Rethinking the economics of recycling

Brought to you by Canton’s Sustainability Committee

Many people like to argue that recycling isn’t worth all the effort and attention it’s given. To a certain extent they’re right. The way we currently recycle isn’t always worth it, at least not from an economic standpoint. You could make the case that our current recycling system doesn’t even make all that much sense from an environmental standpoint.

But as Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Edward Humes puts it, “When we start thinking about waste as a resource and stop thinking about it as something to throw into a hole in the ground, you start seeing all kinds of opportunities to change the way we do things.”

In a 2015 interview on public radio station KCRW, Humes talked about how of all of the major consumer economies in the world, Americans, per capita, are among the most wasteful. “We just throw out more stuff,” he said.

Most materials, including some plastics, can be economically recycled, he contended. Take plastic beverage bottles — which we as a country throw away by the billions each year — as one example. Humes cited studies by the Environmental Protection Agency that found that manufacturers could save some 76 percent on the energy costs of producing their products if they just used recycled plastics instead of virgin plastics.

Humes noted that instead of recycling all of the materials that we possibly could, we’re locking away billions of dollars of potentially useful materials in our landfills. He went on to suggest that we should look at our entire waste stream and start replacing materials that can’t be recycled with those that can, or at least eliminate the subsidies and incentives that exist that perpetuate the continued use of wasteful materials.

Instead of thinking about recycling as the solution to all that ails the environment, we’d be better off looking at it as a part of the solution. Remember the mantra, reduce/reuse/recycle? If consumers and corporations alike can reduce how much they produce and purchase, and reuse as much as they possibly can, then we can start looking at recycling as the last best option.

Send your recycling suggestions and comments to cantonsustainability@gmail.com.

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Posted by Guest on Apr 1 2022. Filed under Opinion. Both comments and pings are currently closed.