4 ms·

The arc of recycling bothers me. When I was a kid, you'd be socially shamed for not recycling or questioning it as a solution. Moving into college, people sta

The arc of recycling bothers me. When I was a kid, you'd be socially shamed for not recycling or questioning it as a solution. Moving into college, people started feeling socially safe to quietly call out that the recycling program might be net-negative for the environment. Slowly the conversation evolved in my circles to rewriting recycling's history as a "raising awareness" program. Where the goal was to bring awareness to this issue or that issue by socially pressuring a bunch of people into sorting and washing their rubbish. Finally we are getting to the point where we can have an honest conversation about recycling. But it's a real bummer because we've spent _decades_ misallocating capital into potentially worthless infrastructure that fails to meaningfully move the needle on the problem. Would have been really cool if, instead of this whole social/political signaling thing we did, we instead spent that time and tax money developing processing facilities for compostable materials that are suitable for shipping/packaging and food storage. Many current social/political ecomovements seem to be going through the same trajectory.

darepublic 3y ago
There was reduce and reuse.. but then those snakes in the garden conspired to add a third R.. an evil R.
johnea 3y ago
social/political signaling? Let's just call it plasti-corps propaganda. This really is the fault of the corps. Recycling _could_ be practical, but corps want to throw it out and make more, because that's cheaper. And if the article wants to talk about lying, it really needs to include the lying that US waste disposal corps are doing about what can go in their recycling bins. 3/4 of what current waste disposal says is recyclable goes straight to the landfill.
- marmaduke 3y ago
  Is it really the fault of corps? I mean, is that a useful explanation? Corps exist to maximize profit don't they? Perhaps we have to consider why single use plastic is appealing in the first place. The culture of use once and throw away might have started with plastic but didn't stop there.
  - hammock 3y ago
    You’re being downvoted and it’s an intriguing question. Corp is gonna corp. The fact is there is an externality that exists to be taken advantage of, and it can try to be corrected in a few ways. Punishing the corp with taxes, regs etc is only one way
  - throwway120385 3y ago
    It was actually a stretch at first to get people to throw packaging away. You can find ad campaigns comparing picnics with reusable containers to picnics with disposable containers for example, so you could argue that disposal didn't come naturally but rather was socialized by people who wanted to make and sell a lot of plastic.
  - avgDev 3y ago
    Definitely, if what a corp is doing is legal they are going to maximize profits. It might not be ethical, but corporations are businesses created to generate money. I'm sure most of us here could find something unethical about their employer if we looked deep enough. That action might even be a product of globalization or the society and the only way for the corporation to exist is to do that unethical thing. Its on the government to protect the people and the land. If plastic is an issue they should force the producers to do something about it. They would then need to increase the cost of the product, which could force people to use cheaper alternatives.
- r3trohack3r 3y ago
  A lot of people want you to believe a lot of things for a lot of reasons. I do not believe any of the people that I saw generating social pressure around recycling in my childhood worked for plati-corps... But they did have their personal identity and social/political in-group signaling tightly coupled to being _perceived_ as caring about the environment. No need for a historical lens though. The same dynamics are at play now. The more frequently someone uses in-group and out-group signaling language to short-cut critical thinking in discourse, the more likely it is that they're perpetuating some form of "propaganda."
WorldMaker 3y ago
Something that I remember from when I was a kid and the first big recycling awareness programs kicked off was how much they emphasized all "Three Rs" at first, how much all three were required hand in hand, and also how quickly that tapered off (both accidentally and presumably some cases intentionally) until people mostly forgot the other two Rs. The original campaign goals to focus on Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Recycle was always meant to be the fallback after you've worked to Reduce and Reuse. Recycle is easier to claim action on, you've got the right bins and they are marked and you sort some of your junk stream, so you are doing your part. Reduce and Reuse are so much harder. It's certainly hard to pat yourself on the back individually for reduce/reuse goals: those are the system goals, the big collective behavior problems. I do sometimes wonder what some of the educators would change in hindsight based on the overall failure of Reduce and Reuse to be the stronger messages over Recycle in the long term. I bet there is some frustration there because they tried.
- mikrotikker 3y ago
  I try hard not to throw things out and give them a second life. Upcycle. Unfortunately it makes me a bit of a hoarder... I need more sheds... or to do 10x more and more diverse, projects.
sandworm101 3y ago
My thinking on plastics recycling has evolved several times over the years. One concept that influenced me is the idea that plastics contain carbon. To bury plastic somewhere where it will never decompose is, essentially, a form of carbon sequestration. There is some tipping point where the energy necessary to transport and recycle plastic might be outweighed by the net removal of carbon through simple burial. Another thing that radically changed my mind about ocean plastics is that most all of it comes from a handful of rivers. The solution to ocean plastics isn't to eliminate or recycle all plastics, or even to filter it out of the oceans. Rather, we just have to to stop a small handful of countries from dumping garbage into their own rivers. https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics
- turtles3 3y ago
  > Another thing that radically changed my mind about ocean plastics is that most all of it comes from a handful of rivers. The article you linked specifically states that this was previously thought to be true, but is not. It does however point out that per-capita ocean plastic polluters are not evenly geographically distributed.
  - XorNot 3y ago
    1,656 rivers is still not a lot of rivers for 80% of all ocean plastic though considering the actual total number of rivers in the world. Because the key bit of data there is that ocean-borne plastic is not primarily coming from beaches, or city storm run-off (at least in modernized areas) in an even distribution but is very obviously a product of local regulation (and in turn suggests that other measures - like foreign aid or imposing standards of behavior on local companies with foreign suppliers/subsidiaries would likely solve the problem). The issue is no one's truly freed themselves from the "individual sacrifice" narrative of environmental remediation: the desire is to accuse people on an individual basis of ruining the world, and requiring all solutions to involve individual consequences for their "sins". There's much less enthusiasm for the reality, which is that other then some slight changes in tax allocation we might be able to just solve the entire problem and give a slightly improved standard of living anyway (i.e. people in wealthier cities generally like their waterways and beaches not to be clogged with trash).
throwway120385 3y ago
I think a lot of things would get fixed if we simply required the originators of the material or item to pay for its recycling or disposal. If it's not economical to recycle an item, the cost would be borne by the organization that made the item.
- nickff 3y ago
  The big problems (which I know of) are that defining 'originator' is actually a bit tricky, and that the 'originator' is often somewhere very far from the end-user, and has very little ability to take any part in recycling or disposal.
  - throwway120385 3y ago
    "Very little ability" is just another phrase for "doesn't want to spend the money."
    - nickff 3y ago
      If a small-medium sized company exports a product, it's very difficult to get involved in recycling/disposal, and there are a lot of small-medium sized companies exporting. Not everyone has a subsidiary in every province of every country, and shipping all used products back to HQ is probably more carbon-intensive than just throwing stuff in a landfill.
      - dekleinewolf 3y ago
        But you can solve this systematically by just having that medium sized company pay for it. They don't have to do it; but they have to pay for it; meaning the cost will be transferred along to the end user.
- brikym 3y ago
  100%! You see a lot of reusing of resources when it suits the businesses. Shipping containers, pallets, kegs & gas bottles are all standardized and get recycled for many years. By recycled I mean the literal meaning before it got molested by corporate propaganda campaigns. I suspect if the manufacturers were forced to pay for the externalized costs of plastic junk they might start: * making their own durable packaging to buy back. * figure out how to standardize package shapes and centralize collection/washing. * Stop overpackaging and over marketing the food. A lot of foods don't need to come in a shiny colorful plastic packet.
rookderby 3y ago
I agree we should have started decades ago and not gone down with path, but it was cheap at the time. We now know some of the externalities, the impacts to society at large, and we should demand that the cost to our future be included. Maybe then glass use, reuse, and other materials can compete with the currently under-priced plastics. I think some sort of carbon tax is going to be required.

darepublic 3y ago

There was reduce and reuse.. but then those snakes in the garden conspired to add a third R.. an evil R.

johnea 3y ago

social/political signaling? Let's just call it plasti-corps propaganda. This really is the fault of the corps. Recycling _could_ be practical, but corps want to throw it out and make more, because that's cheaper. And if the article wants to talk about lying, it really needs to include the lying that US waste disposal corps are doing about what can go in their recycling bins. 3/4 of what current waste disposal says is recyclable goes straight to the landfill.

marmaduke 3y ago
Is it really the fault of corps? I mean, is that a useful explanation? Corps exist to maximize profit don't they? Perhaps we have to consider why single use plastic is appealing in the first place. The culture of use once and throw away might have started with plastic but didn't stop there.
- hammock 3y ago
  You’re being downvoted and it’s an intriguing question. Corp is gonna corp. The fact is there is an externality that exists to be taken advantage of, and it can try to be corrected in a few ways. Punishing the corp with taxes, regs etc is only one way
- throwway120385 3y ago
  It was actually a stretch at first to get people to throw packaging away. You can find ad campaigns comparing picnics with reusable containers to picnics with disposable containers for example, so you could argue that disposal didn't come naturally but rather was socialized by people who wanted to make and sell a lot of plastic.
- avgDev 3y ago
  Definitely, if what a corp is doing is legal they are going to maximize profits. It might not be ethical, but corporations are businesses created to generate money. I'm sure most of us here could find something unethical about their employer if we looked deep enough. That action might even be a product of globalization or the society and the only way for the corporation to exist is to do that unethical thing. Its on the government to protect the people and the land. If plastic is an issue they should force the producers to do something about it. They would then need to increase the cost of the product, which could force people to use cheaper alternatives.
r3trohack3r 3y ago
A lot of people want you to believe a lot of things for a lot of reasons. I do not believe any of the people that I saw generating social pressure around recycling in my childhood worked for plati-corps... But they did have their personal identity and social/political in-group signaling tightly coupled to being _perceived_ as caring about the environment. No need for a historical lens though. The same dynamics are at play now. The more frequently someone uses in-group and out-group signaling language to short-cut critical thinking in discourse, the more likely it is that they're perpetuating some form of "propaganda."

WorldMaker 3y ago

Something that I remember from when I was a kid and the first big recycling awareness programs kicked off was how much they emphasized all "Three Rs" at first, how much all three were required hand in hand, and also how quickly that tapered off (both accidentally and presumably some cases intentionally) until people mostly forgot the other two Rs. The original campaign goals to focus on Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Recycle was always meant to be the fallback after you've worked to Reduce and Reuse. Recycle is easier to claim action on, you've got the right bins and they are marked and you sort some of your junk stream, so you are doing your part. Reduce and Reuse are so much harder. It's certainly hard to pat yourself on the back individually for reduce/reuse goals: those are the system goals, the big collective behavior problems. I do sometimes wonder what some of the educators would change in hindsight based on the overall failure of Reduce and Reuse to be the stronger messages over Recycle in the long term. I bet there is some frustration there because they tried.

mikrotikker 3y ago
I try hard not to throw things out and give them a second life. Upcycle. Unfortunately it makes me a bit of a hoarder... I need more sheds... or to do 10x more and more diverse, projects.

sandworm101 3y ago

My thinking on plastics recycling has evolved several times over the years. One concept that influenced me is the idea that plastics contain carbon. To bury plastic somewhere where it will never decompose is, essentially, a form of carbon sequestration. There is some tipping point where the energy necessary to transport and recycle plastic might be outweighed by the net removal of carbon through simple burial. Another thing that radically changed my mind about ocean plastics is that most all of it comes from a handful of rivers. The solution to ocean plastics isn't to eliminate or recycle all plastics, or even to filter it out of the oceans. Rather, we just have to to stop a small handful of countries from dumping garbage into their own rivers. https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics

turtles3 3y ago
> Another thing that radically changed my mind about ocean plastics is that most all of it comes from a handful of rivers. The article you linked specifically states that this was previously thought to be true, but is not. It does however point out that per-capita ocean plastic polluters are not evenly geographically distributed.
- XorNot 3y ago
  1,656 rivers is still not a lot of rivers for 80% of all ocean plastic though considering the actual total number of rivers in the world. Because the key bit of data there is that ocean-borne plastic is not primarily coming from beaches, or city storm run-off (at least in modernized areas) in an even distribution but is very obviously a product of local regulation (and in turn suggests that other measures - like foreign aid or imposing standards of behavior on local companies with foreign suppliers/subsidiaries would likely solve the problem). The issue is no one's truly freed themselves from the "individual sacrifice" narrative of environmental remediation: the desire is to accuse people on an individual basis of ruining the world, and requiring all solutions to involve individual consequences for their "sins". There's much less enthusiasm for the reality, which is that other then some slight changes in tax allocation we might be able to just solve the entire problem and give a slightly improved standard of living anyway (i.e. people in wealthier cities generally like their waterways and beaches not to be clogged with trash).

throwway120385 3y ago

I think a lot of things would get fixed if we simply required the originators of the material or item to pay for its recycling or disposal. If it's not economical to recycle an item, the cost would be borne by the organization that made the item.

nickff 3y ago
The big problems (which I know of) are that defining 'originator' is actually a bit tricky, and that the 'originator' is often somewhere very far from the end-user, and has very little ability to take any part in recycling or disposal.
- throwway120385 3y ago
  "Very little ability" is just another phrase for "doesn't want to spend the money."
  - nickff 3y ago
    If a small-medium sized company exports a product, it's very difficult to get involved in recycling/disposal, and there are a lot of small-medium sized companies exporting. Not everyone has a subsidiary in every province of every country, and shipping all used products back to HQ is probably more carbon-intensive than just throwing stuff in a landfill.
    - dekleinewolf 3y ago
      But you can solve this systematically by just having that medium sized company pay for it. They don't have to do it; but they have to pay for it; meaning the cost will be transferred along to the end user.
brikym 3y ago
100%! You see a lot of reusing of resources when it suits the businesses. Shipping containers, pallets, kegs & gas bottles are all standardized and get recycled for many years. By recycled I mean the literal meaning before it got molested by corporate propaganda campaigns. I suspect if the manufacturers were forced to pay for the externalized costs of plastic junk they might start: * making their own durable packaging to buy back. * figure out how to standardize package shapes and centralize collection/washing. * Stop overpackaging and over marketing the food. A lot of foods don't need to come in a shiny colorful plastic packet.

rookderby 3y ago

I agree we should have started decades ago and not gone down with path, but it was cheap at the time. We now know some of the externalities, the impacts to society at large, and we should demand that the cost to our future be included. Maybe then glass use, reuse, and other materials can compete with the currently under-priced plastics. I think some sort of carbon tax is going to be required.