The Big Lie About Reycling

The big lie is you're helping save the planet by recycling plastics. Am I committing heresy in saying it? Probably.

Here's the thing; recycling certain metals makes sense. They're expensive and come in limited quantities when mined. An example is gold, silver, lead and copper. Steel, the list goes on and on. But plastic, that's problematic as oil is available in vast quantities despite what the naysayers claim and when produced manufacturers do so in large production runs, using economies of scale.

Now consider the consumer, that's you and me. We go into a store and buy a drink stored in a plastic bottle. Does it make sense to then separate that plastic, transport it, sort it, process it into another plastic whatever? Clearly it does not as the amount of hydrocarbons displaced in 'saving' that precious bottle is greater than what went into making the bottle in the first place.

The only sensible thing you can do is ensure that that plastic bottle takes a short and safe trip to a landfill. Maybe, possibly an incinerator. But it makes absolutely no sense to recycle the thing.

And the really big lie is the one told to you time and again. That lie is when choosing to recycle you're saving the planet, protecting cute seals or some such, sustainable this, eco that. How about this as a sales pitch; are you prepared to take a 20% pay cut to save the planet? Oh and with no certainty that taking a pay cut will actually work, but it will make you feel like you're doing something. Have I won you over? No? Well that's what the consumer is being asked to do as that recycling 'industry' is building cost into every part of their saving everything.

Recycling sometimes makes sense. Mostly though, it's a sales pitch hoodwinking you, the put-upon consumer, into paying more and receiving less. What is the answer? Engineer alternatives that's what. Find other ways to do things. Don't take junk and think you can make something out of it.