RE: #Earth Deeds - The True Nature Of Recycling
A recycling program makes it easy for people to feel good while ignoring the fact that they should be minimizing how much waste they create in the first place.
This is SO TRUE! It is amazing to me how many people think it is OK to use plastic because it goes in the recycling bin!
I appreciate recycling in cities. I am a minimalist, but there are times in a city when I generate plastic and glass no matter how hard I try. Having the ability to recycle is a necessity, while I continue to look for ways to reduce. I recently found a bulk food store in Florence and am pushing our local market at Damanhur to bring more in. When I just have to use plastic or glass, I prefer to recycle than just throw it away. Paper products, on the other hand, mainly go into the compost. There is no excuse to not compost. You can either do it in your tiny city apartment for your house plants or the local park or you can get together with friends and do it!
It is true that recycling is beneficial at times, it's better than no recycling. I suppose I just needed to emphasize that It should be the secondary action once we have exhausted our efforts to avoid it in the first place.
I think if people stopped buying things encased in plastic by default, choosing those that have been packaged with renewable material instead manufacturers might change their packaging practices.
We recycle too - its near impossible to live without a bit of plastic coming into the house.
This is exactly my concern with all the new businesses being created around recycling plastic products. While recycling and reusing is a great first step, the real goal should be total elimination. If these businesses grow, they are going to continue to require the creation of plastic, which I truly believe can be completely eliminated. We need all these new recycling businesses to have a phase-out plan, so that we can shut them down easily as we step away from generating so much plastic.
Our work as Bioversum is about Circular Economy solutions that are inspired by nature so that we think about the potential waste problem at the very beginning. People need to learn that it is not necessarily more hygienic to have everything individually wrapped in plastic. If we learn how to buy and store things differently, we could eliminate tons of unnecessary plastic!
Thanks so much for sharing, this resonates with my own beliefs.