Reasons to recycle? Are these really the best arguments we have?

A recent NYT essay argued that, however bad the current recycling situation is, the problems with it can be fixed. After reading it, I was left even more skeptical about recycling than I was before

For many years I taught a university course called “Why People Believe Weird Things”. One of the topics we discussed in the course was recycling, a topic I assigned because I wanted to include a discussion of a belief (the merits of recycling) that I was confident was held by virtually every student in the class, and one that for many years I held as well. I assigned an article for the course presenting skeptical view of the merits of most recycling, and students also watched an episode of the Penn and Teller show “Bullshit” on the topic.

However skeptical I was about recycling when I taught the class, everything I’ve learned about the topic since then has made me realize that my moderate skepticism at the time was, if anything, overly generous regarding the real merits of recycling (NPR broadcast an excellent Planet Money episode on the topic in 2020). And so – when I saw the title of the Nov. 29 Guest Essay in the New York Times “ I’m Appalled By What I Learned About Recycling. But We Can Fix It”, I was eager to read what a real expert on the topic would say about how to fix the current problems with recycling. A few comments about his essay are below:

The first half of the essay presents a well-informed survey of recycling’s problems. Focusing on plastics, the author, Oliver Franklin-Wallis, writes: “What we do know is that with plastics, at least, the amount being recycled is much less than most of us assumed.” and “Crunch the sums, and only around 10 percent of plastics in the United States is recycled, according to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.”

But despite this rather negative assessment of the current state of the industry, Franklin-Wallis is ultimately quite optimistic about the potential and future of recycling. Regarding the benefits of recycling, he writes:

“Compare recycling with the alternative, which is making the same products from scratch. Recycling steel, for example, saves 72 percent of the energy of producing new steel; it also cuts water use by 40 percent. Recycling a ton of aluminum requires only about 5 percent of the energy and saves almost nine tons of bauxite from being hauled from mines. Even anti campaigners agree that recycling plastics, like PET, is better for the climate than burning them — a likely outcome if recycling efforts were to be abandoned.”

Sounds great! But wait – did you notice what he did here? He first talks about the energy and water savings associated with recycling steel and aluminum. OK. But no one questions the benefits of recycling those materials – which is why there is actual economic value in collecting waste steel and aluminum products. But then comes the rhetorical sleight of hand (that it would be easy to miss if the reader is not paying close attention) – the transition to talking about recycling plastics, as if similar benefits accrue in that process. But Franklin-Wallis doesn’t then actually say anything about the energy and water savings associated with recycling plastics (perhaps because there are none). Instead, he pulls a rhetorical switcheroo, claiming that recycling plastics is better for the climate THAN BURNING THEM. But – burning plastic waste is not the only disposal option. Like any other material, plastics can be buried – which produces none of the toxic gases associated with some forms of burning plastics. And just because some forms of burning plastics creates toxic gases does not mean there is no possibility of burning plastics in a cleaner, actually energy-producing, way.

Mr. Franklin-Wallis then turns to the economic benefits of recycling – revealing that economics is not his strong suit.

“The economic perks are significant, too. Recycling creates as many as 50 jobs for every one created by sending waste to landfills; the E.P.A. estimates that recycling and reuse accounted for 681,000 jobs in the United States alone. That’s even more true in the developing world, where waste pickers rely on recycling for income.”

This is a classic kind of fallacious economic argument, often used by those who oppose improvements in the efficiency of manufacturing and other processes involved in the economy. Basically, he is saying here that the MORE work it takes to do something with plastics waste, the better – because we need to keep creating unnecessary jobs for people here and abroad. H’mm. If that were really important — how about if, instead of having trucks pick up the plastic waste from our bins, we instead hire people to walk around with big bags (or maybe even small bags) to pick up the plastic waste — requiring numerous trips by each worker each day back to the central collection location to empty each bag when it fills. That kind of system would create tens – maybe hundreds – of thousands of new make-work jobs in the plastics recycling industry. And by the logic of this argument, maybe we should never have advanced beyond having human telephone operators handle every phone call, and maybe it would be better if “elevator operator” was still be a good profession. LOTS of jobs were lost when technology made the process of making a phone call easier and when self-service elevators were invented. Too bad.

To argue that it is economically less efficient to recycle plastics than to dispose of plastics is simply not the strong argument for recycling that Franklin-Wallis thinks it is. And then there is his vision for the future:

“So before we abandon recycling, we should first try to fix it. Companies should be phasing out products that can’t be recycled and designing more products that are easier to recycle and reuse”

Again, Mr. Franklin-Wallis seems to have no idea how the economy works. Who, pray tell, is going to be charged with deciding for companies which products they can make and how to make them? If there are economic benefits to companies making products that are easier to recycle, companies will do it! THAT’S how the system works.

And then, in the final paragraph of the essay, Franklin-Wallis places recycling in the context of his larger philosophy of how we all should be living our lives:

“For the sake of our planet and our own health, we should all be trying to move away from our disposable excesses. Yes, recycling is broken, but abandon it too soon, and we risk going back to the system of decades past, in which we dumped and burned our garbage without care, in our relentless quest for more. “

Sounds good. But is “dumping and burning our garbage without care” the only alternative to recycling? Actually, I’m not even sure what he means by “without care”. As far as I know, in the U.S., the burning and burying of garbage is done with a great deal of care – and Franklin-Wallis knows it. Moreover, after reading this, I admit to be left wondering – what exactly is a “disposable excess”? And who is going to define for me what parts of my lifestyle need to be changed to dramatically reduce my “disposable excesses”? I have a niggling feeling that some of the changes that Mr. Franklin-Wallis would mandate for me might not be ones that I would agree should be classified in the “disposable excess” category. And which parts of my lifestyle are the result of my apparent “quest for more”? Interestingly, Franklin-Wallis refers to his having “traveled the world writing a book about the waste industry”. Given the cost to the environment of flying, that seems to me to possibly qualify as an “excess” related to HIS “quest for more” – but perhaps Mr. Franklin-Wallis would disagree. Clearly, Mr. Franklin-Wallis has a lot more confidence than I do in the ability of “experts” (perhaps especially experts like himself) to make top-down decisions regarding how the rest of us should live their lives.

FWIW – my wife and I recycle everything that we can. Weird beliefs are hard to shake.