Recycling Part Two: We Need to Ditch Performative Environmentalism

Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast

Episode 78

Recycling Part Two

We Need to Ditch Performative Environmentalism

With all the talk about going green, I look at some of the things we do and question if we are doing more harm than good. Now more than ever we use every “R” word in the book: reuse, recycle, regenerate, reclaim, reabsorb, recreate, and even more.

But is this all just a public performance. Are we just showing off instead of showing up. In this episode I want to discuss performative environmentalism. By doing so, I am going to make you feel bad about some of your green choices. Then I am going to tell you how you can truly make a difference. So stick around for Recycling Part Two: We Need to Ditch Performative Environmentalism.

Welcome back everyone to the Adventures in Sustainable Living podcast. This is your host Patrick and this is E78 Recycling Part Two: We Need to Ditch Performative Environmentalism.

Before we get started I would like to once again remind you that if you would like contact me with questions, concerns, or even suggestions on content, especially if there is something in particular you would like to hear about, you can contact me at [email protected].  Repeat. 

So, let’s get down to today’s discussion

With all the talk these days about going green, reducing our carbon footprint, and recycling, more and more these days we hear the “R” word. This is usually one of the following: reuse, recycle, regenerate, reclaim, reabsorb, recreate, and even more.

Typical to my personality, I got to wondering if we are actually doing the right thing. Are we actually approaching this in the right way. Or are we just showing off instead of showing up, meaning is all of this just a public performance and we are not even solving the underlying problem. Are we just showing off our green choices and making ourselves feel good all the while  missing the most important point of all. That is the basis of performative environmentalism. 

In this episode I first want to discuss how we developed this recycling mentality to begin with, where it came from and who started it. 

Secondly I want to define performative environmentalism and give you some good examples of how that works and what it means. 

Thirdly, I want to show you that in many ways the small little things we do to make ourselves feel better about the environment are actually meaningless.

Then I am going to show you that industry does nothing but promote this wasteful cycle.  

And lastly, I want to tell you how you can actually make a difference.  

In light of all the take about going green these days, several months ago I asked myself if there was any one thing that I did that had zero impact on the environment. The short answer to that is NO? It turns out that just being here on planet Earth, living and breathing, does have some impact. Anything we do beyond that, such as living our daily lives, has even further impact. That said, we all can’t just sit around and live like a bunch of zombies. We have to get on with the business of life.  

But while living our lives we have to keep in mind one of the basic principles of sustainability is having as little impact as possible. Part of the solution to that is to minimize our use of resources and reclaim what we do use by recycling. But as I have stated before that has challenges as well.  But until we solve some of our biggest problems, we still cannot ignore recycling. But before you cement this idea in your head that going green is actually a good idea, I would say it depends on how you go about it. 

But before we even get to that, taking a look at where we came from offers some valuable insight into why we are where we are today and why everything is such a mess.  

Once upon a time in our culture, maybe 75 years ago, if you wanted something to eat, or if you just wanted a cup of coffee, you actually sat down in a restaurant and you were served food on a china plate and coffee in a porcelain mug. This was the ideal circular model for doing business. The restaurant owner sold you food and coffee, there was very little waste. In fact, there were few litter bins on the street because there wasn’t a lot of trash. 

Beverages such as coke and beer were produced and distributed locally because bottles were expensive and heavy and transportation was slow. But again this was a circular system because bottles were collected, washed and used again. Additionally, the producer took responsibility for the product and the packaging. Milk and even some foods worked the same way. Milk came in glass bottles and it was delivered right to your door. Consequently there were bottlers, breweries, and diaries in every small city and town. It was a very simple, circular model. Local businesses operated by local people serving a local market. 

But then came the urban sprawl and the development of the interstate highway system. What most people don’t know is that a big part of that was a military move by the government but the end result is that is was now easy to move things around by truck. 

A man named Bill Coors recognized the opportunity and based his central brewery in Colorado. He actually invented the aluminum beer can and made it open source so that all the breweries could take advantage of the idea. Canned beer quickly became he American standard. 

With the new highways and ease of mobility, a new way of eating was developed. There was no need for expensive brick and mortar businesses when people could just eat in their cars. Furthermore, disposable packaging was vastly more efficient.By the 1960s automobile ownership was common place, fast food was the fasting growing sector of the restaurant industry, and people ate out of paper with either foam or paper cups, plastic wear for utensils and everything was disposable. 

The problem that soon developed was that no one knew what to do with the trash. When there were china plates and porcelain mugs there was no trash. Consequently, people either threw the garbage on the ground or out the car window. As a result of this the Keep America Beautiful program was developed by Phillip Morris, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Anheuser-Busch. This program pushed the message that each person was responsible for the destruction of nature and completely downplayed the role of industry in creating a disposable product in the first place. This was actually the beginning of placing environmental responsibility on the consumer. 

Then after years and years of people being well trained to pick up their trash a different problem emerged. The trash dumps were filling up. In steps the government with stricter manufacturing standards, bottle bills, the outlawing of water dumping, and restrictions on new incinerators. The industries options for dealing with the waste associated with their products were quickly narrowing. 

So, recycling was invented. 

Now recycling is shoved at us from every angle when the reality is that it is an extraordinary scam. We are taught that recycling is the most virtuous thing we can do and we pay serious taxes to make sure it gets done. We now get personal validation for doing the right thing and feel less guilty about throwing things away. However, this engrained behavior becomes a license to buy more product which in turn leads to more production and the selling of more stuff. The reality is that this somewhat circular system is just performative environmentalism. We feel good about what we do when we recycle but we are once again missing the most important point. 

Performative environmentalism is when a person acts in environmentally friendly ways just for the sake of uplifting and promoting their own virtue and appearance, or just making themselves feel better rather than genuinely desiring to protect and preserve the planet. It it what I call showing off instead of showing up. 

But “going green” is a hot topic these days. Consequently, industry is responding by producing huge swathes of environmentally friendly products. But is this just performative environmentalism to a higher degree but served up in the form of green washing. When a company puts more time and money into their appearance of being green when the behind-the-scenes reality is something quite opposite, that is called green washing. 

-An example of this was when British Petroleum launched a huge advertising campaign to promote how environmentally friendly they are when behind the scenes they were purchasing gas and oil wells at a record rate. 

-Another example is when Apple advertises that they are increasing the percentage of recycled components in their products while making no attempt to alter their underlying business model of pressuring people to purchase new phones every year.

Another perfect example is what I call the straw wars. While I am certain that most people have heard of this I am also certain that most people do not know the extent of this issue. It all seemed to start with a video of a sea turtle with a straw stuck it its nose that went viral on social media.

Now before I go on, you have to remember that I am both a veterinarian and a scuba diving instructor. Anything that saves animals, the environment, our oceans, and our planet is a good thing. 

However, I also hold the opinion that those key board warriors who march the anti-straw brigade through the streets of social media are doing nothing more than stoking the fires of performative environmentalism which does more harm than good. Such things cause people to focus on small individual actions that are almost completely meaningless. In other words, we are missing the point once again.  

The straw wars eventually caused the city of Seattle to ban the use of plastic straws in all food service industries. New York City, Charleston, South Carolina and Miami Beach, Florida all have their own version of bans in place. But while most of us might stand up and hail the fact that as a culture we won a small victory with the straw wars and saved untold numbers of sea turtles, which of course makes us congratulate ourselves, this only serves as a diversion from the fact that straws only make up 1% of the plastic pollution in the ocean and 40% of our plastic waste results from single-use plastic products. 

While it may seem virtuous to ban the use of in-flight straws, that flight from San Francisco to New York generates about 3 tons of CO2 per person. When you patronize your local fast food restaurant on you way home, and feel good about politely refusing the straw, you overlook the fact that the fast food industry produces 32 billion pounds of food waste per year and results in 676 million pounds of other waste as a result of their services.

Oh but please, I am fine without the straw. This is a prime example of performative environmentalism. We are doing small individual acts that make us feel good but we are missing the real point. 

I have noticed in recent months that more and more plastic food containers, especially plastic drink bottle, have written on the label a little note that says “Recycle Me”. So I of course dutifully rinse the bottle, remove the label and drop it in a recycle bin. It makes me feel as if I did the right thing. But this small action fails to address the fact that 1.3 billion plastic bottles are used each day and only 30% get recycled. It fails to address why industry is still producing single use plastics in the first place. This is performative environmentalism in the most harmful way.

Let’s take for example the bottled water industry which I discussed in my episode titled A Bottle of Deception. This industry was invented by convincing us that bottled water was better. Meanwhile we pay 1000 times more for the convenience of it being in a bottle. But their marketing ploy was fabulous. In fact, one of Pepsico marketing VPs said to investors in 2000, “When we are done, tap water will be relegated to showers and washing dishes.” And all those plastics bottles will no longer be considered garbage. The Coco-cola companies director of sustainability packaging says “Our vision is to no longer have our packaging viewed as being waste but as a resource for future use.”

But this doesn’t even broach the subject of what all these bottles are made of in the first place. By far the most common material used for drinks bottles is a compound called polyethylene terephthalate, or PET for short. It is strong, light weight, economical, shatterproof, and can even be washed and used repeatedly. The recycling of these bottle is considered an enormous industry success. 

The use of recycled PET—called RPET—is increasing due to an industry that is trying to go green. And this to some degree points to a commitment to a circular economy by brand owners. Recycling PET is expensive but the industry claims it saves 50% t0 60% of the energy required to make new plastic from raw material. But further study on the safety of RPET is needed. Some studies revealed that even more chemicals may be leaching into food and drinks from this new material.

Hopefully you are starting to get the picture that we are focusing on the wrong things. Just because something can be recycled does not mean that it actually gets recycled. And that is the problem.

Within 50 years we have gone from reusable items to single-use disposable items that have become the bane of our existence. We spend billions of dollars to build and maintain landfills. We complain about dirty cities and plastic waste islands floating in the ocean. We are stuck in this perpetuating addictive cycle of consuming, recycling, and then consuming more. We continue in our pervasive disposability practices that governments try to clean up and manage while we all accept this as a normal part of life while producers sidestep any responsibility for the end of life management of their products and designers perpetuate  stuff designed for disposability instead of durability 

Furthermore, if you really examine the impact that one person has on environmental change, you will find that it is a drop in the bucket compared to industry polluters. The impact that we have by purchasing a hybrid vehicle, converting to energy efficient light bulbs, going plastic free, going zero waste are insignificantly minor compared to the responsibility of big business and big oil.  

So at this point, you might be asking if going green is even worth it or you might start feeling that I am down playing individual responsibility. Actually I am not. But focusing on individual action is a grave error if it covers up the fact that industry has a much greater responsibility than the individual.  

But, I will tell you what really does matter. I will tell you the real reason why your individual action makes a big difference. If someone sees you recycling they are more likely to recycle. If your neighbor sees you installing solar panels, they are more likely to install solar as well. Then someone else does the same. Then the next person and the next. The power of individual action lies in the fact that social change starts with individual practice. And social changes often affect legal changes. And that is what gets the ball rolling. 

For those of you that have been following me for some time, you know very well that I am an independently minded person. I go out my way to live as independently as possible, control as much of my resources as possible, maintain my self employment status, and within reason make my own decisions. 

That said, there are many things I cannot control. But my reaction to all the things I cannot control is to position myself so as to minimize the impact. For example, I cannot avoid paying taxes. But I can be self employed and take advantage of numerous legal means to minimize my tax burden. I cannot control the price of gas. But I can get really creative and dramatically reduce my driving. I cannot control the price of food. But, I can produce my own food. 

The bottom line here is that I cannot save the planet but I can reduce my impact and teach others how to do the same. And it is quite possible for each and every one of us to find small ways to control our own resources in a much more sustainable way as opposed to being completely dependent on a supply chain that we cannot control.

And since we literally live in the age of information, ignorance is truly a choice because there is no excuse for anyone to not find out how to reduce their environmental impact. However, part of the problem with living in the age of information is that there is so much misinformation out there. 

For example, for many years we were told that eggs and even potatoes were bad for you. Tomatoes were once thought to be poisonous. With so much information out there it is hard to know what to believe.

At the end of the day a huge part of that misinformation comes from the producers of many of the products we consume.  The bottom line is that producers have convinced us that the consumers are to blame. They conveniently state that we are just the producers that are satisfying public demand. But these same companies like to confuse the public, promote distrust in climate science, impede vital policy changes so they can keep profiting while climate change is accelerating and the world is literally burning. 

Make no mistake, big industry and big oil are to blame for many of the environmental changes. Just 20 of them are responsible for 35% of global emissions. The impact that we have as individuals is nothing compared to industry. One household going car free, flight free, or even going vegan many save 4 tons of emissions per year. But the world needs to slash tens of billions of tons annually. This type of changes requires government investment and strong regulations.

But while one individual may not make a difference, the true power is in collective action. Individuals acting collectively will shift mores and norms, change consumer culture, curb emissions, and make drastic political change more likely. If only one percent of us takes action then that could actually result in changing our culture. 

But if we are truly going to convert to a circular economy, we are going to have to ditch performative environmentalism. You may feel good about refusing the straw at the drive through window but look at the amount of waste that the fast industry produces. It may make you feel good to take your reusable coffee cup to Starbucks but what difference does that make when you sit for 20 minutes idling your gas guzzling SUV at the drive through window. 

You have to remember that the greenest waste is the waste that you never produce. Recycling, albeit a good thing, should be the last resort. The whole point to this episode is that we need to address the underlying problem, which is our wasteful lifestyle, instead of making ourselves feel better about recycling. 

At the end of the day, we are going to have to do more than change our coffee cups. We are going to have to change our culture. And as a culture we could actually sit down in a restaurant and drink coffee, buy beer in refillable and returnable bottles similar to what is done in most of the world. But that is going to require some lifestyle changes and some loss of convenience. That is going to require all of us to show up instead of showing off. But the added benefit is that we get too slow down and actually have a conversation. And you should never underestimate the power of a good conversation. 

And now just to start wrapping things up for this week if you have comments, questions, or even suggestions about content, please contact me at [email protected]. And if you have enjoyed this episode, then please take the time to leave me with a review and don’t forget to subscribe to the Adventures in Sustainable Living podcast as well as my companion blog Off Grid Living News. 

In closing I want to leave you with a quote from Confucius. “Life is really simple, but men insist on making it complicated.” 

But it is possible to keep your life simple. All you have to do is go through life and leave only footprints. Live minimally, use only what you need and be sustainable.   

This is your host Patrick signing off until next week. Always remember to live sustainably because this is how we build a better future. 

Patrick