Reduce, Don't Recycle

Recycling has become a bit of a crutch these days. It’s a way for people to feel good about what they’re doing (“saving the planet”) without changing their behavior. It gives people a free pass on generating waste; it allows them to save face.

Recycling is one of those things that sounds good on the surface, but ends up having unintended consequences which may in fact be worse than the alternative.

Recycling has a lot of issues:

• in some cases the actual process of recycling can use more energy than it saves (although this is often disputed), especially in cases where recycled material is being shipped around the world so that it can be dumped on someone else
• often the material sent for recycling is never recycled at all
• costs have—in some cases—become unsustainable and numerous US cities have ended or scaled down recycling programs
• some believe that recycling is coming to an end altogether, which suggests we need to find a better way to manage waste

Update (2025): The situation has only gotten worse since this article was first written. The pandemic created a massive surge in single-use plastics from PPE and takeout containers. A 2022 report revealed that less than 6% of plastic in the US was actually recycled¹, despite decades of messaging suggesting plastic recycling is effective. Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry plans to triple plastic production by 2050.

Even paper recycling, once considered straightforward, faces contamination issues. When people toss greasy pizza boxes or plastic-lined coffee cups into paper recycling, they can ruin entire batches of otherwise recyclable materials.

However, recycling does have some benefits. According to the EPA:

In 2017, the recycling, composting, combustion with energy recovery and landfilling of MSW saved over 184 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2E). This is comparable to the emissions that could be reduced from taking over 39 million cars off the road in a year.

Recycling aluminum is particularly effective, saving about 95% of the energy needed to make new aluminum from raw materials. But aluminum cans make up a tiny fraction of our waste stream compared to plastics and other materials.

Re-Thinking Waste #

The main issue with recycling is (and always has been) that it doesn’t get at the root of the cause: waste generation. Recycling may have its benefits, but it does nothing to discourage people from generating waste in the first place.

The biggest driver of waste is consumerism and throwaway culture. It’s difficult to repair consumer products, they aren’t built to last, and we’re constantly being bombarded with ads telling us to buy more and use our brains less.

There is some good news on the repair front: the Right to Repair movement has gained significant momentum. The EU implemented rules requiring manufacturers to make products more repairable, and several US states have passed similar legislation. In 2022, Apple announced a Self Service Repair program after years of fighting against repair rights—a small but meaningful victory for consumers².

Reduce #

The best thing people can do is focus on reducing consumption, which is at the top of the reduce -> reuse -> recycle funnel. Consumption reduction also has a number of knock-on benefits, such as making you a wealthier person and limiting the number of problems you have to deal with in life. Strategies to reduce consumption include:

• purchasing higher quality goods which are meant to last, rather than be replaced
• avoiding trendy items (like fashionable clothing), which make up a significant proportion of waste—I, for one, pretty much wear the same clothes every day and nobody has ever had an issue with it
• living in smaller homes to discourage filling them with junk and furniture that you don’t need
• living in smaller homes to reduce the amount of material needed and wasted for the home itself (also, there’s reduced heating, cooling, and lighting costs)
• living in cities that offer lots of transport options such that you don’t need to purchase automobiles (which are a massive source of waste: even though about 10 million cars are recycled per year, more cars are being sold which means there’s a lot of waste)
• living as close as possible to your workplace to reduce wear and tear on disposable items
• shopping at package-free stores, which are becoming more common in major cities
• using digital products instead of physical ones where possible (though be aware digital has its own carbon footprint from data centers)
• borrowing or renting items you’ll only use occasionally instead of purchasing them
• participating in clothing swaps or buying second-hand

The growth of the Zero Waste movement has made reducing consumption easier. People living a zero-waste lifestyle aim to send nothing to landfill, and some manage to fit a year’s worth of trash into a single mason jar. While that’s extreme, the movement has popularized accessible swaps like reusable grocery bags, metal straws, and refillable cleaning products.

Beyond Individual Action #

While individual choices matter, it’s important to acknowledge that 70% of global emissions come from just 100 companies³. Truly effective environmentalism requires a combination of personal choices and systemic change.

Some promising systemic approaches include:

• Circular economy models where products are designed to be reused, repaired, or recycled from the start
• Extended producer responsibility laws that make manufacturers responsible for the entire lifecycle of their products
• Deposit return schemes for containers, which have achieved 90%+ recycling rates in countries like Germany and Norway
• Packaging taxes that incentivize companies to reduce excess packaging

Plus, if you think you feel smug about how good you are at recycling, you’ll be excited to know how absolutely amazing you’ll feel when you go around telling everyone about how little waste you’re generating.

And if you’re really committed, you can post photos of your mason jar filled with a year’s worth of trash on Instagram. Nothing says “I’m saving the planet” like social media validation for your minimal waste lifestyle.