Why is recycling important?

Photo: Jefferson County landfill. Photo by David Parsons courtesy of US Department of Energy/National
Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

When you throw stuff away, you might be very glad to get rid of it: into the
trash it goes, never to be seen again! Unfortunately, that's not the end of the
story. The things we throw away have to go somewhere—usually they go off
to be bulldozed underground in a landfill or burnt in an incinerator. Landfills
can be horribly polluting. They look awful, they stink, they take up space that
could be used for better things, and they sometimes create toxic soil
and water pollutionthat can kill fish in our rivers and seas.

One of the worst things about landfills is that they're wasting a huge amount of
potentially useful material. It takes a lot of energy and a lot of resources to
make things and when we throw those things in a landfill, at the end of their
lives, we're also saying goodbye to all the energy and resources they contain.
Some authorities like to burn their trash in giant incinerators instead of burying
it in landfills. That certainly has advantages: it reduces the amount of waste
that has to be buried and it can generate useful energy. But it can also
produce toxic air pollution and burning almost anything (except plants that
have grown very recently) adds to the problem of global warming and climate
change.

The trouble is, we're all in the habit of throwing stuff away. In the early part of
the 20th century, people used materials much more wisely—especially in
World War II (1939–1945), when many raw materials were in short
supply. [2] But in recent decades we've become a very disposable society. We
tend to buy new things instead of getting old ones repaired. A lot of men use
disposable razors, for example, instead of buying reusable ones, while a lot of
women wear disposable nylon stockings. Partly this is to do with the sheer
convenience of throwaway items. It's also because they're cheap:
artificial plastics, made from petroleum-based materials, became extremely
inexpensive and widely available after the end of World War II. But that
wasteful period in our history is coming to an end.

We're finally starting to realize that our live-now, pay-later lifestyle is storing up
problems for future generations. Earth is soon going to be running on empty if
we carry on as we are. Americans live in much greater affluence than virtually
anyone else on Earth. What happens when people in developing countries
such as India and China decide they want to live the same way as us?
According to the environmentalists Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and Hunter
Lovins, we'd need two Earths to satisfy all their needs. If everyone on Earth
doubles their standard of living in the next 40 years, we'll need 12 Earths to
satisfy them! [3]

Why should you recycle?

If everyone reduced, reused, and recycled, we could make Earth's resources
go an awful lot further. Recycling saves materials, reduces the need to landfill
and incinerate, cuts down pollution, and helps to make the environment more
attractive. It also creates jobs, because recycling things takes a bit more effort
than making new things. Recycling doesn't just save materials: it saves
energy too. Manufacturing things uses a lot of energy from power plants—and
hungry power plants generally make global warming worse. We can save a
surprising amount of energy by recycling. If you recycle a single aluminum can
you save about 95 percent of the energy it would take to make a brand new
one. [4] That's enough energy saved to power your television for about 3
hours! [5] You'll often hear people say that over half the trash we throw away
can be recycled. Looking at the chart below, you can see that we currently
recycle somewhere between 30–90 percent of the various different materials
we use. Just imagine if everyone were recycling most of their garbage:
together, we'd be making a tremendous reduction in the amount of raw
materials and energy we use—and doing a lot of good for the planet.
Chart: Percentage recycling rates in the United States for various materials. Drawn in 2019 by
explainthatstuff.com using the latest available data, taken from the following sources: Steel: US Geological
Survey; Aluminum: US Geological Survey; Aluminum cans: Aluminum Association; Paper: US EPA;
Glass: Glass Packaging Institute; Rubber: US Tire Manufacturers Association; Plastic: Association of Plastic
Recyclers (APR) and the American Chemistry Council (ACC).

What are the different ways of recycling?

Throwing things away is a bad habit; recycling them is a good habit. Recycling
isn't all that difficult: it's simply a matter of changing your habit. Practically
speaking, recycling happens in one of two ways. Either your local government
authority arranges a door-to-door collection (this is sometimes
called curbside recycling) or you take your recycled items along to a local
recycling center and place them in separate containers.
Photo: A curbside recycling service in England. Householders fill a large plastic box with mixed material for
recycling, without sorting it out, and leave it outside their home. Items are sorted out at the curb into separate
bins inside the truck, which has completely open sides for ease of loading and unloading.

The essential difference between a bag of trash and a bag of valuable,

recyclable waste is that the trash is all mixed up together and the recyclable
waste is sorted out and separated. If you have a curbside recycling scheme,
you may be given a recycling box into which you can place certain types of
waste (perhaps metal cans, glass bottles, plastics, and newspapers) but not
others. When the box is collected, it might be sorted out at the curb. People
on the truck will take time to sort through your box and put different items into
different large boxes inside the truck. So, when the truck arrives at the
recycling station, the waste will already be sorted.

Alternatively, you may see your whole box being tipped into the truck without
any kind of sorting. The truck then takes your waste to a different kind of
recycling station called a MURF, which stands for Materials Recycling Facility
(MRF), where it is sorted partly by hand and partly by machine (this type of
recycling is also called single-stream or comingled). If you don't have curbside
recycling, it helps to sort out your waste and store it in separate bags or boxes
before you take it to the recycling center. (For example, you could wash out
food tins and glass bottles and keep them in separate plastic bags.)

Which materials can be recycled?

Most things that you throw away can be recycled and turned into new
products—although some are easier to recycle than others.

Kitchen and garden waste

You can recycle up to half your kitchen and garden waste by making your
own compost—a rich, crumbly, earthlike material that forms when organic
(carbon-based) materials biodegrade (are broken down by worms and
bacteria). Compost is great for using on your garden: it returns nutrients to the
soil that help your plants to grow. Making your own is much cheaper than
buying compost at a garden center; it's also better for the environment than
using peat, which is a threatened habitat. To make compost, you will need a
compost heap or a large container of some kind in your garden or yard.
Composting is obviously much easier if you have a garden than if you have an
apartment on the 23rd floor of a skyscraper! But even in cities, some
authorities arrange collections of biodegradable waste and make compost at a
central location. It can take anything from a few months to a year or more for
waste to rot down and turn into compost. Generally, you need to add an equal
mixture of "greens" (vegetable scraps, dead flowers, grass cuttings, and so
on) and "browns" (torn up cardboard, small twigs, shredded paper, and that
kind of thing).

Paper and cardboard

Photo: Shredded paper, bagged up and awaiting recycling. Photo by Ron Fontaine courtesy of US Navy.

In the early 1970s, photocopier manufacturers got scared that we would stop
using paper and turn into a "paperless society." Not much chance of that!
Over four decades later, the bad news is that we're producing more paper
than ever before. But the good news is that we're recycling more as well.
Unlike some materials, paper can be recycled only so many times. That's
because it's made from plant fibers that become shorter during paper-making.
When they're too short, they no longer make decent paper. In practice, this
means some new paper always has to be added during the papermaking
process.
One problem with recycling paper is that not all paper is the same. White
office printer paper is made of much higher quality raw material than the paper
towels you'll find in a factory washroom. The higher the quality of paper waste,
the better the quality of recycled products it can be used to make. So high-
grade white paper collected from offices can be used to make more high-
grade white recycled paper. But a mixture of old newspapers, office paper,
junk mail, and cardboard can generally be used only to make lower-grade
paper products such as "newsprint" (the low-grade paper on which
newspapers are printed). Corrugated cardboard (which is held together with
glue) is harder to recycle than the thin cardboard used to package groceries.

Waste documents are usually covered in ink, which has to be removed before
paper can be recycled. Using bleach to de-ink papers can be an
environmentally harmful process and it produces toxic ink wastes that have to
be disposed of somehow. So, although recycling paper has many benefits, it
comes with environmental costs as well.

Metal

Photo: Collecting aluminum cans for recycling. The next stage is squashing them into bales so that they take
up less room. Photo by Denise Emsley courtesy of US Navy.

Most of the metal we throw away at home comes from food and drink cans
and aerosols. Typically food cans are made from steel, which can be melted
down and turned into new food cans. Drinks cans are generally thinner and
lighter and made from aluminum, which can also be recycled very easily.
Mining aluminum is a very energy-intensive and environmentally harmful
process. That's why waste aluminum cans have a relatively high value and
why recycling them is such a good thing to do.

Wood
People have been reusing this traditional, sustainable material for as long as
human history. Waste wood is often turned into new wooden products—such
as recycled wooden flooring or garden decking. Old wooden railroad sleepers
(now widely replaced by concrete) are sometimes used as building timbers in
homes and gardens. Waste wood can also be shredded and stuck together
with adhesives to make composite woods such as laminates. It can also be
composted or burned as a fuel.

Glass

Photo: Glass is loaded into a crusher to compact it ready for recycling. Photo by A. Sanchez, courtesy of
Defense Imagery.

Glass is very easy to recycle; waste bottles and jars can be melted down and
used again and again. You simply toss old glass into the furnace with the
ingredients you're using to make brand-new glass. Bottle banks (large
containers where waste glass is collected) were the original examples of
community recycling in many countries.

Oil

Waste oil from truck and car engines causes huge environmental problems if
you tip it down the drain. It pollutes our rivers and seas, the wildlife that
depend on them, and even the water we drink. If you take your waste oil along
to a recycling center, it not only keeps our waterways clean—it can also be
reprocessed into new products such as heating oil. Waste vegetable oils
(made by frying food, for example) can be turned into a useful kind of vehicle
fuel called biodiesel.

Plastics
Photo: Disposable bottles and other containers are typically collected together, but they have to be carefully
sorted into different kinds of plastic before they can be recycled. Photo by John Gordinier courtesy of US Air
Force.

Of all the different materials we toss in the trash, plastics cause by far the
biggest problem. They last a long time in the environment without breaking
down—sometimes as much as 500 years. They're very light and they float, so
plastic litter drifts across the oceans and washes up on our beaches, killing
wildlife and scarring the shoreline. The only trouble is, plastics are relatively
hard to recycle. There are many different kinds of plastic and they all have to
be recycled in a different way. There's so much plastic about that waste
plastic material doesn't have much value, so it's not always economic to
collect. Plastic containers also tend to be large and, unless people squash
them, quickly fill up recycling bins.

All told, plastics are a bit of an environmental nightmare—but that's all the
more reason we should make an effort to recycle them! Different plastics can
be recycled in different ways. Plastic drinks bottles are usually made from a
type of clear plastic called PET (polyethylene terephthalate) and can be
turned into such things as textile insulation (for thermal jackets and sleeping
bags). Milk bottles tend to be made from a thicker, opaque plastic called
HDPE (high-density polyethylene) and can be recycled into more durable
products like flower pots and plastic pipes.
Another solution to the problem could be to use bioplastics, which claim to be
more environmentally friendly.

Is recycling effective?
Some people hate recycling; the very mention of it sets their blood boiling!
They claim it's a waste of time, money, effort, and energy—with supposedly
recycled material often simply thrown away or shipped around the world to
developing countries. According to this point of view, recycling is an example
of "feel-good" environmentalism: something people do mainly to make
themselves feel better, and which may have a dubious or even negative effect
on the planet. In 1996, journalist John Tierney summed up many people's
doubts—and ruffled an awful lot of eco feathers— when he wrote, in the New
York Times, that "Recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern
America: a waste of time and money, a waste of human and natural
resources." [1] Just as you'd expect, environmentalists and recycling
champions vigorously refute this.

It's very easy to find statistics from different countries about the benefits of
recycling. For example, the US EPA has summarized the positive side of
recycling in a single sentence: "In 2006, Americans recycled 32.5 percent of
municipal solid waste, which prevented the release of 52 million metric tons of
carbon equivalent—the same as taking 41.2 million cars off the road." [2] But
it's often uncertain whether statistics like this take account of the energy
consumed (and carbon emissions produced) during recycling collection and
processing. What if the recycling process produces more carbon emissions
than it saves? What if it costs more to collect materials than you get back from
recycling them? It's obviously vitally important to consider these things.
?
Studies of recycling

A few studies of the effectiveness of recycling have been done. In 2010, the
UK government's waste and packaging advisory agency, Wrap, carried out a
detailed analysis of the effectiveness of recycling. It compared seven types of
disposal (recycling, landfill, incineration, and so on) for seven different types of
material commonly recycled (paper, glass, plastics, and so on). In almost
every case, reusing or recycling was the best option, although it's a much
more effective solution for some materials than others; in a small number of
cases, for example, low-grade waste paper, the report suggested that
incineration with energy recovery might be a better option. [3]

But doesn't recycling consume energy? What about all the fuel needed to
drive those recycling trucks around carrying old newspapers from place to
place? Even taking this into account, there is a net benefit from recycling
compared to landfill or incineration. According to the UK government's 2007
Waste Strategy: "Current UK recycling of paper, glass, plastics, aluminum and
steel is estimated to save more than 18 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a
year through avoided primary material production." [4]

Economics—commodity market conditions—also plays a vital part in

evaluating recycling. When markets are buoyant and people are willing to pay
more for scrap metal or waste glass, recycling is obviously more cost-effective
than when prices are low.
Ultimately, the bottom line is that it's rarely better to throw something away
than to reuse it or recycle it.

Further reading

 Is Recycling Worth It? PM Investigates its Economic and

Environmental Impact by Alex Hutchinson. Popular
Mechanics, November 13, 2008. An excellent article about
the economic costs and benefits of recycling.

References

1. ↑ Recycling is Garbage by John Tierney. The New York

Times, June 30, 1996. Almost 20 years on, Tierney
updated his figures but essentially made the same
argument again in The Reign of Recycling, The New York
Times, October 3, 2015. Readers responded the following
week in Where Our Trash Goes, The New York Times,
October 10, 2015.
2. ↑ US EPA: Recycling: Basic information: The main EPA
website about how to recycle things, including what
happens to recycled materials and other ways of reusing
things (such as donating used electronic equipment to good
causes).
3. ↑ Recycling still the most effective waste disposal method,
report finds by Juliette Jowit, The Guardian, 16 March
2010.
4. ↑ Does recycling reduce carbon emissions? by Local
Government Improvement and Development, 20 July 2010.

How can we get people to recycle more?

Generally, it's better to recycle things than to trash them—but that's not
always true. What we really need to do is think harder about how we produce
waste and how we dispose of it. It will always be better not to produce waste
in the first place than to recycle it, so reducing the need for things is always
the best option. That means pressurizing manufacturers to use less
packaging, for example. Reusing things is also generally better than recycling
them, because recycling takes energy. (It takes energy to power the truck that
collects your recycled material and energy is also used at the plant where
things are recycled.) So it's better to keep a plastic ice-cream container and
reuse it as a storage box than to send it off to be recycled. You're saving the
material you'd use if you bought a new box, but you're also saving the energy
that would be needed to recycle the old one.

Photo: 100% recycled: look out for this symbol. By buying recycled products, you're helping to create a market
that encourages even more recycling.

Buying recycled products is another important part of recycling. If no-one's

prepared to buy recycled, it doesn't pay people to recycle things in the first
place. Why do recycled things cost more if they're made of old trash?
Recycled things are often more expensive than non-recycled ones, because
they're made in smaller quantities and it often takes more effort to make them
and get them to the shops. But remember this: although they have a higher
cost, they usually have a lower environmental cost: they are doing less
damage to the planet.

That's not always true. Some cynical manufacturers have seized on the
public's enthusiasm for recycled goods. They produce costly, pointless
recycled gimmicks that make little if any difference to the planet. Sometimes
recycled products are made in energy-hungry factories and shipped or (worse
still) air-freighted halfway round the world. Then it's possible they are actually
doing more damage to the planet than the cheap, disposable products they're
pretending to replace. If you're not sure whether a recycled product is all it
seems, contact the manufacturer and ask them to explain exactly how and
where it is made. Ask them to explain exactly how it's helping the
environment. A genuine manufacturer, truly motivated by environmental
concern, will always be pleased and proud to do this.
In short...
Think carefully about what you use, where it comes from, and where it goes.
Try to reduce, reuse, and recycle if you possibly can—and in that order! Be a
thoughtful consumer, not a reckless one, and you'll be doing your bit to save
the environment.

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Browse our full list of our environment articles.

Articles

 The Indian men who make money selling trash by Aparna Alluri.
BBC News, January 2, 2019. How Delhi's scrap merchants
(kabadiwalas or raddiwalas) make good money by recycling other
people's trash.
 Listen Up America: You Need to Learn How to Recycle. Again. by
Nick Stockton. Wired, August 21, 2015. How and why recycling
can be much more effective (and cost-effective).
 Our E-Waste Problem Is Ridiculous, and Gadget Makers Aren't
Helping by Christina Bonnington. Wired, December 8, 2014. Up to
80 percent of obsolete electronic gadgets end up in landfills... but
why?
  South Korea's enthusiasm for recycling by Lucy Williamson, BBC
News, 9 June 2011. An English journalist is baffled but impressed
by the diligent recycling in Seoul.
 The truth about recycling by Leo Hickman. The Guardian,
February 26, 2009. Recycling (and using recycled materials)
needs to be a much more fundamental part of everyday life.
 Recycling around the world: BBC News, 25 June 2005. How good
are people at recycling in different European countries?

Useful briefings

 FoE Briefing: Recycling Collections: Sort separated or

comingled? [PDF format]: This September 2009 briefing from
Friends of the Earth UK compares the benefits of two different
types of kerbside recycling, where materials are sorted at the kerb
or simply mixed together and sorted later.

Videos

 Single-Stream Recycling: Leading the Way to Zero Waste: A 15-

minute introduction to single-stream recycling, with a tour of the
Boulder County Recycling Center. Simple and clear enough for
younger students.
 Waste Management Single-Stream Recycling: How mixed
(comingled) recycling works—why it's easier for residents and
how the waste is sorted at the MRF recycling plant.

Books

For older readers

 Recycling Reconsidered: The Present Failure and Future Promise

of Environmental Action in the United States by Samantha
MacBride. MIT Press 2011. An honest evaluation of the
successes and failures of the recycling "movement": has it simply
diverted attention from the bigger problem of waste production?
 Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: An Easy Household Guide by Nicky
Scott. Green Books, 2009. A practical guide designed to help
determined recyclers find a home for things they're determined
not to trash. However, recycling information varies widely from
place to place and changes quite often so much of the guidance
may not apply to you.
  Confessions of an Eco-Sinner: Tracking Down the Sources of My
Stuff by Fred Pearce. Beacon, 2008. Where does recycled stuff
really end up? Does it all get shipped out to Asia—and what
happens to it then?

For younger readers

 What A Waste: Rubbish, Recycling, and Protecting our Planet by

Jess French. DK, 2019. Includes experiments and activities. A
wide-ranging look at the interlinked problems of waste, pollution,
dwindling resources, and energy use. 72 pages for ages 6–9.
 Recycling by Charlotte Wilcox. Lerner Publishing, 2008. Lots of
impressive facts and statistics mixed in with clear text. The photos
are mostly of dull and dirty old recycling plants, but never mind!
Good for ages 9–12.
 Recycling by Eleanor J. Hall. Kidhaven, 2004. An alternative for
ages 9–12.

Organizations

 US EPA: Wastes: A huge collection of information from the US

Environmental Protection Agency covering all the different types
of waste disposal and recycling.
 WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme): Nonprofit UK
agency helping to promote more sustainable forms of waste
disposal, including recycling and composting.

References
1. ↑ Americans produce about 1.9kg of solid waste per person per
day, which works out at 726kg per year or roughly 9 times body
weight. Assuming a lifetime of about 70 years, that gives at least
600 times your body weight in trash. Waste statistics come
from Municipal Solid Waste, US Environmental Protection
Agency, March 29, 2016.
2. ↑ There are some fascinating posters of World War II recycling
at World War II recycling posters, Waste360.com.
3. ↑ These figures are quoted in Natural Capitalism: The Next
Industrial Revolution by Hawken, Lovins, and Lovins. Earthscan,
2010, p.51, which bases its analysis on Our Ecological
Footprint by Wackernagel and Rees. New Society, 1996.
4. ↑ The figure of 95 percent energy saved by recycling a can has
been quoted widely since the 1970s (see for example this search
on Google Books). The earliest reference here appears to be a
Newsweek article from 1976.
5. ↑ Appropriately enough, the figure of three hours of TV power
has, itself, been "recycled" widely. The first reference I found is a
1991 Forbes article (Volume 148, Issues 11–14, p195), though an
earlier Illinois Information Service article (from 1988) quotes a
figure of 24 hours.
Reduce

Reducing waste is the most important thing we can do. By reducing waste, we avoid the
unnecessary use of resources such as materials, energy and water. It means there is less
waste to manage.

How can we reduce waste?

 Buy in bulk to reduce packaging

 Take a reusable shopping bag with you so you don't have to use a paper or plastic
bag from the shop
 Say ‘no’ to a plastic shopping bag when you only have a couple of items
 Choose products that use less packaging
 Buy reusable items rather than disposable ones
 Stick a "no junk mail" sign on your letter box
 Take your lunch to school in a reusable container.

Reuse

The next most important thing we can do is reuse waste material. That way it doesn't go in
the rubbish and end up in the landfill. It also means you don't have to buy a new product.
That saves you money and saves the energy and resources that would have been used to
make the new product.

How can we reuse waste?

 Give unwanted toys and books to hospitals or schools

 Put unwanted clothes in used clothing bins
 Use plastic containers for freezing or storing food items
 Save wrapping paper and boxes to use again
 Use old jars for storage
 Take old magazines to your local doctor's or dentist's surgery
 Shop at second hand stores or use online trading websites to buy items that are
unwanted by others
 Take household items to your council’s resource recovery centre
 Make memo pads out of waste paper
 Re-use envelopes - purchase reuse labels.
Recycle

Recycling involves some form of reprocessing of waste materials to produce another

product. For example, recycling plastic bottles to make buckets.

What can be recycled?

 The main products that can be recycled are paper, cardboard, glass, aluminium, tin
and plastic containers.
 Composting and worm farms are methods of recycling organic waste.

Buy recycled

 You can buy products that are made from recycled materials. This is called ‘Closing the
Loop’.
Recycling in your district

 Different districts collect different recyclables at the kerbside and at their transfer
stations/resource recovery parks. Contact your local city or district council to find out
what they collect.

Recover

 This is the recovery of waste without any pre-processing. For example, waste oils that
cannot be refined for reuse in vehicles can be burnt for energy recovery. Recovering the
energy from waste oil reduces our dependence on coal and imported oil.

Residual Management
This is the last option when waste cannot be used in any other way. Usually, this means
sending rubbish to a landfill. Residual disposal of liquid waste is normally into
a sewer or septic tank.

It is very important to manage residual solid and liquid waste properly. Waste not disposed
of correctly can cause damage to health and the environment.