Best article I’ve read this week. Thank you Michael.
This is such an important issue we need to face up to.
It’s almost cruel that something we believe is doing good is actually making things worse.
And your point about ignoring reduce and reuse ♻️ is very valid. We often just fall back on recycling to save us but that’s missing such a big part of the equation to make this work.
Not to negatively impact your mood further, but Bloomberg Opinion’s David Fickling had a good piece about those single use plastic bag bans. TLDR: switching to multiple use bags actually has an overall negative environmental impact. This just highlights we need to think in terms of systems, as you’ve been doing in this newsletter.
Wonderful article. In some sense, recycling can also perversely increase the usage of materials. If I can recycle aluminum, for example, the price of the metal falls as the supply rises. Cheap aluminum begets, ironically, more usage of the metal. This doesn't mean we shouldn't recycle at all, as you point out, but that the benefits are *very* complicated.
Personally, I live by the mantra of reduce and reuse primarily, with emphasis on the former.
Illuminating and depressing to read and learn from this article. As a parent of 3 young kids I’m conscious that we’ve been especially wasteful the last few years as we’ve been in a state of “survival” (not literally) but where getting by is sufficiently challenging that being diligent about RRR seems out of reach. I’ve been punting this concern for some magical point in the future when things get easier. Sounds like the barrier is higher than I thought.
I knew some of this already, but not at this level of detail. Thank you for writing it. I think building awareness early and looking at the end-to-end life cycle of recycled items, from making to recycling, is essential. Is there a real incentive by recycling collectors to recycle, or is it just done because people are demanding, as you mentioned? And how do we encourage reuse of bags and other containers?
I also recently read the following:
A typical one-liter (33-ounce) bottle of water contains some 240,000 plastic fragments on average, according to a new study. Many of those fragments have historically gone undetected, the researchers determined, suggesting that health concerns linked to plastic pollution may be dramatically underestimated. While plastic pollution exists everywhere on Earth, bottled water is of particular interest to scientists because of its potential to introduce plastic particles to the human body. A study published in 2022 found that the concentration of microplastics in bottled water was higher than in tap water. A report from 2021 warned that simply opening and closing the cap on a plastic bottle of water can release tiny plastic bits into the liquid.
And
bag hoarders are creating fresh environmental problems, with reusable bags having a much higher carbon footprint than thin plastic bags. According to one eye-popping estimate, a cotton bag should be used at least 7,100 times to make it a truly environmentally friendly alternative to a conventional plastic bag.
In the United Kingdom, the average person now buys around three single-use carrier bags a year, down from 140 in 2014 – the year before a charge was levied on single-use bags. However, Greenpeace said UK supermarkets in 2019 sold 1.58 billion durable plastic bags — known here as “bags for life” – equivalent to 57 per household and more than a bag per week. And this was a 4.5% increase compared to 2018.
This suggests the model, whereby a heavier bag is offered to encourage reuse, is simply not working.
I think the below confirms what you are saying and my experience as most people forget to carry them and end up buying more:
New Jersey banned all single-use plastic and paper bags beginning in May 2022. For many, the inconvenience was worth it if the ban helps “save the environment.” However, a market assessment study of that ban by American Recyclable Plastic Bag Alliance reveals that consumption of plastic bags increased by 300%. How is this possible?
Because the switch to heavy duty woven plastic bags uses much more plastic, of a type that is not recyclable, resulting in greenhouse gas emissions increasing by 500%. Further, these reusable bags are used just two to three times on average and then discarded. The net result — more plastic in landfills, more cost to consumers, more inconvenience and more greenhouse gases.
I think until we find better solutions to these problems/issues, we will run into a catch-22 situation. One side of the coin is how to reduce consumption, and the other is growth and jobs for people. We have not figured out a way out yet, and maybe we will never; we will start moving all the trash to our nearest planet(s) in the future and start getting the raw material from other planets so we can keep our show going for a while as the earth is supposed to be habitable for 800 million years unless something else like a meteor expedites our end or departure from the planet.
Maybe something like the below will solve/reduce the problem in the future:
Fermenting Plastic
Researchers have engineered a bacterial strain to upcycle plastic into a biodegradable “spider silk”, which could have a host of commercial applications. The report is only a preliminary proof-of-principle, but it offers an interesting option for untangling ourselves from our ever-accumulating polyethylene trash.
Well done! I certainly enjoyed hearing the "Reduce, Reuse" emphasized.
Our culture here in the US pretty much takes for granted that our supply is endless, so everyone has fallen into the recycling trap. We're also a consumer culture, and our economy relies on us to purchase new goods or services that other people here make, or at least for those same folks to sell their services to the rest of the world.
Recycling is the only one of the three that supports the short-term activity of the economy, so it tends to get the most attention. Reducing or reusing doesn't benefit the producers of the goods - in fact, it hurts them! But recycling? That doesn't hurt the producers one iota (just talking short-term economics here).
From a "let's not kill any more species than we're already killing" perspective, though, simply wasting less stuff and reusing any containers you can use a few more times (or even repurpose) will have many times more effect. Virtually everyone who recycles should turn their focus more toward the admittedly less glamourous (but vastly more effective) cousins, Reduce and Reuse.
Of course, as you rightly point out, the social signaling from recycling is just too strong of a draw! "Look at me, I am recycling."
I've been aware of the darker side of recycling, but some of what you said was new knowledge to me. Like the plastic bags just ending up in landfills. I'm not going to give up on recycling, but I definitely want to shift to reuse or reduce more than I used to.
I think we should double-down on recycling but that means we need to push our local governments to do it better. Though there is the need to accept that for profit companiesl like Waste Management wouldn't throw away highly valuable resources.... which means recycles aren't that valuable...
Here in Copenhagen, we have a massive recycling room in our building where you can deliver essentially every type of recyclable stuff. Our family does this diligently.
But your post has sent me on a research spree and I can see that Denmark also didn't have the best track record on plastic recycling until recently. Things do appear to be getting better, with a massive plastic recycling plant in Esbjerg that should single-handedly handle most of Denmark's plastic sorting and recycling.
Looks forward to the next chapter of this recycling saga!
You could actually help write that next chapter. Please share links and resources for how Denmark figured out how to do it better! (you can e-mail those)
Great, well-researched article Michael. We have unfortunately framed recycling (and reducing + reusing) as moral behaviors, which leads us to this chasm between what we do as individuals (we put many things in our recycling bins) and the actual results (most of it ends up in a landfill).
A better approach IMO is to focus on the economics of recycling. For instance, if recycling glass (as in your example) is uneconomical only because of contamination from plastics, and most plastics end up in landfills anyway, we might benefit from recycling policies of the kind “put only clean paper, cardboard, aluminum, and glass in your bin.”
Exactly. The bigger issue with glass is the variety of colors and the application of stickers. Those make it very hard to reprocess into useful products. Back in college, our local CocaCola distrubtor actually reused the glass bottles in specific vending machines and they'd get worn from the reuse but never had to be recycled.
Great piece. I actually campaigned successfully in the 90s for my college campus to institute a recycling program and have been disappointed with where we are now with recycling as a practice. Like others commenting here, I knew already the failures of the recycling system here in the US but not to this level of depressing detail. Still, it’s remarkably easy to discontinue some of the plastic use we take for granted. I recently ditched plastic wrap for beeswax wraps, which are superior in every way: ease of use, better seal, and locking in flavor. They’re more satisfying in a tactile sense as well.
When I was in the Army I pushed for more recycling and then started to find out how bad it was then. I was shocked at how much worse it's gotten in the 15 years since. We do a lot of reduction and reuse ourselves and I still focus on recyling metals.
This is a bummer because I do wish recycling was better, but I knew it was pretty futile. I’ve seen what appear to be separate bins for garbage and recycling separated by different colored lids, but the container beneath is the same and all goes into the same bag. You get the facade of separating based on the lid, when it all ends up the same place anyways, unfortunately.
I think we can too. The money for it just doesn’t seem to be there, and the economics for recycling just don’t work out so far. Maybe someday a better recycling process might be figured out.
Ah, very great point. Comfortable ignorance seems rampant in MANY facets of our society these days. But, what can you do? So many of these issues seem beyond any sort of reasonable control so it's easier, and almost better, to turn a blind eye. Because there's nothing you can do, thinking you can just discourages you when you make no progress. So to avoid the personal misery of failure, just continue to act like it's all fine and someone else can handle it. I know that's unreasonable and there are things many of us can do, but it is very difficult.
My first step in doing something was writing the essay. Once we realize everything is not what we see, then we can start to demand something different. It breaks the thin veneer of ‘feel good’ and hopefully people decide to take action. Myself, I’ve been trying to get involved locally but when I bring these points up, I get smeared as ‘anti-environment’ when I bring up this points becasue I’m very pro-environment. It’s a mess! 😆
I really appreciate this article, and these comments. My phone lock screen right now is a cartoon drawing of the earth saying "please stop buying things you're hurting me" -- https://amyletter.substack.com/p/2023-all-you-need-to-know -- this has actually been VERY effective in changing my behavior. For those of us who have trouble with the "reduce" part, putting a reminder like this where you will see it -- at the moment of decision before you "buy" -- really can make a difference.
One more link: I inherited a reusable tote that IS a re-used shirt, and it is an excellent tote. This is a way of getting a tote without anything new being made in the world: you use a t-shirt you already have, which you have worn past its usefulness as a garment, but not past its usefulness as a bag: https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/make_a_diy_t-shirt_tote_bag.pdf
The link is for a no-sew version, but of course if you know how to sew, you just sew instead of tie.
Okay, one more, because I raise chickens for eggs: please never throw away your egg cartons! There definitely is someone near you who is raising chickens for eggs who will gladly re-use the heck out of those cartons. You just need to find them. And usually people will trade you a free carton of fresh eggs in exchange for a bag of used egg cartons, not a bad deal!
It is a dirty story. We’ve been lied to and manipulated as you point out. Reuse or don’t buy plastic bottles in the first place seems to be a way to bypass the untrue recycling narrative. Just Don’t Buy Single Use Plastic.
Love how you're peeling back the layers on recycling myths, Michael! Considering the challenges with plastic recycling, how do you view biodegradable alternatives fitting into the solution?
I'm exploring that thread right now because it might have benefit but right now all biodegradable that can actually perform the job need industrial composting or many many years as to be not much different.
Best article I’ve read this week. Thank you Michael.
This is such an important issue we need to face up to.
It’s almost cruel that something we believe is doing good is actually making things worse.
And your point about ignoring reduce and reuse ♻️ is very valid. We often just fall back on recycling to save us but that’s missing such a big part of the equation to make this work.
Thanks! It was a frustrating article to write becasue the more I dug in, the worse the picture became!
Not to negatively impact your mood further, but Bloomberg Opinion’s David Fickling had a good piece about those single use plastic bag bans. TLDR: switching to multiple use bags actually has an overall negative environmental impact. This just highlights we need to think in terms of systems, as you’ve been doing in this newsletter.
Yeah were were talking about that in another comment thread on this article. Upwards of 500% worse for CO2 in reusable bags.
Wonderful article. In some sense, recycling can also perversely increase the usage of materials. If I can recycle aluminum, for example, the price of the metal falls as the supply rises. Cheap aluminum begets, ironically, more usage of the metal. This doesn't mean we shouldn't recycle at all, as you point out, but that the benefits are *very* complicated.
Personally, I live by the mantra of reduce and reuse primarily, with emphasis on the former.
100% agree with Reduce and Reuse
Illuminating and depressing to read and learn from this article. As a parent of 3 young kids I’m conscious that we’ve been especially wasteful the last few years as we’ve been in a state of “survival” (not literally) but where getting by is sufficiently challenging that being diligent about RRR seems out of reach. I’ve been punting this concern for some magical point in the future when things get easier. Sounds like the barrier is higher than I thought.
It certainly takes intentionality. We still recycle metals and cardboard. I contacted my local recycling location and they basically just shrugged.
I knew some of this already, but not at this level of detail. Thank you for writing it. I think building awareness early and looking at the end-to-end life cycle of recycled items, from making to recycling, is essential. Is there a real incentive by recycling collectors to recycle, or is it just done because people are demanding, as you mentioned? And how do we encourage reuse of bags and other containers?
I also recently read the following:
A typical one-liter (33-ounce) bottle of water contains some 240,000 plastic fragments on average, according to a new study. Many of those fragments have historically gone undetected, the researchers determined, suggesting that health concerns linked to plastic pollution may be dramatically underestimated. While plastic pollution exists everywhere on Earth, bottled water is of particular interest to scientists because of its potential to introduce plastic particles to the human body. A study published in 2022 found that the concentration of microplastics in bottled water was higher than in tap water. A report from 2021 warned that simply opening and closing the cap on a plastic bottle of water can release tiny plastic bits into the liquid.
And
bag hoarders are creating fresh environmental problems, with reusable bags having a much higher carbon footprint than thin plastic bags. According to one eye-popping estimate, a cotton bag should be used at least 7,100 times to make it a truly environmentally friendly alternative to a conventional plastic bag.
In the United Kingdom, the average person now buys around three single-use carrier bags a year, down from 140 in 2014 – the year before a charge was levied on single-use bags. However, Greenpeace said UK supermarkets in 2019 sold 1.58 billion durable plastic bags — known here as “bags for life” – equivalent to 57 per household and more than a bag per week. And this was a 4.5% increase compared to 2018.
This suggests the model, whereby a heavier bag is offered to encourage reuse, is simply not working.
Yeah the reusable bag situation is actually worse than the microfilms. It certainly doesn't reduce because people don't remember to reuse.
I think the below confirms what you are saying and my experience as most people forget to carry them and end up buying more:
New Jersey banned all single-use plastic and paper bags beginning in May 2022. For many, the inconvenience was worth it if the ban helps “save the environment.” However, a market assessment study of that ban by American Recyclable Plastic Bag Alliance reveals that consumption of plastic bags increased by 300%. How is this possible?
Because the switch to heavy duty woven plastic bags uses much more plastic, of a type that is not recyclable, resulting in greenhouse gas emissions increasing by 500%. Further, these reusable bags are used just two to three times on average and then discarded. The net result — more plastic in landfills, more cost to consumers, more inconvenience and more greenhouse gases.
It's insane. Just like turning off nuclear power has sent germany back to dirty coal.
I think until we find better solutions to these problems/issues, we will run into a catch-22 situation. One side of the coin is how to reduce consumption, and the other is growth and jobs for people. We have not figured out a way out yet, and maybe we will never; we will start moving all the trash to our nearest planet(s) in the future and start getting the raw material from other planets so we can keep our show going for a while as the earth is supposed to be habitable for 800 million years unless something else like a meteor expedites our end or departure from the planet.
Maybe something like the below will solve/reduce the problem in the future:
Fermenting Plastic
Researchers have engineered a bacterial strain to upcycle plastic into a biodegradable “spider silk”, which could have a host of commercial applications. The report is only a preliminary proof-of-principle, but it offers an interesting option for untangling ourselves from our ever-accumulating polyethylene trash.
https://phys.org/news/2024-01-bacteria-plastic-multipurpose-spider-silk.html
Is there a netflix movie to accompany this article?
Want to make one?
Well done! I certainly enjoyed hearing the "Reduce, Reuse" emphasized.
Our culture here in the US pretty much takes for granted that our supply is endless, so everyone has fallen into the recycling trap. We're also a consumer culture, and our economy relies on us to purchase new goods or services that other people here make, or at least for those same folks to sell their services to the rest of the world.
Recycling is the only one of the three that supports the short-term activity of the economy, so it tends to get the most attention. Reducing or reusing doesn't benefit the producers of the goods - in fact, it hurts them! But recycling? That doesn't hurt the producers one iota (just talking short-term economics here).
From a "let's not kill any more species than we're already killing" perspective, though, simply wasting less stuff and reusing any containers you can use a few more times (or even repurpose) will have many times more effect. Virtually everyone who recycles should turn their focus more toward the admittedly less glamourous (but vastly more effective) cousins, Reduce and Reuse.
Of course, as you rightly point out, the social signaling from recycling is just too strong of a draw! "Look at me, I am recycling."
If we can break that social signalling we can actually fix it better."
Finally, we're going to start our propaganda business!
I've been aware of the darker side of recycling, but some of what you said was new knowledge to me. Like the plastic bags just ending up in landfills. I'm not going to give up on recycling, but I definitely want to shift to reuse or reduce more than I used to.
I think we should double-down on recycling but that means we need to push our local governments to do it better. Though there is the need to accept that for profit companiesl like Waste Management wouldn't throw away highly valuable resources.... which means recycles aren't that valuable...
Here in Copenhagen, we have a massive recycling room in our building where you can deliver essentially every type of recyclable stuff. Our family does this diligently.
But your post has sent me on a research spree and I can see that Denmark also didn't have the best track record on plastic recycling until recently. Things do appear to be getting better, with a massive plastic recycling plant in Esbjerg that should single-handedly handle most of Denmark's plastic sorting and recycling.
Looks forward to the next chapter of this recycling saga!
You could actually help write that next chapter. Please share links and resources for how Denmark figured out how to do it better! (you can e-mail those)
Awesome. I found them in Danish so far, but with machine translation and AI being what it is, that shouldn't be an issue.
Enough to get the general gist anyway.
Great, well-researched article Michael. We have unfortunately framed recycling (and reducing + reusing) as moral behaviors, which leads us to this chasm between what we do as individuals (we put many things in our recycling bins) and the actual results (most of it ends up in a landfill).
A better approach IMO is to focus on the economics of recycling. For instance, if recycling glass (as in your example) is uneconomical only because of contamination from plastics, and most plastics end up in landfills anyway, we might benefit from recycling policies of the kind “put only clean paper, cardboard, aluminum, and glass in your bin.”
Exactly. The bigger issue with glass is the variety of colors and the application of stickers. Those make it very hard to reprocess into useful products. Back in college, our local CocaCola distrubtor actually reused the glass bottles in specific vending machines and they'd get worn from the reuse but never had to be recycled.
I hope we can make it a better place before we turn into dust.
That's my goal. It sucks to write this essay but it's only by writing this can we begin to define and fix the problem.
Great piece. I actually campaigned successfully in the 90s for my college campus to institute a recycling program and have been disappointed with where we are now with recycling as a practice. Like others commenting here, I knew already the failures of the recycling system here in the US but not to this level of depressing detail. Still, it’s remarkably easy to discontinue some of the plastic use we take for granted. I recently ditched plastic wrap for beeswax wraps, which are superior in every way: ease of use, better seal, and locking in flavor. They’re more satisfying in a tactile sense as well.
When I was in the Army I pushed for more recycling and then started to find out how bad it was then. I was shocked at how much worse it's gotten in the 15 years since. We do a lot of reduction and reuse ourselves and I still focus on recyling metals.
Tell me why we get fooled again?
???
Because the truth doesn't give us the same dopamine hit?
This is a bummer because I do wish recycling was better, but I knew it was pretty futile. I’ve seen what appear to be separate bins for garbage and recycling separated by different colored lids, but the container beneath is the same and all goes into the same bag. You get the facade of separating based on the lid, when it all ends up the same place anyways, unfortunately.
I've seen those containers too and they're so obvious it creeps me out. I think we can make it better. We should make it better.
I think we can too. The money for it just doesn’t seem to be there, and the economics for recycling just don’t work out so far. Maybe someday a better recycling process might be figured out.
If more people demand it we’ll get there. Right now I’m concerned that they’re comfortably ignorant that what they have isn’t working.
Ah, very great point. Comfortable ignorance seems rampant in MANY facets of our society these days. But, what can you do? So many of these issues seem beyond any sort of reasonable control so it's easier, and almost better, to turn a blind eye. Because there's nothing you can do, thinking you can just discourages you when you make no progress. So to avoid the personal misery of failure, just continue to act like it's all fine and someone else can handle it. I know that's unreasonable and there are things many of us can do, but it is very difficult.
My first step in doing something was writing the essay. Once we realize everything is not what we see, then we can start to demand something different. It breaks the thin veneer of ‘feel good’ and hopefully people decide to take action. Myself, I’ve been trying to get involved locally but when I bring these points up, I get smeared as ‘anti-environment’ when I bring up this points becasue I’m very pro-environment. It’s a mess! 😆
I really appreciate this article, and these comments. My phone lock screen right now is a cartoon drawing of the earth saying "please stop buying things you're hurting me" -- https://amyletter.substack.com/p/2023-all-you-need-to-know -- this has actually been VERY effective in changing my behavior. For those of us who have trouble with the "reduce" part, putting a reminder like this where you will see it -- at the moment of decision before you "buy" -- really can make a difference.
One more link: I inherited a reusable tote that IS a re-used shirt, and it is an excellent tote. This is a way of getting a tote without anything new being made in the world: you use a t-shirt you already have, which you have worn past its usefulness as a garment, but not past its usefulness as a bag: https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/make_a_diy_t-shirt_tote_bag.pdf
The link is for a no-sew version, but of course if you know how to sew, you just sew instead of tie.
Okay, one more, because I raise chickens for eggs: please never throw away your egg cartons! There definitely is someone near you who is raising chickens for eggs who will gladly re-use the heck out of those cartons. You just need to find them. And usually people will trade you a free carton of fresh eggs in exchange for a bag of used egg cartons, not a bad deal!
I like the T-shirt idea a lot. I also try to buy eggs in the paper vs foam containers. Because foam is worse than plastic.
It is a dirty story. We’ve been lied to and manipulated as you point out. Reuse or don’t buy plastic bottles in the first place seems to be a way to bypass the untrue recycling narrative. Just Don’t Buy Single Use Plastic.
Totally agree. Hard sometimes but worth the benefits.
An entirely different look at it ☺️
https://deerambeau.substack.com/p/broken-glass
Yeah, I can relate to the cacophany of indulgence.
Love how you're peeling back the layers on recycling myths, Michael! Considering the challenges with plastic recycling, how do you view biodegradable alternatives fitting into the solution?
I'm exploring that thread right now because it might have benefit but right now all biodegradable that can actually perform the job need industrial composting or many many years as to be not much different.