The Green Analysis

In 2021 the world produced 2.12 billion tons of waste, 13% of that is recycled, or 275.6 million tons, according to comfyliving.net. But the recycling marketing campaign has negatively impacted society, causing people to no longer feel guilt when buying new products. This caused the production of recyclables to increase, which led to a net increase in the amount of recyclable material on the earth. Also, recycling should be meant as a stage of transition from plastics and one-time-use things that we can recycle to reusable materials. Not just as a means to produce more and more one-time-use material. So here is the truth about recycling.

The Facts

Plastic Problem

According to comfyliving.net, the most significant percentage of recycled material is paper products at 23.1%, and plastic is only at 12.2%. While both plastic and paper are produced at a rate of 300 million tons per year. This means that almost 1/4 of all paper gets recycled, but only about 1/10 of all plastic gets recycled, leading to our current plastic pollution problems.

Economic Impact

On average creates 1.17 jobs per 1000 tons of recycled materials. In 2020, recycling created 681,000 jobs, $37.8 billion in wages, and $5.5 billion in tax revenue. The total revenue that recycling creates would equate to about 0.207% of the whole 2020 economy. The ferrous metals industry provided the largest contribution to profit in all three categories (job, wage, and tax revenue), in terms of revenue.

Landfilling

In 2018, about 146.1 million tons of MSW were landfilled. Food was the largest component at about 24 percent. Plastics accounted for over 18 percent, and paper and paperboard made up about 12 percent. The rate of landfilling has increased from 88.1 million tons in 1960 to 292.4 million tons in 2018. The problem with such a large amount of material being landfilled is that landfills are the largest source of human-caused methane, a greenhouse gas 21 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. The EPA admits all landfill liners will eventually leak, and their toxic leachate, or garbage juice, can seep into and contaminate soil and groundwater supplies. Roughly 20% of the sites on the Superfund list (the nation’s most hazardous sites) are solid waste landfills. All of the information in this section was from the United States Environmental Protection Agency website.

Pros and Cons

Recycling has undoubtedly benefited the world in countless ways, from producing jobs and profit, and reducing the amount of material we just throw away into a landfill. It also helps our oceans and continents stay just that little bit more trash-free. It also reduces emissions by limiting the amount of methane produced by landfills.

Recycling sometimes seems futile because while we are doing a good job continuing to recycle, it isn’t that much in the grand scheme. 12.2% of the world’s waste is recycled, but a total of 2.12 billion tons of waste is generated, meaning that 1.86 billion tons of trash are still not recycled. This unrecycled waste is either landfilled, incinerated, or worse, left outside to pollute our world. Also, recycling has only increased our reliance on unreusable materials because people no longer feel guilty when buying nonreusable products. This caused the total production of plastic, paper, and other materials on continue to increase instead of decline.

My Opinion

Recycling is a very complex and dynamic process; this process includes many advantages and disadvantages. Some of these are the production of jobs and money that recycling plants bring and how we still only remove about 12% of all waste. Furthermore, the amount of waste that we produce increases each year. Recycling is a marketing campaign to increase reliance on nonreusable products. So when the environmental aspects of these products come under scrutiny, the companies can point to recycling and continue mass manufacturing nonrenewable goods. Recycling is like a facade covering and hiding the fact that we are increasing the amount of waste we produce each year. But if changed, recycling could serve a different role. Recycling can be changed to be a transitory phase from non reusable products to reusable ones, making the transition easier for the world.

Bibliography

https://www.politico.eu/article/recycling-killing-the-planet/ https://www.epa.gov/recycle/recycling-basics https://nems.nih.gov/environmental-programs/Pages/Benefits-of-Recycling.aspx https://comfyliving.net/recycling-statistics/ https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/national-overview-facts-and-figures-materials https://www.epa.gov/smm/recycling-economic-information-rei-report