What do you really know about recycling?
By Karen Kempf

June 2004

Perhaps you know that recycling saves energy and reduces the use of virgin materials needed for manufacturing, thus conserving our natural resources. It creates less air and water pollution than products manufactured from virgin materials, and it cuts back on the amount of waste sent to landfills and incinerators where trash is either buried being sealed in so they can not decompose, or they are burned and toxins are released into the air. But as they say there is always another side to the story and recycling does have its downside. Although the process of remanufacturing recycled products into new products generally causes less pollution than the manufacturing of new products from virgin materials, it is not free from creating its own pollution. In fact most recycling processes are actually “downcycling” instead of recycling. For example: every time plastic goes through the recycling process it creates more pollution as plastic isextremely toxic when melted down --which it is in order to make new products. Every time a piece of plastic is recycled it becomes a weaker plastic; thus more chemicals or other materials are added to it to make it stronger. Specifically, in the case of plastic it usually can not be recycled into the item it once was -- plastic bottles become fleece jackets not more plastic bottles. Downcycling is only slowing the process of waste creation, it is not stopping it, nor is it preventing pollution from happening. Knowing this you may wonder if recycling is worth doing at all. In my opinion yes it is, because it is still a better alternative to sending things to landfills and incinerators. More importantly, you should know that recycling is not the end all be all answer to waste reduction. It is only one small piece of the solution, the third step of the solid waste management hierarchy – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. The U.S. creates an average of 4.3 pounds of solid waste per person per day! To prevent this, we must reduce the amount of trash we create by changing our consumption habits. If we cannot reduce we should reuse as much as possible or repair what is broken, and lastly we should recycle. But the biggest part of the solution is to completely change the way we make things. We must make products that reduce waste and pollution at all stages of it life cycle: production, use, reuse, recycling, and if necessary decomposition. Or better yet, don’t create waste and pollution at all. “Pollution is just resources we aren't using.” R. Buckminster Fuller