America Finally Admits Recycling Doesn’t Work

The way we currently do it doesn't work, but that doesn't mean that it's not a worthwhile thing to do!

If we were all slightly less lazy and were willing to separate things more like other countries, it would work much better. Or, be willing to pay the true costs of many of the materials.

Is this website biased towards any political ideology? A pop up had some political verbiage but I closed it before reading. Seems like a charged article.

Wide-spectrum recycling efforts in the United States has only been in practice for about 20 years. Earlier metal and glass recycling efforts existed prior to that but the widespread implementation of plastic recycling programs is only a couple of decades old.

20 years is not a long time to solve such a difficult problem. 20 years after the invention of the transistor the first microprocessor had not been invented-- and determining how to handle millions of tons of plastics is a lot harder than figuring out how to shrink down a transistor.

One of the problems with recycling programs is that most of the outputs of electronics and plastic recycling are in foreign countries, countries that cannot cope with the ecological impacts of being the dumping grounds of US and EU recycling shipments.

One simple way to decrease the costs and increase the effectiveness of recycling efforts is to require that packaging be made of easily-recyclable materials.

Assertions about an activity like recycling based on an economic argument makes as much sense as applying capital-M Market theories to healthcare, nutrition, and environmentalism.

In places where capital-M Market theories are applied to those areas, what occurs is that the rich enjoy outstanding healthcare while the poor are discharged from emergency rooms onto the streets in hospital gowns and slippers after being stabilized, people die ten years sooner than those in equally-industrialized nations because they are addicted to high fructose corn syrup, and fracking firms poison West Virginian watersheds because jobs trump the need for clean water.

Plastics and e-waste are difficult to recycle, and absent massive investment in research and development will likely be difficult to recycle so long as there is an infinite variety of them and potential consumers are on the other side of the globe.

People who argue from economics will continue to do so like cult members convinced of the infallibility of their prophets as a metaphorical line of misery and destruction keeps rising and engulfing the less fortunate, so long as the line does not rise to their level.

But it will, and when it does the "job creators" will realize that you can neither eat nor breathe an investment portfolio.

One day, humanity's addiction to plastics and the near-perpetual problems they create (the persistent presence of microplastics in sea life and the human bloodstream being just one) will be seen as a mistake as grave as leaded gasoline.

I find the evidence provided by this article is far too thin ans anecdotal to support the claim. If nothing else, it makes no distinction between plastic recycling and alumimnum recycling, for example.

If the Koch connection is true, I would infer the agenda is to spread FUD about recycling. I can’t imagine the motivation for that. Perhaps that Koch industries own Georgia-Pacific and Koch-Minerals, both of which profit from increased raw natural resource consumption.

The root of the problem is that the environmental costs of producing difficult-to-recycle plastic are not being paid by the manufacturers. A solution is to make manufacturers internalize those costs: require a deposit or fee for every gram of plastic manufactured or imported. Scale the fee to cover the actual cost of recycling.

Manufacturers that start to use more environmentally-friendly materials will have lower costs, and will be able to sell their products at a lower price, leading to more market share. There will still be some use of difficult- or impossible-to-recycle plastics, but we as a society can express our distaste for storing garbage by adjusting the fees.

Recycling can work for certain things like paper, especially corrugated cardboard. The most ridiculous thing was back in the 80s when the decision was made that cutting down trees for paper bags was a bad thing and to use plastic bags instead. So instead of using a renewable resource we are stuck with plastic bags that end up everywhere and jam up recycling machines. Let's at least go back to paper or use more multi-use bags.

Ummm how about this concept, from recent headlines China is refusing to accept it because it the recyclables are filthy. That tells me many people are not actually recycling they are just separating items. When you go return beer bottles to a deposit location, most refuse to take them if they are filthy... it is common sense!

Funny that recycling in other countries like Germany actually works! https://earth911.com/business-policy/recycling-in-germany/

People giving up plastics for a period of time rather than chocolate(ie Lent in Ireland) led by the government may be a much better solution than endlessly recycling according to dogma. Reduce and reuse is more disruptive to people's daily habits and materialistic standards, and is a hard choice for some to make.

An alternative is compostable packaging for everything - practically though I'm not sure it's feasible. We need far better waste capture for co-firing, landfill, or integration into substrates in construction.

Recycling is nice as it is indeed feel good. And flawed as directs efforts from what might be actually required for the public to do.

I think there are a lot more parts of "recycling" that are working besides putting recycling products in a separate trash can.

In Chicago now, you have to pay for bags (plastic or paper) at any major store. It's 7 cents per bag. I have no numbers on how effective it has been, but everywhere I go, I rarely see anyone getting the bags from the stores.

Programs like this and NYC's styrofoam ban seem to be very effective in the "reduce/reuse" portions of reduce, reuse, recycle. Can/bottle deposits are effective too. I doubt very many cans in NYC aren't recycled.

Recycling does indeed work, as proven by the last few billion years on this planet - literally everything that ever was on the Earth is either still around or has been recycled over and over. It is the concept of 'waste' - introduced by a recently arrived species - that doesn't work. Unless there is some infinitely expandable place to put it, producing ANY amount of unusable or unrecyclable waste that accumulates will at some point in the future become a problem. This is math that even the most rabid Koch bros follower can't argue with.

In the 1980s, recycling of compostables ("GFT", for vegetables, fruit and garden waste) become common in Netherland. Amsterdam abandoned it again during the 1990s, I think, mostly because the quality of the GFT waste was too low.

We're recycling plenty of other stuff, though: paper, glass, and plastic, mostly. Plastic is fairly recent, but the others are old, so I assume they work.

If people want to do more to help the environment then they can use reusable stuff. I know poeple who use paper plates and plasitc forks for EVERYTHING. Bring your own bags to the store instead of getting plastic. There are other methods to reduce ones individual waste.

i really have no point except we can find other ways.

The Foundation for Economic Education is listed as a partner organization of the Charles Koch Institute.

They take a bit from PopSci, but miss the conclusion... maybe they need to check their own facts...

It's worth considering the source of this article.