Does Recycling Actually Make a Difference? What about Landfills?
Everyone knows that person who refuses to recycle because they say it doesn’t actually do anything. Know anyone like that? Does recycling actually make a difference to our environment?
The Good News About Recycling
Perhaps you’ve heard — or made — the argument that putting more trucks on the road to collect recycled materials, and building the machines necessary to process recyclables so they can be reused, seems like it can’t be good for the environment.
Scientists believe that from studies of life cycle analyses, material by material, have shown that recycling outpaces landfilling as an environmental practice. Even though you are putting a truck out there to collect it, even though you are putting mechanics out there to process it, you are entirely offsetting that extra activity because you are saving energy by replacing raw materials over and over again.”
How recycling works: Here’s What Actually Happens to a Plastic Container After You Recycle It
So the short answer is that yes, recycling does help the Earth. But that, unfortunately, doesn’t tell the whole story.
The Bad News About Recycling
In full transparency, much of which revolves around the fact that a lot of the materials we think are being recycled actually aren’t.
There are multiple reasons this might happen. Say, for example, that a glass container is thrown into the recycling bin but it breaks on the way to its first stop, a materials recovery facility. Then it can no longer be recycled and will be thrown away during the sorting process, says Sanborn. Similarly, if a pizza box comes in with too much food contamination, it ends up in a landfill.
But even when a product isn’t contaminated and is sorted — and perhaps even processed into a material that could potentially be reused — there aren’t always companies interested in buying these recycled materials. This is a problem for low-quality plastics in particular.
“Plastic leaches into food and stuff, where glass doesn’t. That results in a lot of companies not wanting to buy recycled plastic. As a result, much of this plastic ends up in a landfill — even if you recycle it properly. The US used to sell a lot of plastic to China, but several years ago they stopped taking it. They have their own to dispose of.
By doing what we’re doing and creating things that don’t belong in the environment, they escape, and we’re doing damage that we have absolutely no idea how bad it is. Whales that beached themselves and finding literally 37 pounds of plastic inside of them. They’re now finding plastic fibers from clothes in plankton. It’s coming into the entire food chain. We have no concept of how bad this already is because too much waste has escaped. The question now is: What do we do?”
The news about plastics sounds dire, yes, and if you’d previously assumed that everything you threw into your recycling bin was getting a second life in a new product, then it may seem depressing to find out that’s not always the case. But these certainly aren’t reasons to stop recycling, say Sanborn and Gedert.
Minimize resource use. Need a straw at a restaurant, say not thanks. Take your own grocery bags. Try to buy sustainably produced goods is also a good way to vote with your money. Patronize retailers who tell you what they do to prevent waste and be sustainable.
Recycling is still a better alternative than sending your waste straight to a landfill. Recycling is on the positive side of the carbon footprint equation even though it’s not perfect. New materials and better research help us to use things over and over and find new uses for things we throw away.
Recycling that does seem worth the effort.
Aluminum cans – about 20 cans can be made from recycled ones using the same energy it takes to make one new can from virgin materials. An aluminum can tossed in the trash wastes as much energy as pouring out half of that can’s volume of gasoline
Glass- can be used over and over again. Recycled glass is the main ingredient in making “new” glass, and an estimated 80 percent of recovered glass containers are made into new glass bottles.
Steel – Recycling one ton of steel prevents the mining of 2,500 pounds of iron ore, 1,400 pounds of coal and 120 pounds of limestone [source: Scottsdale].
Waste Management Inc., one of the biggest waste companies in the US has three rules about recycling: they accept bottles, cans, paper, and cardboard, keep food and liquids from recycling material, and no loose plastic bags or plastic wrap. It’s best to make an attempt to wash or at least rinse out bottles and cans. Regarding single use plastic bags, some communities have even begun to ban them. In the recycle world they are evil. The single-use plastic grocery bag has been targeted by environmental groups as a ubiquitous symbol of waste. If grocers charged a dollar for every one, they used to bag your purchase, patrons would quickly change behavior.
Plastics are usually downcycled, meaning it is recycled into something of lesser value like fleece or lumber, but requires 70 percent less energy to recycle than to produce from virgin materials [source: Economist]. Even if plastic can only be recycled once, that’s one time that oil and natural gas can be saved.
Discarded plastic bags can travel hundreds of miles on the wind and float along rivers and oceans, if they don’t lodge in trees first. Every year, an estimated 100,000 marine mammals and amphibians and 1 million sea birds die from ingesting plastic waste [source: Surfrider
Far out in the Pacific Ocean floats an island of garbage twice the size of Texas. Known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, it’s an accidental accumulation of millions of tons of floating debris — much of it plastic — trapped in a convergence of oceanic currents.
There is a gray area concerning the pluses and minuses of recycling for the simple reason that it is difficult to follow a product through its life cycle, from the factory to you to the recycling center.
Other contributors to landfills:
Organic waste from spoiled foods, trimmings, yard waste and other formerly live items are a large part of the waste flow. Over time these items produce methane and/or carbon dioxide from the breakdown process. Some landfills attempt to capture these gasses.
Demolition waste from remodeling or tearing down old structures adds to the growing problem of landfills. Much of the materials form this source is not easily sorted and reused (lumber, tile, concrete, gypsum board, insulation, metals, etc. Also industrial waste from mining or manufacturing can end up in a landfill.
Used clothing. Cheap clothing usually from developing countries are worn a few times and then discarded and end up in a landfill. Polyester clothing has a long life and does not easily breakdown in a landfill. If its burned, it produces noxious gasses. Solution? Be thoughtful and consider what you buy and could it be recycled. Patagonia, H&M, North Face and other retailers accept their used products for recycle.
In summary, the US has a long way to go. We must, should, and can do a better job since we only have one planet. Every little effort adds up. Changing our thinking on how to do more and better communications from our communities to let us know if we are gaining or falling behind in our efforts would be beneficial.
Here are some stats to see how we compare to developed nations. Unfortunately, we in the US, don’t rank in the top ten.
- Germany has the highest recycling rate of any country in the world at 66.1%.
- Along with Germany, Singapore (60.6%), Wales (60.2%), South Korea (59.0%), and Austria (55.9%) make up the top five countries that recycle the most.
- Interestingly, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan are the only non-European in the top 20 nations with the highest recycling rates.
- Sweden is revolutionizing how people recycle by implementing a country-wide system called Panta, which pays its citizens every time they deposit recyclables, such as cans or bottles.
- Similarly, Norway, Germany, and Denmark have recycling schemes that resemble Sweden’s Panta.
- In 2018, China began shutting down recycling facilities that accept tons of trash from other countries, such as the United States, due to environmental issues.
- About 39% of materials recycled by Singapore come from demolition, construction, and industrial industries.
- The US has recycled about 67.2 million tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) compared to 267.8 million tons of MSW generated in 2017.
- Furthermore, the United States also composted 27 million tons of MSW in the same year.
- Kamatsu, a mountain village in Japan, segregates its trash into up to 35 types to optimize its recycling process.
Want to know more? Reach out to your community recycling center or municipal waste website. See what the rules are and do your best to follow them. We don’t have any place else to live, so we need to take care of what we have.