Recycling is bullshit (mostly)

So, we’ve learned that recycling is bullshit. Well, mostly bullshit. It turns out that all the efforts we were being asked to make, putting jars and cans and paper and plastic into a blue bin and setting it out to the curb really isn’t doing much at all.

The first domino fell when China made the decision to take our trash that was intended for recycling. Turns out they have enough trash they can recycle. Good for them. They shouldn’t be the garbage dump of the world. The governments of the western world started panicking. ‘What do we do now?’ The sham was up. All the lies they had been telling us have now become apparent. Turns out, they are just taking the ‘recyclable material’ and moving into the dump.

And you know what? I’m glad China stopped taking our trash. Why the hell are NIMBYing our recycling over to them? We should be looking after it ourselves.

Why is recycling so hard? It comes down to a few things.

1. The blue bin that takes everything is actually a crap idea. Sure, people don’t have to sort at home which encourages more to go into the blue bin, but it results in contamination. People need to learn to sort their recycling. More on that later…
2. Standardization… Governments need to force manufacturers to standardize the use of materials.
3. We are lazy pieces of shit who are addicted to convenience. We are all hypocrites in this. You, me, everyone.

So, now that we have accepted that we suck, and are lazy pieces of shit, what are we going to do about it? Let’s break it down.

First off, what is easy to recycle?

1. Aluminum cans… Apparently it takes 95% less energy to recycle aluminum than it does to produce aluminum from ore. Approximately 36% of all Aluminium produced in the United States comes from old recycled scrap. Hooray for us.
2. Paper… easily done. The paper recycling rate in the US is 63%. Pretty good. You know what screws up paper recycling? Getting the paper wet. You know what gets paper wet a lot? Unsorted recycling blue bins. Paper can be recycled up to 7 times.
3. Glass… infinitely recyclable. The beer companies that use the industry standard bottle (good job Beer Store in Ontario!) can reuse bottles over and over again. Those that are not the standard are converted into cullet.
4. Plastic bottles… sort of… most people throw them in the trash (remember what I said about convenience?). Some are more recyclable than others.

I’ll keep revisiting recycling. Greenhouse gases isn’t the only environmental issue you need to worry about.