Is recycling the problem, not the solution? – Australia

Posted on November 15, 2022 by DrRossH in Plastic Recycling

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Economist Jason Murphy has a different take. Recycling plastic, he argues, is “kind of bullshit”.

  1. People are very worried about reducing landfill – but landfill size is only a minor environmental problem compared to reducing greenhouse emissions.
  2. With the exception of aluminium, recycling is extremely inefficient. It is much, much cheaper to make new products. That’s why our recycling market does not work.
  3. Recycling makes us feel good about all the stuff we throw away – which enables us to keep consuming. Consumption is the real problem, not recycling.

In sum: recycling does not work and just makes us consume more.

The University of Western Australia’s Dr Tim Kurz, who worked on those experiments, says recycling makes us feel as though “we’ve fulfilled our moral duty”.

 

Does recycling make us consume more?

Recycling is the darling of environmentalists. But business likes it as well. An investigation by NPR in 2020 found evidence Big Plastic spent millions promoting plastic recycling – when they knew most of what they produced could never be recycled.

“If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment,” Larry Thomas, former president of the Society of the Plastics Industry, told NPR.

So thinking something can be recycled can distract us from the environmental damage it represents. But does recycling actually make us consume more?

Germany introduced a plastic container deposit scheme in 2003. Plastic bottle use dramatically increased in the years afterwards, at the expense of reusable glass bottles.

On this last point, are glass bottle really reused or are the more likely to be broken down and then remade into new bottles.  If the latter that is far more energy intensive than making a plastic bottle.