Why Recycling Is Worth

Recycling; Is It Worth It?

For most of America, recycling has become a way of life. For some, it is a valiant effort to take charge of our waste and do what is right for the environment and for future generations. For others, it is a forced mentality by government agencies or private businesses who attempt to prove their value by self-promoting their commitment to environmental responsibility. Recycling, in theory, is a positive effort; however, massive recycling programs are not the answer. Recycling programs in general lack an intelligent way to a means, since the costs and environmental burden may outweigh the desired result. Recyclers should only focus on materials that they can process in a cost effective way, and consumers should focus

their energy on the reduction of items that get placed in their recycling bins.
Why Do We Recycle?
The practice of recycling got its big boost in 1987 when discussions of landfill shortages spread far and wide. With the imminent threat of not having a place to dispose of waste materials, people began to look at recycling. Research programs sprouted to identify ways to manage the impending problem of landfills that had reached capacity and a shortage of available land to build new landfills. The threat of garbage overflowing into the daily lives of millions of people bred a hasty and poorly thought out proposal to recycle.
The objective behind recycling is to protect the environment from the overburden of wastes that could get reprocessed and used again, and while most people stand by that as their reasoning for recycling, it promotes a feeling of altruism which is the widespread commitment to the greater good.

People want to feel good about themselves by expressing a devotion to their environmental responsibility. The inherent motto of the program is “Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle”, which makes complete sense. Reducing the amount of waste that gets created is the base layer of recycling, because if there is less waste, there will be less material to manage. Reuse what you can, instead of throwing it away and purchasing more, or use it for a different purpose, and recycle items that can get broken down to create new

things.

Environmental Impact
The main reasoning for recycling is to protect the environment, but at what cost? Recycling programs have a negative effect on the same environment that they have the intent to protect. Recycling trucks consume huge amounts of fuel, create noise, and spew exhaust gases into the atmosphere. Even though these same concerns are prevalent to garbage trucks, the addition of vehicles to the fleet only multiplies the effect. The recycling can that gets rolled out to the curb for collection is made of the same plastics that are being placed inside. Incinerators used to melt down plastics expel toxic fumes into the air we breathe. The process used to turn paper into pulp creates sludge, and that sludge contains dozens of toxic chemicals that are either burned or dumped back into the landfills (Handley, 2013).
John Tierney, a New York Times writer, published an article title “Recycling is Garbage”. In that article he stated that recycling may be “the most wasteful activity in modern America: a waste of time and money, a waste of human and natural resources.” In a sense, he is correct. He further substantiated his claim by saying, “Should you recycle today’s newspaper? Saving a tree is a mixed blessing. When there is less demand for virgin wood pulp, timber companies are likely to sell some of their tree farms – maybe to condominium developers. Less virgin pulp means less pollution at paper mills in timber country, but recycling operations create pollution in areas where more people could feel the effects: fumes and noise from collection trucks, solid waste and sludge from the mills that remove ink and turn the paper into pulp. Recycling newsprint actually creates more water pollution than making new paper: for each ton of recycled newspaper that is produced, 5,000 gallons of waste water is discharged (Tierney, 1996).”
Recycling facilities are commonly unsafe and unhygienic. In places where large amounts of recyclables get stored, pollution and diseases are difficult to contain. Runoff can seep into the ground water that can cause not only an issue to humans, but also to fish and wildlife in the surrounding areas. Resources get consumed at a higher rate due to recycling, since facilities require large amounts of energy to operate the equipment and machinery. Water is a major ingredient to recycling because the material needs washed or broken down in order to begin the process of making other goods (CEF, n.d.). Even in your homes there is additional water waste created from the rinsing of cans, bottles, and plastic jugs.
Personal Responsibility
Businesses and communities place such an emphasis on recycling that if you do not participate it reflects negatively on your character. Many businesses and communities have launched mandatory programs in an effort to force the theory of recycling upon those that do not voluntarily realize the potential. There is a sense of ownership for those that decide to “go green”. They feel a responsibility to ensure they are disposing of things they used in the most environmentally friendly ways, but many people become detached from the effort required to process the waste once it leaves their personal collection container.
If consumers really cared about how the products they are using are contaminating the environment, they would place more effort on reducing the amount of recyclables they are using. The mentality of some is that if they throw something in the trash, then that is bad, but if they throw it into the recycling bin then it is good. They are then unconsciously adding to the problem the world faces of how to manage the magnitude of recyclables. Reports often praise the increase in the amount of products that are being recycled, but they fail to discuss the rise in the consumption of those same products. Instead of looking at ways to recycle the tons upon tons of waste produced, we should look at how much we are consuming. The goal should be zero-impact instead of zero-waste, which gets achieved through lower consumption.
Cost of Recycling
Saving the environment comes at a cost.

To implement a recycling program requires a collection process that includes the containers to gather the materials, the trucks to transport them to the processing site, and the manpower to manage the program. Unfortunately, recycling is more of a business than an attempt to save the environment. The value of the material being recycled overshadows the negative impact of dumping items into the landfill. At a point in time, the demand for recycled paper declined, so recyclers stored the material in hopes that values would increase. “The hope is that eventually the markets turn around and that the materials is sold, but I have heard of instances where it gets landfilled, because a community doesn’t have the demand or the space or the company to deal with it, “ says Gene Jones, the executive director of Southern Waste Information Exchange (Westervelt,

2012).
The reported costs of recycling in San Jose, CA are $147 per ton, versus that of $28 per ton to take the material to the landfill (Black, 1995). Recycling programs do generate revenue, but sometimes the costs incurred are higher than the profits. When prices for recycled materials fall, the costs to operate the facility remain the same, which in turn will be a negative impact on the profit margin. When it comes to the types of products that get recycled, some just do not make economic sense. To process a ton of glass costs $90, while the market will only pay $10 per ton. Plastic bags are another cost driven recyclable. It costs $4000 to process one ton of plastic bags, but that ton of recycled material only sells for $32 (Storm, 2015).
In a follow-up article almost 20 years later, Tierney reaches an identical conclusion. “Despite decades of exhortations and mandates, it is still typically more expensive for municipalities to recycle household waste than to send it to a landfill. When it comes to the bottom line, both economically and environmentally, not much has changed at all (Tierney, 2015).” This observation exemplifies the failing desire to strive towards a greener future simply because it does not make a profitable financial case.
Program Improvement Proposal
Recycling is a great way to minimize the amount of material that gets dumped into our landfills, however, the management of recycling programs needs to change. The idea to take something that is bad for the environment and recycle it is a reactive approach to a larger problem. Efforts need to focus on improving the way that the products that come in plastic, paper, glass, and aluminum forms can be consolidated. Could your laundry detergent and sports drink come in paper containers? If more items became offered in similar packaging, which would reduce the time spent sorting materials, operating costs would be decreased. If there were not as many recycling streams, there would consequently be less processing centers, and costs would decrease. Having collection trucks that could handle both recyclables and residual waste at the same time would reduce fuel usage and emissions. With the current configuration, many homeowners have two separate trucks making pickups from their houses, which is a redundancy of vehicles.
In order to decrease the amount of materials that get consumed, we need to think about how the products that we are currently using can be upcycled into other uses. There are many websites that show a multitude of “life hacks”, where they show how you can repurpose common everyday items. This practice needs expanded and exploited to the point that it is common knowledge of how different items can be used.
Conclusion
The environmental and financial costs of the current way that recycling programs operate are unstable and inefficient. Environmentalists, corporations, and government agencies should take a step back and re-evaluate how this problem is being addressed, and propose an action plan that would better suit the goal. This does not mean that recycling should not be a part of the effort to reduce waste; we just need to have an understanding that current programs are not the saving grace that will keep materials out of our landfills.