zerowaste

"is the "recycle" thing also bullshit? how so?"

The only honest answer to this is "it's complicated". If I had to give an oversimplified binary answer, I'd say yes, it is a bit bullshit.

To attempt to summarise part of why:

• There are so many different kinds of plastics that actually making recycling supply chains work is difficult
• At the household waste processing level, I've seen a few investigations that show plastic that could be recycled being sent to landfill, or incineration. This is in part because of inconsistent practices by households sorting their trash, meaning the waste processing plant has to do a heckton of work to ensure that everything is indeed recyclable. This may vary depending on one's local authority
• Plastic recycling is far more economical at the commercial/industrial level, especially because there's less work/error in the processing side of it.
• I think it depends on the particular plastic, but I think that plastic can generally only be recycled once, and recycled plastic is often lower quality than "virgin" plastic. This doesn't mean we shouldn't recycle plastic, but that we should be aware that it has its limits.
• Glass and aluminium have less of these issues than plastic, but it's still more complex than most realise. Logistics of processing recycling is hard and often expensive.

Along those lines, I think the main point I want to highlight is that the phrase that was often pushed is "reduce, re-use, recycle". I think that far too much emphasis has been put on recycling in recent years, especially given the complexities and caveats with recycling that I outlined above. "Reduce, re-use, recycle" is explicitly anti-consumerist, which is why I think the rhetoric has morphed to emphasise the recycling aspect, despite recycling ideally being the last item in that list. Reduce how much stuff you're using by being mindful in your purchases, especially with plastics and the like; then consider how you could re-use stuff that you already have; only then should recycling be entering the picture.

My opinion is that changes like this are less about reducing the waste products, but more about how this kind of mindful anti-consumerism shapes us; modern society has made consumers of us all, and we desperately need to resist that as much as possible. It's hard to do because corporations have become very skilled at co-opting eco-conscious rhetoric and "green-washing" consumerism: they placate us by advertising that the plastic products they're selling us are made with 10% recycled plastic, as if that makes much difference to the fact the product will probably end up in landfill

People just like to look a things in a binary way and to look at excuses not do annoying things.

Só since recicling doesn't 100% solve the plastic problem obviously we should stop even trying to do the thing.

And also throw in reduce and reuse in the bucket of things not to do because why try everything at all if we can just point a finger at someone and keep not doing anything besides complain.