Are We Recycling or Wishcycling: Who is to Blame.

Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast

Episode 22

Are We Recycling of Wishcycling?

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Adventures in Sustainable Living podcast. This is your host Patrick and this is episode # 22 called Are We Recycling or Wish-cycling: Who is to Blame

I want to start this episode by asking a simple question. Have you ever taken the blame for something that was not your fault? Have you ever been the scape goat for someone else’s mistake? Have you ever had a coworker throw you under the bus for something that was actually a shared responsibility? Or have you ever sat back and watched someone shift the blame of a mistake onto someone else?

I think we have all experience this at one time or another. And I think we all have a similar angry and frustrated reaction to such things. People shift the blame onto someone else in order to divert attention away from themselves or divert attention away from the real problem. 

Let me give you an example. Do you really think that banning plastic straws is going to save the planet? And yet we hear this all the time. Of all the plastic trash that ends up in the ocean, plastic straws are a minuscule portion of that. Now I can quote you statistics on this is you want. But that is boring. Allow me to give you a real life example. 

A few years ago I was doing some voluntary beach clean up on the small island of Utila, which is one of the bay island off the coast of Honduras. I was there doing some advanced training in scuba diving. As part of my training, I was required to spend half a day doing beach clean up. So there we were on this small beach, a crew of about 15 people. In four hours time, we pick up 40 large garbage bags full of plastic trash. You want to know how many plastic straws I picked up during that time? Three. 

Now we watch or hear about a video that went viral on the internet that was about someone pulling a plastic straw out of the nose of a sea turtle and suddenly we are bent out of shape over plastic strays. However, we are not focusing on the real problem at hand. And furthermore, things such as this only shift the blame to someone else. 

It is so easy to make the commitment to never again use a plastic straw but what about the 4.9 lbs of waste that each of us produces every single day? What are you going to do about that?  Well you may immediately say that you will start recycling more, composting more, producing less trash. But how far are you willing to go? 

What if everyone that cried out about the environment and climate change was required to live off the grid, eat only the things they were able to grow, wear only the clothes they were able to knit from scratch then there wouldn’t be much of a environmental movement now would there?  

But again most people would object to such a concept. But again, just how far are we willing to go? 

The simple fact is that switching to paper straws is not going to save the planet. It only diverts our attention away from the real problem. Which brings me to recycling. 

I am sure that we are all familiar with the triangle icon that represents recycling and of course the 3 Rs, which are reduce, reuse, recycle. Well, this is fantastic but if recycling were the answer to our waste problems then way do we still have a problem with plastic trash. 

Now I think we all can agree that we live in a hyper-consumeristic society. I have certainly addressed this issue in previous episodes as well as how much waste we produce. But, there is the thing. And I am going to say that I am guilty of this as well.  As much as I realize that we all need to change our wasteful lifestyles, we are consumers are not to blame, at least not totally. But according to the media, and so many other resources that I’ve read, we are bad Americans, we are wasteful, and we need to change our evil ways. 

In so many ways that may be true. After all, the US comprises 5% of the world’s population yet we consume 25% of the resources. But I can say that over and over again and sooner or later I am going to starting sound like the teacher in the Charlie Brown cartoons that is always in the back ground going wah, whant, wah, wah, wah. So sooner or later you are not going to listen. 

Granted, it is fantastic in so many ways if you say I will no longer use a plastic stray. I will no longer walk out of the supermarket with a plastic bag. Because this means you are taking steps in the w right direction and you are paying attention to what you are doing.

But if you think recycling is going to save the planet then you are wrong. 

Did you know that until 2018 most of the materials to be recycled in the US were actually sent to China? This has been going on for many years unknown to any of us. We actually package up our trash and send it to China. But, as of 2018, China is no longer accepting recycling materials from the US because they have their own crap to deal with. So what this has done is the shift the responsibility to town, cities, and states to what they need to do. 

Now I am not oblivious to the fact that it takes time, resources and money to recycle materials. Now when I lived in a small community in South Carolina, the city added a small monthly fee to your cost for waste disposal to support the recycling program. I was more than happy to pay the fee of course. I was also surprised at just how little trash we produced and how much actually went into recycling especially when recycling was made easy.  

But, here is the thing. Once again the responsibility was placed on me as the consumer. But this is only shifting the blame.  

I do agree that recycling is far better than throwing something away. We can even call someone out for not recycling, shame on you, and thereby reinforcing our own green behavior. But what you may not realize is that only 9% of the worlds plastic is even recycled. Most of it still ends up in a landfill. So, in other words, recycling if often just another word for the long, expensive detour that a plastic bottle takes on it way to the landfill. 

So remember the teacher on the Charlie Brown cartoons in the back ground going wha, whant, wha, whant, wha, wha

Recycle, recycle, recycle, recycle. 

But this commentary is only shifting the blame to the consumer. Yes, we as consumers do play an extremely important part in this cycle. But, all this attention on us as consumers is like someone throwing you under the bus and making you take responsibility for something you did not do in the first place. 

So, here is the REAL issue. Our answer to our plastic problem has always been to recycle. So, why do we still have a problem with plastic pollution? Maybe it is because our attention has been diverted away from the real problem. We are being convinced that the problem is with us because we are not recycling. What we should really be focusing on is the industry that produces all the plastic waste in the first place.  

So, look at it this way. The industry machine is putting all of their money into waste management, they are pushing the concept of recycling and also teaching people how to improve their recycling habits. But the only thing this is doing is throwing the consumer under the bus. In other words placing the blame for plastic pollution on the consumer. 

What this means is that plastic manufactures continue to produce single-use plastics and businesses can continue to package products in plastic without ever taking any responsibility. Do you really think that when a plastic coke bottle washes up on the beach that the Coco Cola Company is going to get fined. Instead, what the industry is asking is “Why was that not recycled?” This kind of narrative forces the consumer to take the responsibility for managing the plastic waste problem. So instead of the question  “Why was that not recycled?” we should be asking “Why is the industry still producing single use plastics in the first place when environmentally friendly alternative are easily available.?” 

Again I want to emphasize that only 9% of the plastics produced actually gets recycled. And only half of the product packaging in the world get recycles. 

But, there are changes coming into the industry. And the state of Maine is sort of at the forefront of this issue. Now that most of our recycling material is no longer shipped to China, this has had a tremendous economic impact on the recycling industry. In fact, many small communities can no longer bear the financial cost of recycling. 

But what this has also done, if that many cites and towns across the US is now supporting laws that wold force the companies who make products pay for the cost of recycling and disposing of these products. These laws are called extended producer responsibility laws or EPR for short. What these laws effectively do is to shift the responsibility from the consumers and back to the companies that produce the products in the first place. 

The simple fact is that the whole system of recycling is not working. But, how did we actually get to this point?

First of all recycling first hit the scene in the 1970s and ‘80s. But things were quite different then. Our recycling system was multi-streamed. This means that different recyclable materials went into different containers. People actually spent time sorting recyclables, washing glass bottles, removing labels and making sure their recycle bins were free of food waste.

At the turn of the century, that all changed. China was a booming manufacturing market. Consequently, they needed all the raw materials they could get and the country took all our recyclables, regardless of quality. This demand for materials combined with China’s lax environmental regulations, shifted global recycling from multi-stream to single-stream.  This means that people put all their recyclables — glass, paper, plastics, food scraps, pizza boxes, Styrofoam, whatever — into one bin, which waste companies then collected and sent to China.

With all this plastic coming into China, trash islands began to pop up, waterways and oceans were filled with plastic trash. Meanwhile, countries like the U.S. just simple ignored the problem. We kept collecting whatever passed as recycling and shipped it to the other side of the world. Out of sight, out of mind.

Well, that all stopped in 2018 when China no longer accepted our recycling materials. In other words, China no longer wants to deal with our poor recycling habits and we were quite literally left holding the trash bag.

But even that is not the complete picture. There are many challenges to the recycling industry. 

First of all there is a complete lack of education about recycling. We have come a long way but only 50% of Americans actually recycle everyday. Many people are unaware of what can actually be recycled in the first place. 

Expensive services: And then there is the expense. In many cities, the curb side service for recycling is simple too expensive so we are constantly pushed toward the trash bin instead of the recycle bin.

Inadequate services: And in many cases there are inadequate services. Houston, Texas is a perfect example. In 2013 they had such an extensive waiting list that people could not even obtain bins needed to separate their trash. 

Lack of support: There is also a complete lack of support in many communities simply because there are more pressing issues to address. In order for a recycling program to work, there needs to be cooperation from both legislators and residents who want to go green.

There are also start up costs to address and the simple lack of alternative services. In communities where curbside services for recycling is not available, residents have to take their materials to facilities where they can recycle. But the simple fact is that many of these facilities are just not available. 

You know I used to be happy that my community had a trash service where you could drive by their facility just to simply drop off recycle materials. They stopped allowing people to do that and some of my friends recently told me that the waste management company was made the cost of recycled prohibitive so they stopped doing it. 

But, here we are again, being thrown under the bus and being forced to take full responsibility for a problem we did not create in the first place. 

So, what is the answer? 

Back to the 3 Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle. But to those 3 Rs we should add Refuse, Repair, and Rot. We should refuse single-use plastics, disposable items, and junk mail. We should repair things instead of replace them. The the rot refers to composting. Recycle should actually be the last resort. 

The simple fact is that the plastics problem is a top down problem. As consumers, yes we need to accept some of that responsibility. We need to reeducate ourselves, compost everything we can, swallow our pride and sort our trash and learn about what local services are available. 

But, it needs to go bigger than that. Unless we stop using single use plastic items, the problem is not going away. If you listened to my episode titled “Choices Make Changes”, then you know that our choices as consumers drives the market place. So make better choices. It comes down to deciding which types of plastics are absolutely necessary, such as medical supplies. And even those need to be make out of material than can be recycled. Everything else simply needs to be cut off. Manufacturers need to be held responsible for their own practices instead of throwing the consumer under the bus. 

So, what is my conclusion? 

Recycling is not the answer to our waste problem. There are many challenges to the recycling industry. We as consumer are being thrown under the bus for the plastic waste problem and yet the industry that produces the waste is not being held accountable. 

So what can we do as individuals. Remember, choices make changes and many times sustainability is about making better choices. 

Your challenge for this week is Refuse, Repair, Rot. Do not allow the industry, society, your neighbors, your coworkers throw you under the bus and place the blame on you. Take responsibility for yourself and stop wish-cycling. Refuse, Repair, and Rot. 

Refuse single-use plastics, disposable items, and junk mail. Repair things instead of replace them. Learn to compost as much as you can. And recycle as a last resort.

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