Recycling’s True Worth

August 28, 2018

With all of the market troubles facing recycling today, what is missing from the discussion is the value of recycling in conserving resources and reducing our ecological footprint. In fact, the real value of recycling will never be adequately measured until our economic metrics include the value of lost resources and the impacts of our waste and pollution on the planet.

Earth Overshoot Day is the date when the world’s population has used more from nature than the planet can renew in a year. This year it fell on August 1. According to Global Footprint Network, the international think tank that conducts the research behind Earth Overshoot Day, we are now using 1.7 Earths. 

The ecological footprint measures “how fast we consume resources and generate waste, compared to how fast nature can absorb our waste and generate new resources.”

According to the organization, more than 80 percent of the world’s population live in countries that use more resources than their ecosystems can renew, and thus are running ecological deficits. The United States’ Ecological Footprint exceeds its biocapacity by 133%. Our country’s “Overshoot Day” was March 15.

As the UK-based Carbon Footprint points out on its website, “Recycling uses less energy and produces less pollution than making things from scratch.” The organization also advocates for composting, which reduces landfilling while revitalizing soil.

Internet HyperConsumerism

The Atlantic ran an article on August 21 titled: “We Are All Accumulating Mountains of Things—How online shopping and cheap prices are turning Americans into hoarders.”

In the article, the author discussed how we’ve reached new levels of shopping “anywhere, anytime” thanks to the Internet. Gadgets, electronics, clothing, food…you name it and it can be ordered in seconds without having to leave our home or office. And, according to the author, online shopping not only provides us with the usual new stuff “dopamine” feel good sensation, we get even more joy through “delayed gratification” when our orders arrive a couple days later.

With shopping just a “click away,” more and more people shop online. Citing statistics from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Americans spent $240 billion in 2017, on goods such as phones and other electronics, luggage, jewelry, books, clothing, etc. This is twice as much as we spent in 2002, when adjusted for inflation. While, our population grew just 13 percent. Of course, the ever-increasing built-in obsolescence of our consumer goods and our demand for cheap goods helps to drive our spending as well.

In 2016, according to the American Apparel and Footwear Association, on average every man, woman, and child in the US spent a record $939.03 for clothes and $248.11 for shoes. While the Environmental Protection Agency states that in 2013, of the 15.1 million tons of textile waste generated, 12.8 million tons were discarded (ending up in landfills or incinerators).

Another industry whose recycling capabilities fall far short of hyper-consumerism is electronics. “Accounting for a comparatively small percentage of the total waste in our landfills, roughly 2%, e-waste represents nearly 70% of the toxic waste in landfills,” the Canada-based Electronic Recycling Association (ERA) reports. “Our tech addiction is literally poisoning the planet.”

The Atlantic article further points out that the size of our homes has increased by 23% over twenty years, as has the growth in self-storage units.

Add up our hyperconsumerism, obsolescence, cheap goods, and our growing piles of stuff that either can’t be recycled or don’t get recycled for whatever reason, and we get to our ecological footprint. 

While the focus on markets and what we should do about them is certainly important, we all need to truly remember and embrace the true worth of recycling in reducing our ecological footprint. Our growing rates of consumerism, lack of recycling, the rising number of consumer goods that cannot be repaired or recycled, and built-in obsolescence must become focal points of our discussions as well.

By Athena Lee Bradley and Robert Kropp