By: Andrew Wahl
A plant stands in front of piles of waste paper being shipped to mainland China for recycling, at a collection site in Hong Kong on Earth Day April 22, 2009. (REUTERS/Tyrone Siu)
This is a bit outside of my usual focus, but this image (one of a series of stunning photos compiled by the Boston Globe’s Alan Taylor in honour of Earth Day) is, for me, a striking reminder of the environmental costs of that supposedly green act of recycling. After the collectors empty your blue box at the curb, where does that recycling go? If you’re an Ontario resident, some stuff, according to this Toronto Star story, goes to China. (How’s that for a flat world?)
When grappling with environmental issues, like with most complex problems, people are apt to fixate on solving isolated aspects with complex solutions, and not see the forest for the trees. Recycling, in theory, is great; if it’s not done well, though, it creates new problems. Sure, innovation is messy. But how messy is it to just focus on those other two neglected cousins of recycling, “Reduce” and “Reuse”? Recycling is a complex, costly solution and ought to be the last of those “Three Rs” we consider doing in our daily lives, but it’s often the first.
2 Responses to “ Earth Day hangover ”
I couldn’t agree more. It bothers me to no end that no one thinks of reducing and/or reusing the things they have. Instead we have programs to recycle all of our crap after which it ends up in some long lost recycling landfill anyway because there is not market for it to be turned into something else. We need to be smarter about what we use and how we use it.
By Stephanie Fazio on Apr 23, 2009
Great post. Too many people focus on the recycling, hardly anyone focuses on the reusing and even fewer on the reducing.
By Jack Zufelt on Apr 23, 2009