Environment

Recycling is Bulls**t

by Amy Judd | November 12, 2008 at 02:33 pm

205 views | 7 Recommendations | 5 comments

This week is National Recycling Week - but is the whole thing just a bunch of bullshit? Does recycling actually make a difference? According to one blogger, no it doesn't. It's just all a big scam to make people think they are making a difference, but really, no one cares.

Lets call recycling what it is- a fraud, a sham, a scam perpetrated by big business on the citizens and municipalities of America. Look who sponsors the National Recycling Coalition: behind America Recycles Day: Coca-Cola, Pepsico, Anheuser-Busch, Coors, Owens-Illinois, International Bottled Water Association, the same people who brought you that other fraud, Keep America Beautiful.

Recycling is simply the transfer of producer responsibility for what they produce to the taxpayer who has to pick it up and take it away.

Heather Rogers wrote in "Message in a bottle" about how they did this. The Keep America Beautiful campaign started a few years after the introduction of disposable bottles in the early 1950s. Soon bottles were everywhere and states were considering bans on disposables. So American Can, Owens-Illinois and Coke got together to basically invent the concept of litter. They said "packages don't litter, people do." (sound familiar?)

So what do you think about all of this? Should we even bother recycling at all or is this something that isn't going to make much of a difference in the coming years?
Personally, I think recycling is really important and it does make a difference. If people couldn't be botherd to return their bottles for money and just threw them out, imagine how many would end up in the landfills? It would be a problem of catastrophic proportions. I think anyway. What do you think?

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mazevedo

at 15:56 on November 12th, 2008

I am still a firm believer everyone should do their part, even though I am sure it has run through almost everyone's mind, whether we can really make a difference or not. I take the optimistic view that we can and recycle!

Nicole Billard

at 16:11 on November 12th, 2008

No matter who getting paid/making money off the actual process, a big part of the point is that there is less crap going into holes it doesn't belong in. We buy 100% post consumer recycled paper products at our office, and I have several pieces of clothing made from the material in recycled pop bottles... that's the point. Anyone who makes this about who gets paid to clean up our messes is missing that point, I think.

talentedchimp

at 20:11 on November 13th, 2008

The concept of recycling allows us to continue with our disposable consumption lifestyle while still thinking we are being "green". I agree, the corporate sponsored message is bullshit, but the idea is still valid.

Read Paul Hawken's book The Ecology of Commerce for interesting ideas on how the recycling concept could really be used.

Rhonda J Mangus

at 18:25 on November 13th, 2008

A very good story, Amy. I never thought that "Recycling is simply the transfer of producer responsibility for what they produce to the taxpayer who has to pick it up and take it away." One thing for certain, the bottles wouldn't just end up in the landfills, they would (and do) end up on the streets as litter too! Interesting!