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This article is part of a special report, The Recycling Myth.Ā
The effort to promote recycling has been too successful.
Thatā€™s the argument being made by some environmentalists, as they point to a perception among consumers that if they carefully sort their glass, paper and plastic, they arenā€™t polluting the planet.
ā€The message about recycling is so positive that it becomes an incentive to consider that recyclable waste is not really waste,ā€¯ said Flore Berlingen, director of Zero Waste France, an NGO.
Itā€™s not that recycling is bad. Itā€™s certainly better for the environment than landfilling or burning unsorted trash. But thereā€™s a growing worry among environmentalists that it could be promoting additional consumption ā€” and additional waste.
If people believe they can buy aluminum coffee capsules, plastic water bottles or even new cars, expecting that everything will be recycled and reused, it allows them to consume with a clean conscience.
ā€The positive emotions associated with recycling can overpower the negative emotions associated with wastingā€¯Ā ā€” Monic Sun and Remi Trudel, professors at Boston University
ā€Today, we are in a very productivist capitalist model of overconsumption and overproduction," said French Green MEP David Cormand. ā€We can see that this is incompatible with our ecological objectives and the maintenance of life on Earth.ā€¯
Monic Sun and Remi Trudel, professors at Boston University, studied consumption patterns and reactions to recycling-awareness campaigns. They showed that ā€the positive emotions associated with recycling can overpower the negative emotions associated with wasting.ā€¯
In their paper, the professors warned that recycling promotional campaigns donā€™t do a good job of showing the economic and environmental costs of recycling, and so donā€™t provide an incentive to prevent waste from being generated in the first place.
"In this sense, recycling becomes the alibi for single-use and even its main justification,ā€¯ Berlingen said.
Recycler beware
Nobodyā€™s arguing that recycling isnā€™t good for the environment.
ā€Overall recycling has a lower carbon footprint, lower [greenhouse gas] emissions, and relies less on resources extractionā€¯ than virgin materials, explained Pieter van Beukering, professor of environmental economics at the Free University of Amsterdam.
But he warned that ā€itā€™s dangerous to say that recycling has always a lower environmental footprint than virgin materialā€¯ because the costs and energy deployed in the recycling process varies a lot from one material to another.
That's not the argument made by much of the recycling sector. It holds that people will continue to produce waste, so there's a need to do a better job of collecting, sorting and transforming that garbage back into new products, something that creates jobs and fuels innovation.
ā€I donā€™t oppose recycling to repair and reuse; theyā€™re complementary,ā€¯ said Emmanuel Katrakis, secretary-general of the Confederation of European Recycling Industries (EuRIC), who added that recycling has ā€massive economic benefits because when we recycle, itā€™s highly job-intensive.ā€¯
When looking at the whole value chain, the consultancy Deloitte estimated in a study published in 2015 that it takes 30 additional jobs to recycle plastic compared with burning unsorted waste or landfilling.
But there's an argument that the whole emphasis is misguided. Instead of making it easier to reuse and recycle things, people should be thinking about whether they need to be consuming at all.
Companies such as Coca-Cola are keen to encourage recycling to reduce their environmental impact | Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP via Getty Images
Part of the problem, said van Beukering, is that EU and national authorities can easily set rules on waste sorting, collection and recycling targets. But itā€™s far harder to put in place rules to stop people from buying stuff they don't really need.
ā€Governments tend to have more [policy] influence on recycling than on [waste] prevention,ā€¯ he said.
However, if taken to its logical extreme, it would mean a dramatic reshaping of capitalist economies ā€” so companies prefer to tout the benefits of recycling.
Major beverage companies like Coca-Cola see recycling as part of the solution to reduce their environmental footprint.
ā€We are trying to prove that we can create a loop as closed as possible, but to do that we need to get the bottles back,ā€¯ said Bruno van Gompel, supply chain and technical director at Coca-Cola Western Europe.
Linear economy
With its new Circular Economy Action Plan presented in March, the European Commission wants to boost recycling and is considering setting minimum requirements for recycled content in products to encourage the development of a market for secondary raw material.
Recycling is seen as a core element of the circular economy promoted by the EU, but its effectiveness relies on people properly collecting and sorting their waste. That makes popular acceptance of recycling a key to the program's success.
ā€Recycling is a collective endeavor,ā€¯ said Katrakis.
As a result, millions of Europeans are being asked to examine their garbage and to put it in the appropriate containers for collection, and countries are under pressure from the EU to ensure that their recycling rates hit ever more demanding targets.
Of the 30 million tons of plastic waste generated in the EU in 2015, only 17 percent was collected for reuse or recycling, according to the European Environmental Agency.
ā€I do believe that the authorities can help us by making sure that the bottles donā€™t get lost, that they donā€™t get into non-beverage applications, that they do not disappear to other markets [outside the EU], that there is stability on tax regimes and no bans,ā€¯ said Coca-Colaā€™s van Gompel.
A protester outside the European Parliament in Strasbourg in 2018 wears a suit made of plastic waste | Patrick Seeger/EPA-EFE
Environmental activists argue that an overemphasis on recycling doesnā€™t make the economy more circular. It makes it more linear.
Berlingen, from Zero Waste France, makes the case for prioritizing waste prevention, or efforts to reuse or repair discarded items instead.
"We must not stop recycling, but we must have an honest and balanced discourse about [it],ā€¯ she said.
Companies, she said, should be doing more to reduce packaging waste by putting their products in refillable or reusable containers, and avoiding single-use packaging.
ā€The consumer may make every effort to be a model sorter when it comes to recycling, [but] it's the manufacturer who has the upper hand on product design,ā€¯ she said.
European Environment Commissioner Virginijus SinkeviĨius said he knows that ā€a more systemic change will be necessary to move beyond just waste management and achieve a true transition to a circular economy.ā€¯
He insisted that the Commission is working on new policies to ā€make sustainable products, services and business models ā€¦ the norm and transform consumption patterns so that no waste is produced in the first place.ā€¯
This article is part of POLITICOā€™s Sustainability Pro service, which dives deep into sustainability issues across all sectors, including: circular economy, waste and the plastics strategy, chemicals and more. For a complimentary trial, email [email protected] mentioning Sustainability.
