I have fervently argued in support of the importance of recycling in several of my columns. But after reading a review in the New York Times by John Tierney, I’ve learned recycling may not be as cost-effective as we want to believe.
Tierney said the current recycling process is actually “costly and ineffectual” and not much has changed economically and environmentally since the modern recycling movement began. The national rate of recycling has stagnated in recent years, and apparently the future of recycling looks even worse.
Before I crawl into a hole and reject society and all its falsehoods, I maintain there are still some benefits that come from recycling. My first thought was that we must reduce the amount of plastic, glass and other materials we generate in the first place.
If we didn’t manufacture so many new materials, there would be less waste to recycle or throw away. This, of course, is not a novel idea. But I’d wager that such manufacturing companies wouldn’t support such a trade-off if they lose their jobs.
The Environmental Protection Agency estimates recycling solid waste in the United States saves the equivalent of 186 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.
However, according to these estimates, essentially all of the greenhouse benefits come from recycling just a few materials, such as cardboard, paper products and household metals like the aluminum found in soda cans.
This is the part where I still cling to the hope that we’re not totally doomed.
Recycling one ton of paper or metal saves about three tons of carbon dioxide, but recycling the same amount of plastic saves only a tad more than one ton of carbon dioxide. And you’d have to recycle three tons of glass to get only one ton of greenhouse benefits.
Recycling makes us feel good about ourselves. We are helping our beloved Mother Earth that we’ve already done so much to destroy. When we recycle that water bottle, we get that warm, fuzzy, I’m-a-do-gooder feeling inside.
But we easily forget to consider the relative costs and benefits of recycling. Tierney said we’ll have more luck reducing carbon emissions by sorting paper and aluminum cans than “worrying about yogurt containers and half-eaten slices of pizza.”
While I argue only the weak-willed leave behind leftover pizza, our food waste is an issue to be considered.
However, most of the benefits of recycling may not come in the way most people would imagine, like reducing the need for landfills and incinerators. According to Tierney, a “modern well-lined landfill in a rural area can have relatively little environmental impact,” and landfill operators have begun capturing the methane released from landfills and using it to generate electricity.
Modern incinerators release so few pollutants that they’re widely accepted in northern Europe and Japan for generating clean energy. Europe for the win, once again.
If we are to adopt effectual policies limiting carbon emissions, we need to understand that our current methods simply are not sustainable.
nrowthor@indiana.edu
@nrowthornIU
