, reuse, recycle been turned into just recycle? Some people even talk about reuse and incorrectly call it recycling. It seems as if many people have been brainwashed via propaganda about recycling. How did that happen?
I would really like to see a longterm container pipeline. In true recycling, we wouldn't have any plastic containers, period. Everything should be served with, on or in durable, lasting materials, or easily recycled post compost paper.
We just don't have an accommodating container infrastructure to manage that, but what if I could take a cup from Starbucks and when I'm finished with it, put it in a recycling bin, it goes to a center for sanitization, then is redistributed to McDonald's? It would be like how a hotel works, but on the scale of a city.
Interesting article. It focused on economics, but didn't really factor in the environmental effects of landfilling or recycling. I wonder how that impacts the economic assessment. Still, generating less waste in the first place is always a good goal. I like the thought of shifting responsibility of recycling to the manufacturer. It would encourage less use of wasteful materials that have little recycling value.
I am skeptical of pretty much all analyses of recycling and environmentalism that start from a primarily economic angle. The main problem being is that (obviously!) economic forces have driven us into the situation in the first place. The market supports overproduction, overpackaging and oversupply. All of those are economic activity that is marked in the "good" column by governments and societies.
Ultimately, lowering the production of a good used by people is a reduction in economic activity. Reduce, reuse, and recycle means less economic activity, but not less wealth. Until we realize this, we are destined to pursue policies that are bad for the environment and waste resources.
It seems like we could achieve the economic goals mentioned in the article and avoid the pitfalls of plastic in the environment by simply getting over our dislike of waste incineration. Modern incinerators are quite wonderful things, but need careful management of a couple waste byproducts. I was pleasantly surprised at the comprehensiveness of the wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incineration
So this guy criticises recycling by creating an economic model that fails to take into consideration externalities of product consumption and discard.
Not a very useful model and we would do well to not pay it much heed
[+] [-] madaxe_again|10 years ago|reply
Even after all of that, a majority of what is supposed to be recycled ends up being "recycled" into electricity, by an incinerator. That's the case in this neck of the woods, at any rate.
Recycling treats a symptom, not a disease. We allow the production of wasteful packaging, we accept planned obsolescence, and we dispose of things that could be yet used for a long time to come.
A better solution would be to impose the cost of disposal on manufacturers - this already happens to a degree with WEEE, but try actually getting a manufacturer to collect - it's made deliberately difficult as they'd rather you just fly-tip and save them the expense - even though you paid for that service as part of your purchase.
Another better solution would be to pass goods on whole for re-use rather than recycling wherever possible, which has gained some traction through things like freecycle and eBay, but is still a minority case. This behaviour could be encouraged by governments, but is instead actively discouraged, as it hurts sales of new goods, and therefore tax revenues.
As per usual, we'll only change when forced to - by which point it'll be too late. People will use 300 year old toasters in the future, and weep for our wastefulnes.
I do what I can, buy very little new (all of my furniture is pre 1960), dumpster dive, pass things I no longer want or need on, but it's still not enough.
[+] [-] nihonde|10 years ago|reply
When I first moved to Japan, I thought it was crazy how many rules there were about separating garbage. It was inconceivable to me that people took the time and effort to ensure that the plastic bits from product packaging go into one bin, and the paper bits into another.
The first time I had to wash a plastic food container and leave it out to dry so that I could throw it away clean, I balked. No one could possibly put up with this nonsense.
Guess what? It's been over a year now since I moved to Japan, and the garbage routine is a completely invisible part of my life. You get into the habit. It feels good to do your part. Everyone else is doing their part, too.
Is Japan the perfect (or even the most effective) country in terms of recycling and waste management? Not at all. Is it by far the cleanest place that I've ever lived in (including USA and Europe)? Absolutely, yes.
I'm not suggesting that Japan has the answer. I'm just observing that a sorting effort made from the bottom up distributes the work and avoids the expense of sorting later. Until I'd seen it in action, I would never have believed that people would tolerate such a confusing and onerous system.
[+] [-] aeorgnoieang|10 years ago|reply
Recycling and reusing are great, but there are real costs to both. I've got a bunch of CDs that I don't really want anymore. I'm certainly not ever likely to use them, given Spotify and the like. But I feel bad enough about just throwing them away that I've just held on to them. I fantasize about giving them away to someone but realistically that would be such a pain in the ass that I almost certainly will never bother. [Now I'm motivated to throw them away!] Just the cost of someone driving to where I live and, maybe, take them from me – for free – has both non-zero environmental and economic costs!
Throwing things away is fine. Not accounting for all the costs, to everyone, is the real problem.
[+] [-] pizza234|10 years ago|reply
In some you have much looser rules, eg. no labels removal, and [directly] paid collection.
While it's true that solving the causes is radically more effective than treating the symptoms, in the isolated view of the garbage recycling, separation by the consumer is still more effective than having it done after collection.
[+] [-] lgieron|10 years ago|reply
Regarding planned obsolescence, it seems fairly easy to legislate away - just pass a law that mandates a minimum of 5-10 years warranty for consumer goods (cars, laptops, smartphones, home applicances). This way, the manufacturers will reengineer the devices to last longer.
[+] [-] hackuser|10 years ago|reply
This doesn't describe recylcing in any place I've lived or seen for a long time. Either all materials go in one big bag/box or at most they are sorted into paper and 'other'.
Some of what you describe I saw with early recycling programs long ago, but I've never heard of 20x20cm squares of cardboard.
[+] [-] david-given|10 years ago|reply
But on the whole recycling was hardly a burden.
[+] [-] lobster_johnson|10 years ago|reply
Where I lived recently, there were no specific guidelines about coloured glass, labels or cardboard dimensions.
In NYC, it's even simpler — only two bins: (1) glass, plastic, metal and cartons (mostly juice containers), and (2) paper and cardboard. By metal, they mean almost anything made of metal, including spray cans and filing cabinets (!).
[+] [-] yesco|10 years ago|reply
In fact the first week I moved in I didn't crush or sort anything because my landlord told me that was all I needed to do and they still collected it (even though my landlord was wrong).
Its also worth noting that as a result of this system, every house on my street always has a larger amount of recycling then garbage (we don't use bins so its easier to notice), it would be nice if more places did this.
[+] [-] agumonkey|10 years ago|reply
This is mostly a cobra effect of modern opulence, people had nothing and knew how to reuse. Now we just meh out of the issue and put it aside like morons. There are more and more attempts at reducing waste but it's still shown as niche in TV news and such.
Make Kanye West use glass bottles and tote bags.
[+] [-] cradle2cradle|10 years ago|reply
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0865475873/ref=as_li_tl?ie=...
[+] [-] ranko|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nofinator|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cmrx64|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|10 years ago|reply
Similarly dated electronics doesn't get given away but gets disposed of because otherwise people could avoid buying new items.
Make things have long warranties and companies will introduce party's that wear, blame the customer, and then be sure those parts aren't available anymore.
To do this properly we need to transition away from capitalism; but the most powerful capitalists are the ones with the power to force the transition.
[+] [-] progrocks9|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomjen3|10 years ago|reply
That is most of the food waste, but not the part that is mostly visible, which can't really be avoided, because few people have chickens to feed it to.
[+] [-] logfromblammo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JulianMorrison|10 years ago|reply
So far as I'm concerned, what a landfill is, is a resource mine we don't yet have the technology or desire to exploit. A bit of futuristic technology, and we could be disassembling it for gold, iron, rare earths, hydrocarbons, etc. It's not gone, but it's put aside. And putting things aside can be fine if you come back for them.
[+] [-] henrikschroder|10 years ago|reply
Aluminium is always extremely cost-effective to recycle, because making aluminium from bauxite requires enormous amounts of electricity, but re-smelting aluminium containers is cheap.
I'm surprised that glass was not cost-effective to recycle according to the article. I thought that since it's generally easy to sort and re-smelt, it's be all good. But maybe the raw materials are so cheap that it outweighs the cost of recycling?
[+] [-] sailfast|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Terribledactyl|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pjc50|10 years ago|reply
There's not a lot of that about (1%): https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3
I agree that we should rehabilitate incineration where it's more efficient than recycling and doesn't produce anything bad (dioxins were a problem at one point). It's certainly better than it ending up in the sea.
[+] [-] DougWebb|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajross|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] delazeur|10 years ago|reply
Do you have data on this? I didn't find any cited in the article. If it's true, I would be very interested.
[+] [-] melling|10 years ago|reply
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/power-plant...
[+] [-] qewrffewqwfqew|10 years ago|reply
The most disturbing part is what happened in NT. The proposed scheme - which had massive community support - was challenged by beverage manufacturers - Coca Cola, Schweppes and Lion - based on some very dubious claims about it being an expensive and ineffective way to recycle.
In other states it has been a political football: parties support the idea when campaigning, then promptly forget about it once in government. The paranoid part of my brain wonders about behind-the-scenes influence of donors on this pattern.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_deposit_legislation_...
As a side point, in Asia I'm used to experiencing that a beverage bought in a platic bottle must be consumed on premises, so the bottle can be immediately put in a container for collection. That's a lot more satisfying than having to look for a bin because I got thirsty.
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|10 years ago|reply
A libertarian friend pointed out that if there was economic value to not littering then someone would already be paying to take my trash from my hand as I drop it.
So now I can litter with a clear conscience, as I've proved its better to do so.
[+] [-] marvel_boy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] progrocks9|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cat-dev-null|10 years ago|reply
Judging from the typical Tragedy of the Commons recyclable contamination disaster at places like Costco, perhaps relying on consumers to put things in the right place is a fool's errand... robotic with human automation at refuse processing points probably is a more efficient way to centralize and drive down the net cost of recycling with scale.
0: http://bgm.stanford.edu/pssi_flyers
[+] [-] dankohn1|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] majewsky|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danielweber|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SteveNuts|10 years ago|reply
Plastic I try to reuse whenever possible.
[+] [-] shoover|10 years ago|reply
It has crossed my mind that they may already do this, either on the sly or per a policy in some terms I haven't read.
If they had more flexibility with the economics, maybe they could stop charging residents $6/month (the fee in my city for recycling pickup) to feel like we're doing the right thing.
[+] [-] hackuser|10 years ago|reply
But it's not clear to me that composting would be better. What is the chemical composition of this compost of somewhat random materials? Is it safe? Is there waste? Is it usable as quality compost? Does it get used? How much demand is there? etc.
[+] [-] rwmj|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frankus|10 years ago|reply
So it saves a lot of water and (if hot water is needed) energy over washing and recycling paper or (with PLA and such) plastic.
The composting facilities I'm aware of are for-profit, but they typically get paid at both ends of the business (http://cedar-grove.com/about-us/faq/).
[+] [-] dreamlayers|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] specialist|10 years ago|reply
I blame my Presbyterian upbringing, W. Edwards Deming, my 4th grade teacher, and Peter Drucker for the washing of my brain.
[+] [-] dclowd9901|10 years ago|reply
We just don't have an accommodating container infrastructure to manage that, but what if I could take a cup from Starbucks and when I'm finished with it, put it in a recycling bin, it goes to a center for sanitization, then is redistributed to McDonald's? It would be like how a hotel works, but on the scale of a city.
[+] [-] nprecup|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] titzer|10 years ago|reply
Ultimately, lowering the production of a good used by people is a reduction in economic activity. Reduce, reuse, and recycle means less economic activity, but not less wealth. Until we realize this, we are destined to pursue policies that are bad for the environment and waste resources.
[+] [-] astrocat|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fiatjaf|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] static_noise|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robbiep|10 years ago|reply