Rethinking Lifestyle

“Local recycling plant struggling to keep up” – that was the headline in the local paper. My first reaction to that headline and the article was one of self-congratulation. After all if we recycle more we landfill less, and that’s good.

But then I did some pondering and that led to some research. We know the mantra “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” As long as we do one of them, we are environmentally friendly, right? Wrong!

Consider the beverage containers we use. There was a time when we rarely used a container for water, at least not in public places. We used reusable coffee cups and drank our water from water fountains. Soda drinks, beer and even milk came in reusable bottles, and because the deposit on the bottle was substantial, almost all bottles were returned for reuse. I can remember buying a soda drink for $0.07, and there was a $0.02 refundable deposit on the bottle. Enterprising youth (and others) scoured roadsides for bottles thrown out from passing cars. Littering was not a problem, the word litterbug had not been coined and recycling plants were unnecessary.

But now we live in a world of single-use packaging. What has that given us (besides an overflowing recycling plant)? Really nothing! The convenience of a water bottle sitting on the edge of our desk is very marginal. If we do need a sip, getting up and walking to the water fountain would probably do more for body and mind than tilting that bottle.

Let’s face it. The increased volume arriving at the recycling plant is not diversion from the landfill. That increased volume is the result of more recyclable material moving through our homes, – single use water bottles, Tim Horton’s cups, plastic clam shells.

The amount of energy needed to make and transport a bottle of water could be represented by filling that bottle 1/4 with oil. Furthermore plastic cannot be recycled to another bottle. It can only be recycled to a lower quality plastic, the kind used for  plastic furniture.

Whereas reducing and reusing really does much to reduce waste, recycling is still wasting. It’s just better than landfilling.

So what can we do? On a personal level we can of course simply avoid using single use containers. Many of us are already doing that.

But individually reducing consumption won’t make much difference. To make a difference, we need to tackle the waste problem as a society, and that means producing less waste.

Bottom line: a recycling facility “struggling to keep up” points to a lack of leadership. It points to regulators and legislators unwilling to do what it takes to reduce the ubiquitousness of single use packaging. What if government (at any level) were to pointedly discourage the use of single use containers? What if retailers were forced to apply a recycling fee high enough to make a difference? What if we went back to a significant bottle deposit on the beverages we buy? Coming generations would thank us.