Do you know what recycling is? OK, let us check then in case we disagree. Recycling is the process of taking something manufactured, which once used can only be thrown away and collecting it as a raw material to start the manufacturing process over again. So does recycling automatically help reduce our energy usage and make us greener? Not necessarily if the energy it takes to collect and transport recycling back to China exceeds that to use a virgin material. We many need bigger landfill sites but actually dumping rubbish might be greener! What’s going on here?
The problem is that recycling has become synonymous with greenness, when quite feasibly it could be the reverse. It all depends on how we calculate the cost of recycling, and that depends on how big you choose to look. Recycling could profitable for the local authority when set against buying landfill volume, or for the recycler in terms of cost of sorting versus resale price, or the manufacturer in terms of material cost versus virgin raw material. Or we could ask whether the overall carbon emissions for the entire process stack up against alternatives. We have been taught to see recycling as good without understanding its implications. If we buy something that says recyclable on the box we feel we are doing our bit. But if recyclable simply means I can easily separate out the bits to reuse then I guess an AK47 is a good product, just metal and wood very easy to recycle. Mmmm.
Another way to look at recycling is to realise it may do little or nothing to reduce the damage to the environment in terms of green house gases and may make the problem worse. It simply keeps materials in the loop rather than destroying them but does nothing to cut the emissions associated with manufacture, transportation and consumption. What we ought to be asking is do we need to keep making new things? Surely recycling is the second choice, the first is to reuse something, then as a last resort recycle it.
We need to start considering reuse rather than recycling. What examples can we look at? A glass milk bottle is reused tens or hundreds of times. A plastic shampoo bottle with its flip lid or built in pump action will probably function reliably for ten years if you refill it. 90% of a car is in perfect working order when you scrap it, just a few of the faster rotating metal parts may be worn and the odd dent. We used to buy everything in glass bottles in 1987 and those went back for reuse like milk bottles. We reused our shopping bags, darned socks, turned collars, mended clothes, top and tailed sheets, resoled shoes, retreaded tyres, repaired bicycles and household appliances, washed out plastic bags, kept cars running for years.
But here lies the real problem. When I list these things we are reminded of post war scarcity, rationing and it all sounds like ‘going backwards’. But is wrong to realise that some of the things we used to do were good and right? Backwards needs a rebranding exercise, how can we make moving forwards encompass things we used to do without it being seen as retrograde? Take that one on Saatchi & Saatchi.
