The more I talk about recycling with people the more I realise just how many people recycle backwards.
Hey OP what the fuck are you talking about?
What I mean is, when a lot of people plan to recycle, they look at stopping products from ending up in landfill. This is a completely pointless thing to worry about. Some materials do require special handling to dispose of safely (batteries, fragile plastics, etc.), but if your goal is a general ‘how do I repurpose this so it doesn’t end up in landfill?’, that solves absolutely nothing.
We aren’t lacking in landfill space. The shirt in the back of your closet that you never ever wear is exactly as bad for the environment in the back of your closet as it is in landfill; storing it is just delaying the point in time at which it’ll start to break down. If I buy something in a plastic bottle, and then repurpose that plastic bottle into a garden pot or something… that garden pot is still gonna go to landfill eventually. I haven’t saved anything. The plastic was landfill as soon as it was manufactured. That shirt was landfill (unless you choose to burn it, which isn’t environmentally any better) the moment the fabric was produced.
The critical point when it comes to making a difference with recycling isn’t before stuff hits landfill; it’s before the stuff is produced in the first place. “Reduce, reuse, recycle” only works because ‘reuse’ and ‘recycle’ are strategies to feed into ‘reduce’. Recycling glass bottles or aluminium cans is useful only because it reduces the amount of new glass and aluminium being produced (note: most of the plastic bottles you recycle go straight to landfill in other countries). Recycling fabric is useful only if it prevents the purchase of new fabric, and thus on a large scale, the production of new fabric.
For example, let’s say my pants are threadbare beyond repair, and I cut them up for dusters. Important question: do I use dusters? Do I need this many dusters? Is this, in short, an act that is stopping me from buying dusters made from newly manufactured material? If it’s not, then it’s not doing anything at all to help the environment. That same amount of fabric is still going to landfill. (That’s not a reason not to do it, it just doesn’t help the environment at all.)
Another example: I tend to cut up old clothes and pick up fabric that’s going to be thrown out a lot, to make bags and wall hangings and rugs and things. I recycle a LOT of fabric. Is this helping the environment? For some people doing this, it probably is, because they’re making stuff they’d otherwise buy. But for me, it’s doing nothing whatsoever for the environment. If I wasn’t making cushions and wall hangings, I wouldn’t be buying any. I just wouldn’t own any cushions or wall hangings. They’re fun to make, they brighten the place up, but they don’t affect my consumption (and therefore the incentive for cushions and wall hanging to be produced) at all; I’m buying zero of those things either way. Is this recycling? Yes. Does it have any effect whatsoever on helping the environment? No. It’s just delaying the amount of time before that exact same fabric ends becomes rubbish.
Same is true of the aformentioned plastic bottles into garden pots. That plastic is going into landfill whether you recycle it first or not. The question is, did repurposing it stop you from having to buy plastic garden pots? Will the cumulative effect of people doing this lower the amount of plastic garden pots being produced? Will that lower the amount of plastic being produced?
Stopping things from reaching landfill is largely an irrelevant and pointless practice. Recycling is only environmentally useful when it affects the future production of materials. Repurposing materials is often fun and practical regardless (I love repurposing materials), but it’s not automatically environmentally useful just because you’re reusing something.
#This is one of the reasons I am OBSESSED with green building materials#because so many of them are actually not that green at all#and the concept of recycled building materials is so over used while being under examined#and BOY DO THEY HATE IT WHEN YOU POINT OUT THAT THEIR GREEN PRODUCT IS NOT REALLY THAT GREEN#omg it makes them so mad#them being architects or company reps etc
Still fuming over that “vegan leather made from cacti!” thing that turned out to be almost entirely plastic with like, a bit of cactus in there.
This is mostly true except the assertion that “We aren’t lacking in landfill space”, which I must disagree with, because we are. Every landfill means another habitat dug up, more hydrology altered, and unless they’re properly constructed, a LOT of extremely harmful compounds entering the surrounding ecosystems via leachate. And it’s a particular problem if you live somewhere with a smaller landmass (e.g. UK, Iceland, Aotearoa, the Philippines, etc) - we are absolutely running out of landfill space, and anything that slows their filling IS a good thing.
But yes, it’s absolutely true that the behemoth in the room is our consumption patterns, and a lot of the green movement is just capitalism in a new colour. If we don’t stop making all the stuff we’re making, the planet dies. It really is that simple.
That’s a good point. For context I am Australian.
Friendly reminder that capitalism mangled “reduce reuse recycle” into just “recycle” for a reason. Corporations don’t want to reduce consumption at all so they’ll gladly sell you the lie that if you recycle hard enough you’ll save the environment. No amount of recycling will save shit if we do not reduce and reuse (and obliterate the capitalist system forcing us all into perpetual overconsumption)
