Landfill beats recycling: The uncomfortable truth about our waste
Just bury your trash: What if everything we know about recycling is wrong?
Conventional wisdom says recycling is always better than landfill, but the data tells a different story. This article argues that for much of our trash, modern landfill is cleaner, cheaper, and more environmentally sensible than recycling. It examines the energy costs of reusable alternatives, the inefficiency of recycling processes, and the reality of ocean plastic, concluding that we should rethink our waste hierarchy.
What if landfill, properly done, is actually one of the cleanest, cheapest, and most environmentally sensible things we can do with our waste?
- leonixyz
The authors think reusing a cotton bag for 173 times is difficult - that's all we need to say about this article. When recommendation for landfilling comes from this kind of sources, I think we can safely assume we are doing absolutely great with our demands to reuse, repair and recycle!
- natex
This author does what other pro-industry mouthpieces do: 1. Reference a real scientific study with a genuine but conditional result, 2. Remove the qualifications associated with the study, so they can 3. Make a much stronger rhetorical conclusion.
Or they simply willfully misreport the results.It's exhausting exercise to have to continuously fact-check these shills. Here's just one example from the article:
"Approximately a hundred rivers, mostly in South and South-East Asia, account for half of ocean plastic."
That is not supported by the cited study. Earlier models estimated highly concentrated emissions; the cited paper concluded that emissions were distributed among far more rivers than previously thought.The cited paper actually helped overturn the older “a handful of rivers cause nearly everything” story. Yet the article uses it to tell essentially that same concentrated-source story.
Also, not "Half of ocean plastic." The paper actually says: “More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global _riverine plastic emissions_ into the ocean." They did not measure half of all plastic in the ocean. The paper modeled annual floating macroplastic (not microplastics) emissions from rivers to ocean. That is different from: "all plastic already present in the ocean or "all plastic entering the ocean from every source".
- sustainalady
As someone who works in sustainability, and life cycle analysis, it's quite frustrating to see someone who is clearly not technically trained lay out an argument for single-use based on LCA data. Establishing a functional unit is critical for this type of analysis, otherwise yeah, it looks like every single-use item is "more sustainable" than a reusable. That isn't actually how you measure a sustainability scenario in this context. Also, the simplification of these vastly complex problems being presented as if we have been over reacting or too dumb to solve them -- be, as the kids say, so for real. It is exhausting to have non-technical sustainability folks write these articles as if they've provided some insight on how simple this all can be, as if we eggheads got too caught up in our science textbooks. Now we have to spend time undoing the perception that "it's just so simple, landfills and single use aren't that bad" instead of moving forward into better systems and effective action. Either spend 5 minutes talking with someone who actually works in sustainability or don't write these nonsense articles.
- yndoendo
Proper recycling improves national security and the well-being of their citizens.
Good example is South Korea. They were devastated after continual war in the 1950s. So they implemented mandatory recycling. Food waste goings into bin A, metals into bin B, plastics into bin C, ... This allows for reducing the cost of recycling by presorting items. It helped them rebuild and become stronger. To this day they still properly separate their garbage to ease recycling.
Recycling food waste and scraps means creating a nutrient rich fertilize resource. Tossing them into a land fill removes nutrients from the food chain. USA food has less nutrients than years past because of the push for synthetic nitrogen fertilizers.
- Yizahi
The language gives off some climate denialist vibes, but the substance is nonetheless true - recycling become both a magical word which is forbidden to be challenged on merit, and it also become a crude hammer to just bash peons to distract from real problems and real solutions. I also appreciate that finally someone says that DAC should happen as a more effective climate change tool.
Lately I'm getting a feel that it's becoming impossible to be a progressive person and criticize some parts of global greenwashing initiatives. One either need to blindly follow the gospel of 12 recycle bins and other inane ideas, or be shut down as a "climate change denier" because one dared to disagree on something.