The Misdirection of Recycling

The environmental impact you make on this world is substantial, but it’s all relative. With the exponentially rising temperatures, frequent natural disasters, and media frenzy regarding the deadly environmental decline of our world, most people ask how they’re able to help.

Recycling is the largest environmental fad taken up by the average Joe. The idea that putting your used plastic into designated bins where it’s then taken to special plants for reuse is a blissful idea, but unfortunately it's not an effective method of stopping the climate behemoth. According to a Greenpeace report, only 2.5 million tons of plastic were recycled in 2021, with 48 million tons being consumed and dumped. Recycling also actively takes the guilt out of consumption, a Boston University study found in 2018, which fuels American consumerism and increases overall pollution.

In the year 2014, a high of 9.7% of the U.S.'s plastic was recycled, with the second most being 8.7% in 2018. However, these statistics counted the exportation of plastic waste to China, which was supposed to be recycling the waste for their own industries. Unfortunately, according to a Yale report, China was recycling only 9% of the imported plastic, with 12% being burned and the rest being buried in landfills or discarded to flow into natural waterways. Bottles and jugs have reprocessing rates of 20.9% and 10.3% respectively, but every other form of widely consumer plastic falls below a 5% reprocessing rate.

So what is the cause of the recycling craze, which turns out to not be as traditionally effective as believed by the vast majority of the public? The answer is large corporations. Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestle, and Unilever have promoted recycling as the end all be all of the climate crisis to distract from the real cause. As depressing as it is, the individual can only do so much to stop climate change. According to an official Canadian governmental report, 51% of emissions in Canada are industrial, with only 36% being attributed to transportation and heating along with other individual causes.  According to the BBC, large companies create adverts and encourage policies that place the responsibility on the consumer to handle their waste responsibly, but actively lobby against bills and regulation that would increase the sustainability and reusability of bottling. According to a Greenpeace brand audit, Coca-Cola is the world's largest producer of plastic waste, but in an article by the BBC less than a year after that audit, a high ranking Coca-Cola executive said that, “customers have to help us in the waste reduction journey.”

While taking public transport, properly disposing of waste, and encouraging proper climate awareness on a local level is helpful in the fight against global warming, the most useful thing that the individual can do is to fight against the lobbying and policies of major corporations. You can not only reach out to your state or federal representative, but you can also take steps to involve yourself and your community on the national level in the fight against consumerism and corporate favoritism. Major corporations have been trying to actively blame the consumer for their waste, but they should begin to be held accountable for the climate damage that they cause.

By Elijah Roth