Category Archives: Recycling

Plastics need to work in our waste systems, it’s that simple

In a recent article by Meg Wilcox, “5 sustainable packaging developments to watch in 2021” it’s a race against the clock for companies to meet their sustainability goals. This will be difficult to say the least, although the “100 percent reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging by 2025” is a catchy mantra, it is filled with empty promises and an utter lack of commonsense. 

The idea that recycling is synonymous with sustainability, and recycling lobbyist calling for MORE money through EPR, is a joke.  Goodrich calls it “groundbreaking”, I’m thinking more on the lines of highway robbery.  The Reuse “experiment” is novel, however the scale is proportional to a freckle on an elephants ass and the core problem (EOL) is admittedly still unanswered.   Plastics do not and should not end-up in an industrial compost, the infrastructure is not available and there’s NO return value.  Plastics are inherently collected/managed in our Solid Waste systems, not Organic.  There is no return value in making plastics Compostable.  We need less rapidly biodegrading waste, not more.  Making plastics perform like organic waste, defeats the purpose, and compounds the problems.  This is the “unintended consequences when you switch from one system to another.”

But first, let’s understand that technologies are widely available today and there are international testing standards to ensure plastics are designed to work in every MANAGED waste system we have available.  Connecting these dots should be the priority of every Sustainable Packaging initiative.

Kate Daly, managing director at Closed Loop Partners states, “…more and more materials are lost to landfill that we’re not able to recapture as a valuable resource.”  I would argue the reason for this is because groups like Closed Loop and SPC miserably fail to see today’s modern landfills as a valuable resource, which they have become. 

It’s a shortsighted and an oddly pervasive problem in the sustainable management of plastics, a lack of knowledge pertaining to how waste is actually managed.   There are several different ways plastics can be disposed after use, landfilling, recycling, incineration, and composting.  The primary systems that capture the majority of discarded plastic waste are specifically designed to protect the environment and convert solid waste (carbon based) into returnable value through anaerobic bioremediation.  Today’s modern landfills have emerged as a major resource for clean renewable energy (LFGE/RNG).  A baseload energy resource that is providing heat for homes, fuel for vehicles and power to industries.

Sustainability managers must first and foremost understand that 90% of plastics are deposited into landfills, properly and customarily to avoid littering.  Even plastics with higher recycling rates such as PET beverage bottles and HDPE bottles have a higher percentage entering the landfill than being recycled.  This means every sustainability decision must provide a beneficial aspect regarding the landfilling of that plastics [ASTM D5526/D5511].  That’s sustainability through accountability, everything else is an experiment in speculation. 

Plastic Recycling: Fact or Fiction?

The great recycling hoax.

Is plastic recycling a hoax?

Would you consider yourself a “recycler?”  Do you religiously empty your bottles and rinse your cans?  Is it painful when there is no recycle bin available and you’re forced to throw plastic packaging in the trash?  If so, this may be a hard pill for you to swallow, but plastic recycling may not be what you think.

For decades we have been led to believe that the plastics we have diligently placed into the recycle bin is recycled back into new plastic items.  Over the decades billions of taxpayer’s dollars have gone into funding the plastic recycling industry. We’ve been convinced that recycling is not only the right thing to do, but its also better for the environment.

In a recent article from Laura Sullivan titled; “How Big Oil Misled the Public into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled” we get taken down the historical rabbit hole on plastic recycling. If you consider yourself a “recycler,” like I did, you will find her article very informative and eye opening. The only question after you read the article will be “how do you respond the next time you have to make a decision on whether to place something in the recycle bin or trash bin?”

Plastics placed into the recycle bin are not being used to make new shiny things nor are they being used to save the planet. In fact, nearly all plastics will end up in a landfill (even if you put it in the recycle bin).

It is time that we stop falling for the big plastic recycling scheme and instead implement science and data driven solutions which prove to have the greatest environmental benefit. Let’s have an honest conversation about where our plastics are discarded and demand plastic packaging work within these environments and have true environmental value at disposal.

Read the full article posted on NPR here: Laura Sullivan; “How Big Oil Misled the Public into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled” 

Sustainability: Fact or Fiction?

If asked could you provide proof that your company’s sustainability efforts are more than just greenwashing? Does your company utilize science, data and facts to drive sustainability solutions over clever marketing or “feel good” stories about sustainability?

The recent Earth Day has caused me to reflect a bit about what is actually being done to improve the environmental condition of the planet.  I watched the self-promotion of companies trying to grab our attention and sell us on how sustainable and environmental they are.  There seems to be a great deal of focus from companies to look at sustainability from a marketing standpoint over what should be truly sustainable or at the least better for the environment.  They promote and make claims about some story or process they have implemented and claim it to be more sustainable.  Unfortunately, nearly all of these companies lack the one critical component of sustainability and that is using science, data and facts to drive their solutions.  It seems to me that many companies, including the big fortune 500 would have the ability and resources to hire the right people to oversee their sustainability efforts and implement solutions which are fact and data driven.  Instead what is observed are companies struggling to truly understand what sustainability is about and end up implementing “feel good” or story based gimmicks to promote how sustainable they are becoming when in truth when analyzing the LCA data of these gimmicks most of these “feel good” approaches offer no environmental value or benefit at all.  Do sales and marketing really have that strong of an influence over sustainability efforts which should be driven by science, facts and data?   

What’s worse is when “experts” are used to push the “the only solution to plastic pollution is producing less plastic,” or “we are going to recycle our way out of this problem” agenda.  It is quite unfortunate when these so called experts thoughtless and meaningless opinions are used to steer solutions to this massive problem of plastic pollution.  I know of a couple of industries who are so fixated on the recycling message that the facts and data completely elude any rational thought.  Anyone who understands global population and economic growth would know that producing less plastics is not in our near future and will most likely never happen without a catastrophic reduction to the human species.  The planet is on a steadily increasing rate of growth which leads to more consumption and with that consumption comes the economic development of poorer nations which leads to accelerated consumption.  It’s a nasty circle driven by the growth of the global population and the desire to live a more consumption based life (the good life).  Regardless of whether we use plastic, paper, mushrooms, algae, space dust, or unicorn farts as our packaging materials we will always need a CRAP ton of it and will need to figure out effective, beneficial (to the environment and economy) and valuable ways of handling it.  Gathering and shipping waste to other parts of the country or other countries in our globe to process isn’t the solution, nor is merely suggesting to the public to reduce plastic use. 

If it’s not plastic it will be some other material we are trying to solve the pollution problem for.  So easily we forget the crisis of the past.  To solve the issue of paper grocery bags (which by the way was going to be the end of all the trees and human life as we knew it) we developed plastic bags which is now the new crisis and surprise! It’s also being promoted as the next cause to the end of the human race.  When will the “experts,” “get it” the problem isn’t what material is being used or how much material we use, it’s what we do with and how we handle that material after use!  This is always going to be the problem of a growing population.  We could always go back to the days of using animal stomachs for transporting liquids but that’s a whole lot of animal stomachs and what would the vegetarians use?  Companies must use packaging materials which are more intelligently designed to work within the infrastructures of our disposal environments to create a value and benefit (both environmentally and economically).     

One such approach is in the conversion of plastic waste in the landfill into clean and inexpensive energy.  This approach requires no special or additional handling of materials and converts plastics into biogas through the natural process of microbes.  It utilizes the existing waste management infrastructures while placing the solution on materials to add value within the common disposal environment of a landfill.  If all plastics were designed to work within their common disposal environment by the year 2030 (11 years) landfill gas into energy would be the single largest source of renewable energy and would surpass all other forms of renewable energy including; wind, solar, and hydro.  Let’s stop the BS hyperbole that landfills are these evil and bad places or that the world is running out of landfill space.  The data and the science show the environmental value and benefit of having materials convert into fuel and energy within the landfill. 

Let’s stop pretending ideas like recycling and reduction are going to solve anything.  Those two words have been used as part of the “Reduce, Recycle, Reuse” campaign since the 1970’s.  After nearly fifty years of that campaign look at the mess of where things are today.  The recycling mess we have today certainly isn’t due to a lack of spending money or repeating the message to brain wash everyone into reducing, reusing, or recycling.  It’s due to the fact that words don’t solve complex plastic pollution problems, it also shows that money doesn’t solve these problems either.  Billions of dollars have been given by governments to subsidized the recycling industry to build and support it and what do we have to show for that investment?  Why is the recycling industry in such a mess given all the money and investment that has been provided and why are we ok with knowing that our recycling efforts have resulted in more plastic pollution to our oceans and planet than any other activity?    

Plastics and other waste should work within their common disposal environments to have an environmental value and benefit at disposal.  I know we all “feel good” about placing things in the “recycle bin” and we don’t want to know about the ugly monster of what truly goes on behind the recycle bin “curtain”.  Our recycling efforts have resulted in massive amounts of plastics being dumped oceans and recycling rates in the single digits, so we can “feel good” about ourselves .  It’s time we stop with the “feel good” approach and start taking action to fix the plastic pollution problem using real science, facts, and data driven solutions.  Implementing solutions with the true meaning of circularity and sustainability would benefit society and the environment much more than this baseless approach of double down and continue pushing plastic recycling programs which have failed to provide environmental value (have severely polluted the planet), requires billions to subsidize and has little science and data to support that it actually has environmental value.  Plastics should be designed to go away (to create environmental value) where plastics are thrown away.  If one of those options should include recycling, then the science and data should support the way the infrastructures of collection, sortation, processing, and transportation are implemented in such a way that has environmental (human health is part of this) and economic value.   

https://www.voanews.com/science-health/china-plastic-waste-ban-throws-global-recycling-chaos

Should your company be one the many which has implemented a “sustainability” program or process with no data or science to back up the environmental claims you are engaging in nothing more than greenwashing and misleading consumers in the worse possible way.  Whether your company reduces packaging, utilizes recycled content, switched to a more environmental material, implemented a bring-back recycling program, or any of many other gimmicks make sure you have the science and data to back up your claims.  And I’m not talking about manipulating data to fit your program, I’m talking about letting the data drive and create your programs.  9 times out of 10 you’ll find that the data will show that your brilliant idea to implement a bring-back program or a shoe recycling program offers zero environmental value or benefit and in many cases will have a negative environmental impact requiring more resources and producing more carbon than your program thinks it is helping by figuring out how to reuse a material.  The act of reusing/recycling a material/s is not inherently more environmental, it is only more environmental when it the data shows the processes involved to reuse/recycle those materials has a net environmental benefit/value. 

In the end, your company’s sustainability solutions should be all about the environment; shouldn’t it? 

The New Plastics Economy’s “Global Commitment” defies commonsense

The “root cause” solution to plastic pollution is in making sure plastics work in today’s managed-waste systems. It seems too simplistic an answer considering the enormity of this problem. But when it’s all said and done, plastics (petroleum or plant based) must work in our managed systems, especially the one that primarily collects plastic waste – period. This is the only path to a full life-cycle and systems approach for profoundly better economic and environmental outcomes.

Plastics are created from energy and, through our managed systems, plastics should ultimately be recovered as clean energy, closing the loop and ensuring plastics never become “waste”. Energy growth is directly linked to well-being and prosperity across the globe. For developing nations, this need is fundamental to improving and even saving lives. Energy is the building block for creating plastics and ensuring Energy’s recovery at the end-of-life is essential in eliminating pollution and achieving Circularity.

Which brings me to the New Plastics Economy’s “Global Commitment” pledge which states, “The Foundation believes the use of anaerobic digestion is currently limited for plastic packaging as at the date of publication,” to justify the focus on Compostability as the only acceptable end-of-life solution, but only for “specific” and “targeted” applications. Otherwise, it’s Recycle or die! The myopic pledge even doubled-down declaring that plastics-to-energy is not part of the circular economy target state! A stance that is radically shortsighted and naïve considering the scope of this crisis and the current state of Recycling.

But what strikes me as incredibly odd is that out of the dozens of experts, the broad stakeholder review process involving 100 organizations and experts across businesses, governments, NGO’s, academics and standard-setting organizations, you’re telling me that nobody noticed that this statement is completely ass-backwards?!?

The vast majority of plastic packaging is commonly and customarily discarded in facilities that are large-scale Anaerobic digestors (a.k.a. modern landfills) Limited? Not true, nearly 90% of U.S. Municipal Solid Waste (especially plastic packaging, because that’s what it is – not organic waste) is sent to anaerobic waste systems (practice and scale) – BTW, 0% to Industrial Composting facilities! These anaerobically managed MSW facilities are actively collecting and turning waste into fuel for vehicles, heat for homes and providing power to industries. They are highly regulated and strictly managed, and no other waste-management system collects more discarded plastics – none!

We have a pollution crisis and to get any tangible grip on this problem plastics must work in the systems that are available to us today. Strategies and pledges based on contingencies and “further innovation” only stagnate our abilities to act now. Recycling will never be a solution to pollution. We have systems in place and technologies available to make meaningful strides today, based on data, science and certainty that eliminate pollution with return value, not just continuing to “fight against” it with sentiment and no substance.

Energy recovery must be included in strategy and design, it is the alpha and omega. From where it comes, it must return. Negating this principle in the management of plastics is blasphemous to the fundamental principles of “Circularity” and only serves to continue down a linear path that solves nothing.

APR Panics as Sustainable Materials Management Takes Hold

In the past 50 years, measuring the sustainability of plastic packaging has been centralized on recyclability. This multi-billion-dollar effort has resulted in less than 10% of plastics being recovered and recycled. As the field of sustainability is maturing, the approach is evolving to a more holistic approach that considers the environmental impact of the product throughout its entire life-cycle. An encompassing approach is critical in making sound decisions that have impact, however not everyone is on board and some that represent the recycling industry are in a downright panic.

In a recent interview discussing sustainability of plastics, Steve Alexander, executive director of APR, states; “Frankly, there is no sustainability without recycling.”. Steve pointed to brand owners making recycling-related commitments and expressed concern that there may be less importance placed on recycling as other sustainability factors are considered. Alexander emphasized that he wants “companies and consumer brands to continue their commitment to utilizing recycling.”

While I understand that Alexander’s job and the entire APR organization’s existence is completely dependent on the continued focus on recycling as the primary directive of sustainability, it is disheartening to see such a blatant disregard for achieving more sustainable communities. The hard-line approach by APR that recycling is the basis of sustainability demonstrates the complete refusal to accept the complex nature of sustainability and the science and data behind sustainable materials management.

Sustainable Materials Management (SMM) is an approach that evaluates a product across the entire life-cycle; sourcing, manufacturing, use and discard. SMM has provided alarming insight to many traditional approaches that while appeared beneficial were in fact environmentally detrimental. It is this reason that the EPA, waste companies and many brands are shifting from the archaic simplistic approach of simply recycling to the encompassing approach of SMM that utilizes science and data to drive true environmentally sustainable approaches.

Contrary to what Alexander and APR may promote, from a full life-cycle analysis approach, recycling is not synonymous with sustainability. In most instances, converting from recyclable rigid packaging into non-recyclable multi-layer flexible packaging is the optimal solution. There are some specific instances where using recyclable packaging is more beneficial, but this is not the majority.

As sustainability leaders, each of us must be willing to question traditional approaches and adopt methods that provide measurable results which are validated with data to provide environmental value. We must follow the science and data to create a sustainable future. And, we must at times make difficult decisions and admit when we have taken the wrong approach – even when it doesn’t benefit our pocketbook.

It borderlines dangerous and irresponsible to push solutions simply because consumers feel they are sustainable when in fact they have a significant negative environmental and financial impact to the environment and our communities.

The question I have for Alexander and APR is:

“Are you an advocate for sustainability or for your personal interests?”

Your actions and statements seem to provide a clear answer.

 

Read the full article here:

APR: ‘There is no sustainability without recycling’

Recycling: Making Sense out of the Cents

Last week I was reading the European Federation of Waste Management and Environmental Services (FEAD) assessment that the EU will need to invest up to $12 Billion (€10 Billion) to innovate and expand the separate collection, sorting and recycling capacity to reach the EU landfill diversion targets for plastic packaging.

I had to pause and reread the figure; $12,000,000,000??

I understand the desire to increase recycling, but at what cost do we stop pushing blindly forward and begin to compare the alternatives?

Let’s just look at the numbers:

The latest report from PlasticsEurope states that there was a total of 16.7 million tonnes of plastic packaging waste in the EU. 6.8 million tonnes of it was recycled. That leaves 9.9 million tonnes that would still need to be recycled to reach the proposed 100% recycling of plastic packaging. According to FEAD it will cost up to $12 billion to build the infrastructure to collect, sort and recycle this 9.9 million tonnes using traditional recycling methods.

This breaks down to an annual cost of $1200 per tonne to recycle this material. Even if they were to expand that expense over 10 years of recycling plastic packaging, it would still cost $120 per tonne.

As an alternative, let’s calculate the numbers when designing plastic packaging with the existing infrastructure in mind. Most plastic packaging is discarded into a landfill. Modern technology allows for plastics to be converted into biogas within these landfills. Subsequently, the landfills are currently harnessing this biogas for auto fuel and energy. The result is recycling waste plastic by conversion to energy.

Sounds like a simple solution, but do the numbers add up?

Incorporating the technology to recycle plastics to biogas costs an average of $120 per tonne. The infrastructure and collection are already in place so there is no additional expense. The value of the biogas energy produced is $550 per tonne. This leaves a net income of $430 per tonne of plastic packaging. For 9.9 million tonnes of plastic packaging the income would be $4,300,000,000 each year. Expanding that over 10 years would be a net benefit of $43 Billion.

So, the question: Is it better to spend $12 billion for traditional recycling or earn $43 billion by combining traditional recycling with energy recycling?

(And this doesn’t even begin to address the fact that LCA analysis shows that most plastic recycling is not environmentally beneficial, nor can plastics be effectively recycled indefinitely. But, that is a subject for another article….)

The Stupidity in Sustainability

In a recent article by Laura Parker, “You Can Help Turn the Tide on Plastic. Here’s How,” 6 feeble recommendations are provided for consumers, none of which will turn any tide on the plastic pollution problem.  I understand Laura Parker may not be an expert in this field, but when it comes to the sustainable management of plastics, can we stop the stupidity?

For example, Laura Parker begins with the blanket statement, “The industry is debating on what biodegradable means.”  Really, what industry?  If Sustainable Packaging is your expertise and you do not understand the difference between [Anaerobic] Biodegradation, Compostable, Degradable and how today’s waste is being Managed, you might be out of your depth and in need of a career change.  For those of us in the field of sustainability there is no debate on what biodegradability means as this is a scientific process with industry testing standards structured to test and validate biodegradation in these types of environments.

Or this drivel, “Biodegradables don’t live up to their promise, for example, in the dark, oxygen-free environment of a commercial landfill…”  The general term means little, but when backed by scientific data to support the claim, like internationally recognized ASTM D5526 testing standards, guess what?  It does biodegrade in landfills (ANAEROBICALLY MANAGED).

When it comes to the management of our waste, the “open environment” should never be an acceptable option or target for discard – do not litter, remember?  Also, aiming and designing for Industrial Composting is irrational, sacrifice the entire supply chain and product performance, for what?  Plastics don’t end-up there and they do not make compost, where’s the value?

Then there’s the “Circular Economy” theory, which makes sense, but let’s be clear, the “New Plastics Economy” does not – at all!  Nearly 50 years of a massive effort to propagate and encourage the recycling of plastics and today the industry is in complete collapse.  Yet, with no shame, companies double-down on this nonsense, telling consumers that its plastic packaging will be “100% recyclable/reusable” in 7 years!  The 2 biggest “BS”-ables in Sustainable Packaging and the root cause of why the recycling industry has been destroyed – but Nero keeps fiddling!  Why do we insist on science and data to back up biodegradation, but use no science and data to back up plastic recycling?

What needs to be achieved is a Sustainable Plastics Economy.  Every plastic application cannot be recycled into another plastic application and plastics cannot be recycled indefinitely. However, if “Zero-Waste” is the goal, value must be derived from the entire lifecycle of the application, not just material recycling, but end-of-life and chemical recycling as well, ensuring conversion into useful Energy.  This happens by taking the contamination factor out of the primary method in which plastic waste is discarded and can be managed.

Sustainable Packaging 101: Stop blaming consumers and take accountability.  Companies need to define the primary MANAGED-WASTE method for its products and packaging and make sure (using science and data) that it works in that system.

The missing link between the Circular Economy and Sustainability

For those of us in the field of sustainability, the Circular Economy is not a new concept. However, when it comes to the Circular Economy and plastics too often there is a misunderstanding of how the two relate. The Circular Economy is used as simply a re-branding of recycling. The idea that recycling will solve the plastics dilemma is a misguided direction that has been pushed for decades. To achieve a sustainable plastics economy, we must understand the Circular Economy and refocus the vision.

The Sustainable Plastics Economy is a guide, written for those wanting to implement the Circular Economy within the plastics industry, providing a deeper understanding of the Circular Economy, and a vision beyond simply recycling. It is a method to replicate the efficiency of nature as intended in the Circular Economy.

The Sustainable Plastics Economy integrates a complete Circular Economy approach with the unique challenges of plastic. It includes the concepts of Sustainable Materials Management by addressing the full life cycle impact of various plastic options such as, what types of materials to select, where to source raw ingredients, waste infrastructures, and customary discard scenarios. The Sustainable Plastics Economy creates a dynamic, data driven approach to create a system designed to replicate and ultimately integrate into nature, as intended in the Circular Economy precept.

The link below allows for a complimentary download of the Sustainable Plastics Economy guidebook. This guide provides an overview of the Circular Economy concepts and introduces the Sustainable Plastics Economy. Also included is a five-step process for organizations to implement the Sustainable Plastics Economy in a practical and pragmatic method.

Download a complimentary copy of the The Sustainable Plastics Economy here:

The Sustainable Plastics Economy Guidebook

 

 

The Reign of Recycling

IF you live in the United States, you probably do some form of recycling. It’s likely that you separate paper from plastic and glass and metal. You rinse the bottles and cans, and you might put food scraps in a container destined for a composting facility. As you sort everything into the right bins, you probably assume that recycling is helping your community and protecting the environment. But is it? Are you in fact wasting your time?

In 1996, I wrote a long article for The New York Times Magazine arguing that the recycling process as we carried it out was wasteful. I presented plenty of evidence that recycling was costly and ineffectual, but its defenders said that it was unfair to rush to judgment. Noting that the modern recycling movement had really just begun just a few years earlier, they predicted it would flourish as the industry matured and the public learned how to recycle properly.

So, what’s happened since then? While it’s true that the recycling message has reached more people than ever, when it comes to the bottom line, both economically and environmentally, not much has changed at all.

Despite decades of exhortations and mandates, it’s still typically more expensive for municipalities to recycle household waste than to send it to a landfill. Prices for recyclable materials have plummeted because of lower oil prices and reduced demand for them overseas. The slump has forced some recycling companies to shut plants and cancel plans for new technologies. The mood is so gloomy that one industry veteran tried to cheer up her colleagues this summer with an article in a trade journal titled, “Recycling Is Not Dead!”

While politicians set higher and higher goals, the national rate of recycling has stagnated in recent years. Yes, it’s popular in affluent neighborhoods like Park Slope in Brooklyn and in cities like San Francisco, but residents of the Bronx and Houston don’t have the same fervor for sorting garbage in their spare time.

The future for recycling looks even worse. As cities move beyond recycling paper and metals, and into glass, food scraps and assorted plastics, the costs rise sharply while the environmental benefits decline and sometimes vanish. “If you believe recycling is good for the planet and that we need to do more of it, then there’s a crisis to confront,” says David P. Steiner, the chief executive officer of Waste Management, the largest recycler of household trash in the United States. “Trying to turn garbage into gold costs a lot more than expected. We need to ask ourselves: What is the goal here?”

Recycling has been relentlessly promoted as a goal in and of itself: an unalloyed public good and private virtue that is indoctrinated in students from kindergarten through college. As a result, otherwise well-informed and educated people have no idea of the relative costs and benefits.

They probably don’t know, for instance, that to reduce carbon emissions, you’ll accomplish a lot more by sorting paper and aluminum cans than by worrying about yogurt containers and half-eaten slices of pizza. Most people also assume that recycling plastic bottles must be doing lots for the planet. They’ve been encouraged by the Environmental Protection Agency, which assures the public that recycling plastic results in less carbon being released into the atmosphere.

But how much difference does it make? Here’s some perspective: To offset the greenhouse impact of one passenger’s round-trip flight between New York and London, you’d have to recycle roughly 40,000 plastic bottles, assuming you fly coach. If you sit in business- or first-class, where each passenger takes up more space, it could be more like 100,000.

Even those statistics might be misleading. New York and other cities instruct people to rinse the bottles before putting them in the recycling bin, but the E.P.A.’s life-cycle calculation doesn’t take that water into account. That single omission can make a big difference, according to Chris Goodall, the author of “How to Live a Low-Carbon Life.” Mr. Goodall calculates that if you wash plastic in water that was heated by coal-derived electricity, then the net effect of your recycling could be more carbon in the atmosphere.

To many public officials, recycling is a question of morality, not cost-benefit analysis. Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York declared that by 2030 the city would no longer send any garbage to landfills. “This is the way of the future if we’re going to save our earth,” he explained while announcing that New York would join San Francisco, Seattle and other cities in moving toward a “zero waste” policy, which would require an unprecedented level of recycling.

The national rate of recycling rose during the 1990s to 25 percent, meeting the goal set by an E.P.A. official, J. Winston Porter. He advised state officials that no more than about 35 percent of the nation’s trash was worth recycling, but some ignored him and set goals of 50 percent and higher. Most of those goals were never met and the national rate has been stuck around 34 percent in recent years.

“It makes sense to recycle commercial cardboard and some paper, as well as selected metals and plastics,” he says. “But other materials rarely make sense, including food waste and other compostables. The zero-waste goal makes no sense at all — it’s very expensive with almost no real environmental benefit.”

One of the original goals of the recycling movement was to avert a supposed crisis because there was no room left in the nation’s landfills. But that media-inspired fear was never realistic in a country with so much open space. In reporting the 1996 article I found that all the trash generated by Americans for the next 1,000 years would fit on one-tenth of 1 percent of the land available for grazing. And that tiny amount of land wouldn’t be lost forever, because landfills are typically covered with grass and converted to parkland, like the Freshkills Park being created on Staten Island. The United States Open tennis tournament is played on the site of an old landfill — and one that never had the linings and other environmental safeguards required today.

Though most cities shun landfills, they have been welcomed in rural communities that reap large economic benefits (and have plenty of greenery to buffer residents from the sights and smells). Consequently, the great landfill shortage has not arrived, and neither have the shortages of raw materials that were supposed to make recycling profitable.

With the economic rationale gone, advocates for recycling have switched to environmental arguments. Researchers have calculated that there are indeed such benefits to recycling, but not in the way that many people imagine.

Most of these benefits do not come from reducing the need for landfills and incinerators. A modern well-lined landfill in a rural area can have relatively little environmental impact. Decomposing garbage releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas, but landfill operators have started capturing it and using it to generate electricity. Modern incinerators, while politically unpopular in the United States, release so few pollutants that they’ve been widely accepted in the eco-conscious countries of Northern Europe and Japan for generating clean energy.

Moreover, recycling operations have their own environmental costs, like extra trucks on the road and pollution from recycling operations. Composting facilities around the country have inspired complaints about nauseating odors, swarming rats and defecating sea gulls. After New York City started sending food waste to be composted in Delaware, the unhappy neighbors of the composting plant successfully campaigned to shut it down last year.
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THE environmental benefits of recycling come chiefly from reducing the need to manufacture new products — less mining, drilling and logging. But that’s not so appealing to the workers in those industries and to the communities that have accepted the environmental trade-offs that come with those jobs.

Nearly everyone, though, approves of one potential benefit of recycling: reduced emissions of greenhouse gases. Its advocates often cite an estimate by the E.P.A. that recycling municipal solid waste in the United States saves the equivalent of 186 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, comparable to removing the emissions of 39 million cars.

According to the E.P.A.’s estimates, virtually all the greenhouse benefits — more than 90 percent — come from just a few materials: paper, cardboard and metals like the aluminum in soda cans. That’s because recycling one ton of metal or paper saves about three tons of carbon dioxide, a much bigger payoff than the other materials analyzed by the E.P.A. Recycling one ton of plastic saves only slightly more than one ton of carbon dioxide. A ton of food saves a little less than a ton. For glass, you have to recycle three tons in order to get about one ton of greenhouse benefits. Worst of all is yard waste: it takes 20 tons of it to save a single ton of carbon dioxide.

Once you exclude paper products and metals, the total annual savings in the United States from recycling everything else in municipal trash — plastics, glass, food, yard trimmings, textiles, rubber, leather — is only two-tenths of 1 percent of America’s carbon footprint.

As a business, recycling is on the wrong side of two long-term global economic trends. For centuries, the real cost of labor has been increasing while the real cost of raw materials has been declining. That’s why we can afford to buy so much more stuff than our ancestors could. As a labor-intensive activity, recycling is an increasingly expensive way to produce materials that are less and less valuable.

Recyclers have tried to improve the economics by automating the sorting process, but they’ve been frustrated by politicians eager to increase recycling rates by adding new materials of little value. The more types of trash that are recycled, the more difficult it becomes to sort the valuable from the worthless.

In New York City, the net cost of recycling a ton of trash is now $300 more than it would cost to bury the trash instead. That adds up to millions of extra dollars per year — about half the budget of the parks department — that New Yorkers are spending for the privilege of recycling. That money could buy far more valuable benefits, including more significant reductions in greenhouse emissions.

So what is a socially conscious, sensible person to do?

It would be much simpler and more effective to impose the equivalent of a carbon tax on garbage, as Thomas C. Kinnaman has proposed after conducting what is probably the most thorough comparison of the social costs of recycling, landfilling and incineration. Dr. Kinnaman, an economist at Bucknell University, considered everything from environmental damage to the pleasure that some people take in recycling (the “warm glow” that makes them willing to pay extra to do it).

He concludes that the social good would be optimized by subsidizing the recycling of some metals, and by imposing a $15 tax on each ton of trash that goes to the landfill. That tax would offset the environmental costs, chiefly the greenhouse impact, and allow each municipality to make a guilt-free choice based on local economics and its citizens’ wishes. The result, Dr. Kinnaman predicts, would be a lot less recycling than there is today.

Then why do so many public officials keep vowing to do more of it? Special-interest politics is one reason — pressure from green groups — but it’s also because recycling intuitively appeals to many voters: It makes people feel virtuous, especially affluent people who feel guilty about their enormous environmental footprint. It is less an ethical activity than a religious ritual, like the ones performed by Catholics to obtain indulgences for their sins.

Religious rituals don’t need any practical justification for the believers who perform them voluntarily. But many recyclers want more than just the freedom to practice their religion. They want to make these rituals mandatory for everyone else, too, with stiff fines for sinners who don’t sort properly. Seattle has become so aggressive that the city is being sued by residents who maintain that the inspectors rooting through their trash are violating their constitutional right to privacy.

It would take legions of garbage police to enforce a zero-waste society, but true believers insist that’s the future. When Mayor de Blasio promised to eliminate garbage in New York, he said it was “ludicrous” and “outdated” to keep sending garbage to landfills. Recycling, he declared, was the only way for New York to become “a truly sustainable city.”

But cities have been burying garbage for thousands of years, and it’s still the easiest and cheapest solution for trash. The recycling movement is floundering, and its survival depends on continual subsidies, sermons and policing. How can you build a sustainable city with a strategy that can’t even sustain itself?

Read original NY Times article written by John Tierney https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-of-recycling.html?mwrsm=Email

Does recycling cause mental illness?

In psychology, there is a mental illness or mental disorder called Delusional Disorder. The main feature of this disorder is the presence of delusions, unshakable beliefs in something untrue or not based on reality. Over the past forty years there has been a growing increase in the feel-good result of recycling. Many sustainability managers today approach sustainability as being synonymous with recycling. The idea is that we should recycle everything no matter the economic or environmental costs. We should do it because it “feels” like the right thing to do. But none of this is based on facts, data or science. In fact, the data and science tell us otherwise and points to the dark side, that this delusional approach of “recycle everything no matter the cost” creates more environmental and economic harm than doing nothing.

Over the past forty years we have subsidized billions on top of billions of dollars, and have increased taxes (bottle bills, bag fees) to subsidize plastics recycling. The result? An industry that doesn’t and wouldn’t survive on its own, recycles less than 10% of our overall plastics and hasn’t even remotely fixed, solved, or made a dent in plastic pollution. All this time, effort and billions of dollars have not even begun to make a positive impact in the massive amounts of coffee pods, sachet packets, personal care packaging and products, zipper bags, plastic bags, plastic film, foam coffee cups, foam and plastic soda cups, lids, straws, utensils, food and product packaging, Styrofoam….. The list goes on and on, to the tune of billions upon billions of these items being disposed of each year and increasing, mind you, because we are adding more and more people to the planet and we continue to consume more and more stuff. None of the efforts that have been made thus far, or that are currently being proposed, to recycle these items have or will change the direction we have been on and are currently heading in.

When sustainability managers develop, and implement ideas and programs such as bring back programs which require additional infrastructure for managing, shipping, transportation to processors which will address less than 5% of a company’s plastic packaging and do so because it feels good or sounds good but neglects the use of facts and data to validate that the overall environmental impact is beneficial, these kinds of programs are hopeful or wishful thinking at best.

One might even ask how it’s possible to perform the responsibility of sustainability guardian’s without the use of facts, data and science? How does one solve a problem of this magnitude neglecting science and data and facts? This “feel good” approach to recycling has resulted in some people becoming mentally ill with Delusional Disorder.

So how do we begin to move in a direction to fix this mental illness? How do we open the eyes of those with Delusional Disorder and get them to start using facts, data and science to develop solutions that will have true environmental benefits and value? Delusional disorder is considered difficult to treat. Antipsychotic drugs, antidepressants and mood-stabilizing medications are frequently used to treat this mental illness and there is growing interest in psychological therapies such as psychotherapy and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) as a means of treatment.

These treatments would take years to get society back on track with using science, data and facts in our solutions to addressing humanities plastic waste problem. So how do we (as a society) effectively and quickly treat this widespread mental illness before it’s too late for the environment? We must begin to make reality based science and data driven decisions and develop solutions that will address the plastic waste we humans continue to produce, use and discard so that we can move in the direction of making real positive changes that will have true environmental value and benefit, instead of the delusion of acting on what might feel good but will ultimately never solve plastic pollution.