We Need to Rebuild the Recycling Brand
Today's guest blog is authored by Alec Cooley, Senior Advisor at Busch Systems. The original post can be read here.
I have a good friend, Bill, who I know through our local Sierra Club group. Bill has walked the talk as an environmentalist for over 40 years. There are few people I know more passionate or committed to taking action on behalf of conservation issues. So, it’s a little disturbing when he periodically questions the value of separating recyclables.
This earnest question was also at the core of an exchange of professional listserv messages I had with a university sustainability officer recently. The person cited a 2019 NPR Planet Money investigative story that said in as many words that plastics recycling was a fraud, promoted by the petroleum industry and consumer brand companies to distract from the inherent wastefulness they profit from. The story argued that not only was the…