BY NAOMI BARR
Yes, every little bit helps!
“Individually, maybe not. Collectively, I’m sure it does. At the very least, we are making a huge problem a bit smaller.”
@LMDEA60
“It makes me feel less futile in the face of climate change if I can at least recycle.”
@ROBINSTEFFLER
“I’d rather keep recycling and believing I’m doing my small part to make things better.”
@CINDICRONK
Nope, doesn’t matter!
“I’m becoming convinced that most of what we recycle does not actually get recycled.”
@WENDIMUELLER
“When you factor in the water we use to wash our recycling and the separate trucks, any resource savings is probably canceled out.”
@OURLUNARECLIPSE
“From years of reading the news, I do not believe most plastics are recycled."
@PEKNPAW
Yes! You may have read articles questioning the effectiveness of recycling, and it’s true the proliferation of plastic is creating challenges. Still, experts say recycling works. And if you care about the planet, it’s a must. According to the non-profit The Recycling Partnership, if all recyclable items in the U.S. were diverted from landfills, it would cut more than 107 million metric tons of carbon emissions a year—equal to taking almost 23 million cars off the road.
Things can go awry when people don’t follow their municipality’s rules, says Nilda Mesa, director of the Urban Sustainability and Equity Planning Program at Columbia University. Nena Shaw, director of the resource conservation and sustainability division at the EPA, agrees: “Recycling centers can only do so much, and putting nonrecyclable or food-laden items in a bin can mean the whole batch ends up in a landfill.”
So follow guidelines for each material. In some towns, glass has to be dropped off at a collection point. Keep grease-coated pizza boxes out of the cardboard pile (a few specks is fine). Rinse out your plastics, and check the number: “Plastic containers are stamped 1 through 7. While 1 and 2 are usually recyclable, the rest depends on your area,” Shaw says.
When we get it right, we make a difference. Recycled aluminum comprises 80% of aluminum production in the U.S., and according to the most recent EPA data (from 2018), we recycle 68% of paper and cardboard and 31% of glass containers. (The plastic stats aren’t as great; your best bet there is to consume less, especially—say it with us now—single-use plastic.) So please reduce, reuse, and recycle as much as possible.
Illustration by Joel Holland