A-Z Recycling Guide
OCTOBER 08, 2015
New York Times columnist John Tierney got it all wrong. Let’s set the
record straight on why recycling matters for our climate and our
future.
Recycling IS Our Future
The recent New York Times op-ed, “Reign of Recycling” by John
Tierney is dead wrong about recycling and completely misses the big
picture: We live on a beautiful and finite planet that we are trashing at
a rapid rate. Recycling, a central tenet of Zero Waste, has a critical
role to play in turning this daunting situation around.
Nearly 20 years ago, The Times published a similar article by
Tierney, “Recycling is Garbage,” which dismissed recycling’s
importance using the same stale arguments.
What’s changed since then? A lot.
LOOKING BACK ON WHAT’S CHANGED
For starters, recycling has been embraced across the country with
impressive results. Since 1996, we’ve recycled and composted more
than 2.6 trillion pounds of materials in the United States. And our
recycling industry has grown significantly, today providing more
than 470,000 jobs nationwide and generating more than $105
billion in economic activity. Instead of paying to landfill valuable
resources, cities can often make money recycling them.
Meanwhile, the urgent challenges humanity is facing, which Zero
Waste can help address, have intensified.
Climate change is the biggie. Scientists now tell us that we must
reduce greenhouse gas emissions as much as 70 percent by
mid-century if we are to have any hope of avoiding global warming’s
worst impacts.
And then there’s the staggering reality of 7-plus billion people on
Earth, who rightly aspire to a comfortable standard of living. But think
about this for a second: If every person consumed as much stuff as
the average U.S. citizen, we would need the equivalent of more
than four Earths to support all of us, and we’re heading towards 9
billion people.
Could we flee to Mars and get by on potatoes grown in our own poop
as Matt Damon did in The Martian? Maybe, but frankly, we think most
of us would rather stay home.
Staying home means wising up. According to EPA, the way we
produce, transport, use and dispose of products and food
generates 42 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. That’s
way too much to ignore.
Can recycling help? You bet. Recycling, and more broadly Zero
Waste, replace our linear, fossil-fueled, and consumption-addicted
economies with circular, more sustainable and more equitable ones
that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and conserve our precious
natural resources.
Here’s what’s changed for the better in the last 20 years:
• The amount we recycle and compost has grown more than 40
percent since 1996.
• Recycling facilities now outnumber landfills two to one.
• More than 70 percent of the U.S. population has access to
curbside recycling through more than 9,800 programs.
• Communities such as Portland, Oregon, are recovering 70 percent
of their recyclable materials from the trash.
• More than 200 U.S. communities compost food scraps from
residents.
•
WHERE ELSE DID TIERNEY GO WRONG?
A lot has changed over 20 years, but the reasons to recycle are as
strong as ever. Let’s dive deeper into why recycling matters today
and how Tierney got it wrong in his article:
Recycling and Zero Waste are about natural resource
conservation, creating green jobs, combating climate change,
protecting public health and ending social injustices.
Saving landfill space is not a compelling reason to recycle. Besides,
municipal landfills are full of toxics, and they leak all too often. The
good news is that if we maximize our recycling potential and practice
Zero Waste, then we either won’t need to build more landfills or we’ll
need far fewer of them.
Recycling is good for business.
Who says so? Industry titans including General Motors, Toyota,
Sierra Nevada and Xerox—all recycle and have committed to Zero
Waste to improve their bottom line. And wait, there’s more: corporate
giants Unilever, Philips, Google and Hewlett Packard are
embracing the circular economy as the new way of doing business.
Recycling helps to significantly reduce the greenhouse gas
pollution driving climate change.
Tierney argues that we should recycle only those materials that have
the biggest climate impact and calls out plastic bottles for having a
relatively small impact—the key word here being “relative.” This is
wrong on two fronts.
First, climate change is an urgent, global challenge that requires
many solutions, including recycling plastics, if we are to have any
hope of avoiding the worst impacts of climate change. Clearly, we
need a myriad of solutions to help us counter the effects of
greenhouse gas emissions.
Second, all those plastic bottles really add up. If everyone in the
United States recycled only their plastic water bottles for one year (all
42.6 BILLION of them), that would offset the greenhouse gases
generated by 1,065,000 round-trips between London and New
York in coach every year.
Recycling creates jobs and communities are investing in
recycling for that reason.
For example: Michigan’s Republican governor is reinvesting in the
state’s household recycling programs in order to create jobs. The
U.S. could create 1.1 million new jobs by recycling 75% of our
discards. Tierney completely missed the jobs benefits of recycling
and Zero Waste and looked only at the direct costs of recycling
compared to landfills.
Low commodity prices are not a sign that recycling isn’t worth it
as Tierney suggests.
Sure, the recycling industry is affected by the global economy, and
U.S. exports are down, partly due to the strong dollar, putting
recycling in a slump. But if we gave up on recycling, then we’d forego
the huge economic, social and environmental benefits of conserving
natural resources and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which
Tierney downplays. (See Grist’s great response.)
Our supplies of fresh water, fossil fuels, metals and other
resources ARE already scarce and limited in parts of the world.
Will we run out completely? Probably not, but these materials may
become so expensive that only the super-rich or uber-powerful will
have access to them. In the next 50 years, we’re likely to run out of
silver, copper, and oil, just to name a few. Prices are projected to
rise and communities and business are investing in recycling to meet
rising global demand. Recycling significantly extends the life of many
materials, sometimes indefinitely as is the case with aluminum.
THE SHIFT TO ZERO WASTE
And here’s the biggest thing that’s changed since 1996: Communities
around the world are not only embracing recycling, they’re going for
Zero Waste.
Zero Waste asks us to reimagine how we live and what we truly
value. It requires creativity, ingenuity, and perseverance to redesign
our systems and resource use — from product design to disposal—
so that we can use fewer resources, conserve energy, mitigate
climate change, reduce water usage, prevent the creation of toxins,
and stop ecosystem destruction. Zero Waste also captures materials
we would normally throw away and uses them, instead of natural
resources, to make new products, creating far less pollution and
feeding local economies.
And as luck would have it, Zero Waste turns out to be one of the
fastest, easiest, most cost-effective ways a community can reduce its
climate impact. It’s time to stop whining about taking out the recycling
and get busy building the Zero Waste communities of the future. Our
kids will thank us.