Recycling

Nobody likes a cheat. But did you know that neither do monkeys, birds, and insects? For us organisms, the ability to protect ourselves against parasites is of prime importance - and that includes parasitic members of our own species. Many animals have responded to this threat by evolving an intrinsic capacity to both expertly detect, and instinctively resent, cheaters.

But humans have become especially good at this. So even if I preface my admission by first informing you that I don't own a vehicle; bring my backpack to the grocery store; stay away from over-packaged products; don't have a lawn; and have personally planted well over a million trees by hand; you are still likely to feel a twinge of annoyance when I tell you that I don't always recycle. This suggests that it's not so much my net impact on the environment that so bothers you, as it is the simple fact that I'm cheating.

But am I, really? After all, I need look no further than Wikipedia to see that there are innumerable controversies surrounding the practice. Micheal Moore, with his book Stupid White Men, made me suspect that much of what I recycle ends up in a landfill anyway, and Penn &Teller used this episode of Bullshit! to convincingly argue that in many cases the landfill option is actually the more environmentally sound alternative.

But of the three, recycling is easily the biggest pain in the Rss. Like any sensible person, I don't want to pollute, or be thought of as a social parasite, but neither do I want to wash, sort and recycle my garbage if it isn't going to do any concrete good. 

So! Should I just shut up and recycle? Or is it your disapproving attitude that should be curbed?


Who Wants Yesterday's Papers


The recycling bins that have been provided for my apartment building are always full of random, unwashed items; essentially garbage (I checked them again today just to be sure). I feel like a fool using these bins because I find it hard to believe that anything I fill them with is going to actually be recycled. How do I know my recycling isn't just being dumped?

The truth is, I can't always be sure. It's happened before, and due to the economic crisis and the declining demand for raw and recycled materials, is likely to happen again. Already, the Chinese apatite for Western recyclables is showing signs of satiety, and the recycling industry is bracing to take the hit. If this continues, more materials will likely become less worthy of salvaging.

But not all recyclables are created equal. For example, aluminum cans are made of a relatively expensive, and messily-procured material. And, unlike many others, it can also be recycled an infinite amount of times without degrading. As a result, you can be sure that the vast majority of the aluminum cans you throw into a blue bin (and even some those that you do not) are going to be reused. By all accounts, you should recycle aluminum cans.


At the other end of the spectrum, the benefits of recycling paper are among the most questionable. Often, producing products using recycled paper incurs a greater monetary and environmental cost than it does to use new material. Because no one is going to spend much time picking out the paper you threw away, I think it's reasonable to assume that a lot of paper falls through the cracks into our landfills.

Here in BC these cracks just got significantly wider, as - again because of the economic downturn - we'll soon be sending all our old newspapers to the States, or possibly even Asia, to be recycled.


The Damage Done


News items like this last one remind us that the act of recycling itself has a number of negative environmental impacts associated with it. Recyclables, of course, must be transported and processed. But the realization that the materials we recycle are often shipped halfway around the world might come as a bit of a slap in the face to those who go to the trouble of attempting to adhere to a locally-grown diet.


Another consequence of sending recyclables abroad is that they sometimes end up in places where environmental regulations are less restrictive, leading one to wonder whether the waste that western recycling programs have "diverted from landfills", have merely been redirected to even worse landfills on other continents. China is currently the world's largest importer of recycled materials, but they certainly don't use everything we in the West send them. So it appears that some of what we recycle is literally transported around the globe, only to end up fouling the local drinking water of distant peoples. 


But even when recycling is carried out locally, it can still incur costs. So while almost everyone likes the idea of recycling, not everyone likes actually having a recycling plant join the community. Conversely, while nobody likes the idea of garbage, living next to a landfill apparently isn't all bad. 

***

Still, it is often useful to think of the Earth as a closed system, because in many ways, it really is. We are, for example, all stuck here with each other, and all the plastic water bottles, cigarette butts, and radioactive waste that we care to produce. Obviously, we can't just indefinitely keep making and releasing these things pell-mell into the environment. So no matter how badly we may suck at it, recycling is a fantastic idea, and I think you should do it if you reasonably can.


But while I'm not sure I completely agree with the authors of the two harshest and comprehensive critiques of the practice I've read (this 1996 article titled "Recycling is Garbage" from the NYT, and this interesting 2003 paper called "Eight Great Myths of Recycling"), we should keep in mind that the logic behind recycling is not nearly as flawless and compelling as the familiar "arrow-triangle" graphic might imply. In practice, it's actually quite a messy task, and this is compounded by the fact that we sometimes go about it rather inefficiently.


So I ask that you attempt to temper your instinctive displeasure with me with the knowledge that I try to do my part in other ways, like those initially mentioned, that are not so controversial and personally inconvenient. For example, I try to keep my trash contained and avoid throwing things on the ground, which I think is more far more important than recycling, no matter how exaggerated accounts of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch might be. 


And perhaps even more helpfully, at least I live in a region that sends it's trash to the States, which is far more than I can say for all you unconscionable Vancouverites.