Most of us are familiar with the 3 Rs - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and the vast majority of people really only pay attention to recycle.  If you put it in the Blue Box every week it's all good, right?

Wrong.

That's right - an environmental tech who works for a recycling firm says that recycling is a myth.

Let's start with the concept of recycling - you have already consumed the product. That means that energy and resources were used to produce the product in the first place.  The plastic has been made, the oil pumped, the metals mined and the emissions produced.  Recycle is not the third R in reality - it is third from last.  This is the real Rs (with a P thrown in) - Rethink, Refuse, Reduce, Precycle, Reuse, Recycle, Recover, Reclaim.  Notice how the first 3 limit work to eliminate the consumption in the first place.

Next let's look at the reality of recycling with real examples.  Glass is the one I will use.  How many of you think that post consumer glass is turned into new glass products like bottles, windows etc?  It isn't because each colour of glass has a different metal in it to create the colour, each metal with a different melting point.  Municipal recycling facilities (MRFs) have gone single-stream.  That means at the curb the recycled material is no longer separated by the guy picking it up, it is all dumped in the truck and sorted, somewhat, at the MRF.  While it is technically possible to colour sort glass it is prohibitively expensive and glass is just, well, sand.  We aren't going to run out of sand soon.  Most recycled glass ends up as a sandblasting material or aggregate - a replacement for dirt.

Let's stick with the collection and transfer of recycled materials to processing plants.  The trucks that collect the recycled materials burn fossil fuels, create emissions and degrade the roads they travel on.  As well from a taxpayers standpoint they cost money in wages, fuel and maintenance costs and road repair.  After is is somewhat sorted at the MRF it is send to yet another facility for processing.  A company that picked up glass from a MRF (approximately 1000 tonnes per week) had a monthly fuel bill in excess of $50,000.  At an average of $0.80 / Litre that is 62,500 Litres of diesel fuel consumed per month and the associated emissions.  Not to mention the lubricating oils and the metals and plastics used for replacement parts.  The electric bill to run the glass processing system ran close to $10,000.  Not in a year.  A month.  Take your monthly bill and kilowatts/hour used and figure out how much energy $10K is worth.  Then there is the approximate 30,000 tonne payload per truck on 5 or 6 runs a day on the 401 degrading the highway and shortening the times between required construction.

And then there is the statistics.  MRFs operating single stream are not very efficient at removing waste materials.  The volume of lightweight but bulky items such as plastic and paper, 20 gallon pails, sex toys etc varies from MRF to MRF.  At some a truck can reach its maximum payload with 2 buckets from the loader.  At others it takes 5 or 6 buckets of the same size to max out a truck due to the volume of non-glass waste.  The MRFs however can claim a decrease in materials sent to landfill, as well as disposing of waste at nearly half the cost.

Two years ago I contacted the Minister of the Environment regarding waste management issues and a deputy minister wrote back saying that 51% of materials collected in Blue Boxes were recovered.  51%.  And they were proud of that number.

Still think recycling is the best option?  Even if you disregard the net environmental loss incurred by consuming products and the recycling facility, consider the financial costs alone.  Cities pay for recycling - they pay for the collection of it and the disposal and transfer to processing facilities.  They use your tax dollars to pay for it.  That's without the deeper issues of road repair, air quality etc.  If everyone in a city reduced the products they consumed needlessly and reduced what was put in the Blue Box and what was thrown out as garbage, less tax dollars would be spent on waste and would be able to be diverted to other programs such as education, health care and other social programs.  That's just up front.

Follow this chain - goods consumed mean goods produced, which means transportation and energy costs, both for the product and waste derived from the consumption and the manufacturing process.  That means hydrocarbons (oil) used, that effects the air we breathe, the water and right down to, eventually, the Nigerian who loses his land or grazing territory to oil production.  Each link in that chain has a financial and socio-economic cost.  The monetary cost to produce the item, the monetary cost to consume the item and dispose of the waste and the tax dollars used to clean it up.  The social is much more difficult to asses.

Bottom line - people are being duped by governments looking for short term gains and by businesses promoting the effectiveness of recycling.  The priority is wrong, reducing consumption should be first.