Stop recycling and save the planet !

Global warming has long outgrown its "kook" image and over the last few years has been whole-heartedly adopted by the mainstream media as a platform for scare-mongering and moral outrage. This has elevated global warming into the worldwide consciousness as a global brand for all environmental impact issues. And as we all know in the consumerist west, brands drive consumer behaviour.
You can witness the results every weekend driving through any suburban community. Everywhere you see perspiring Dads lugging boxes of carefully separated newspapers, glass, and now plastics out to the car for the trip to the recycling yard. And as they struggle to get the car boot shut, wondering if maybe a few extra degrees wouldn’t be so bad after all, they little realise that they are about to make it worse.
Recycling can be an effective way to ensure reuse of scarce or expensive resources (we wouldn’t dream of throwing away used gold) or to reduce the energy expended in processing (it uses far less energy to melt down aluminium cans for reuse than to smelt aluminium ore).
But this does not necessarily mean recycling is universally A Good Thing. You can’t simply apply a formula that works for one resource or production process to every resource and process.
Lets take the example of paper recycling. One of the foundations of suburban recycling efforts. Saves carbon-consuming trees - doesn’t it ? And saves energy - doesn’t it? So recycle a newspaper and you win twice – take that, global warming !
We all love that familiar satisfied saving-the-rainforests feeling after dropping off a bundle of newspapers for recycling. But, we don’t fell rainforests to make paper, we fell rainforests to clear farmland. Paper is produced from logs grown by commercial forestry enterprises. These businesses grow trees specifically for paper production. Using sustainable forestry management techniques, to ensure the business has a sustainable income. It just makes business sense. Trees are their “crop”.
So what would happen if we recycled close to 100% of the paper we use? Firstly, we wouldn’t need to grow so many trees for making paper. So the forestry enterprises will clear the land for an alternative commercial use. So much for saving the trees. What about saving energy ? Sure there is some energy advantage in producing paper from used paper compared to using fresh timber. But this meagre win is completely overwhelmed by the energy expended by Dad’s car journey to and from the recycling yard. And that’s before looking at the wider environmental impact of the trip.
Ok, now lets take a look at glass recycling, another stalwart of the suburbs. What is the resource we trying to conserving here ? Quartz sand, The most common mineral on the planet ? or perhaps landfill space – but what exactly is wrong with dumping heat-treated sand in a hole in the ground where it came from ?
Despite this evidence, there is actually a good case for recycling paper and glass in many situations. But it is far from a universal truth, and further still from a significant contribution to reducing the environmental impact we are having on the planet. So why do we do it ? Because its easy. The real damage that such questionable recycling practices cause lie in the complacency they produce. Dad’s trip to the dump means the family is “doing its bit”. And we avoid the need to address some really difficult questions and to make very tough decisions.
The UK government’s target of recycling 25% of household waste was met by 2005, compared to just 6% recycled in 1995 (Source: DEFRA). But government targets do not differentiate between valuable recycling and wasteful recycling-for-the-sake-of-it.
But far more damaging is that over the same period, from 1995 to 2005, total household waste per person in the UK had increased by 15 per cent to an average of 517kg or just over half a tonne of waste. This highlights where we should really be looking to reduce the impact each one of us has on our environment. If rather than trying to recycle a higher proportion of our increasing waste output, we instead put the efforts into reducing the amount of waste we produce, the world would be in a far better position.
The question we need to address is not “when is my local council going to collect recycling waste at my gate?”, but “why am I producing more and more waste ?”. What are the sources ? Who are the producers ? What are my choices ? And am I prepared to make them ?
I am not advocating an end to recycling. Recycling plays a vital part in the transformation of the way we waste. But populist generalisations are dangerous because they can drive or influence behaviours that achieve the exact opposite that the individual intends. Or they can lead to complacent satisfaction with lazy thinking or easy solutions, when real effort and tough decisions are required. Time is the most scarce resource in our modern lives, and we don’t all have time to research the facts in detail about what we read. The results can be disastrous.