Let’s take a moment to talk about trees. Well, plants in general, actually. How do they grow? Well, everyone should already be aware of the concept of photosynthesis, and how sunlight and water and carbon dioxide are turned into oxygen. But what it seems to me that people tend to fail to understand is what that means. Carbon is taken out of the air. Where does it go? It goes into the plant itself. And when you burn a log, you are recombining that carbon with oxygen to make fire. So, literally, plants grow out of the air. Their roots go in searching of water, and very little else they need comes from the ground.
So now let’s take another moment to talk about climate change. Global warming, before that concept was too confusing for stupid people (eg. “If the globe is warming, how does my freezer still make ice?”) and they had to rename it. There are many factors that influence one, but the biggest is how much carbon is in the air. Once upon a time, a long long time ago, there was no life on this planet. I don’t really know what it looked like at that point, but I’ll bet it was pretty lonely. But then something happened, and things started to change.
Back then, there was tons of carbon in the air, and the world was pretty warm. But as life went on, and creatures died off (poor dinosaurs), the carbon in their bodies fell to the ground. And as plants and trees died, and fell to the ground, they stayed there. And every single thing that died, that wasn’t consumed by something else, meant that there was less carbon in the air. Because remember, all of the carbon in a plant is taken from the air, and all of the carbon in an animal is taken from a plant.
So the more plants and animals that live and die, the less carbon there is in the air. And underground, over time, this carbon changes into oil and coal. And the more of that is in the ground, the less is in the air.
Now you go forward to the last couple thousand years. What have we been doing? Digging all of this stuff out of the ground, and using it for fuel. And what happens then? We burn it, it turns back into carbon dioxide, and goes back into the air. But what does all of this have to do with recycling?
Well, people tell you to recycle your plastics, and don’t buy non-recyclable plastics, because plastic doesn’t naturally break down or decay, and will therefore be stuck here forever. Well, if the point is to keep carbon out of the air, then every bit of plastic that’s made is carbon that will never get put back into the atmosphere. That’s better than digging it up and burying it. What’s important is making sure that it ends up stored somewhere better than being chucked into the ocean.
Now, a better solution would be to stop cutting down so many trees. The more trees and forests there are, the more carbon is being stored in them, and the less carbon in the air. That’s better than piles and piles of plastic, but people want their cheap McDonald’s burgers, and that means cutting down rainforests for land to raise cows.
But honestly, what happens when you recycle something? For some cans and bottles, you can get a small deposit back. But keep in mind you’ve paid that deposit already, so really these companies are getting them back for free, and double-dipping if you don’t manage to get your deposit back. And for these companies, melting down already existing bottles and cans is cheaper than creating new ones from scratch. So it is absolutely in their best interest, and because you’re paying a deposit and not always reclaiming it, the whole recycling program is against your own personal interests.
And who else is benefitting from this whole program? Homeless people. Where I live, there are tons of them, and they go around digging through trash cans looking for bottles they can return for deposits. And you might be thinking, hey, if they’re willing to do that, they get to make a little money and keep these things out of landfills, isn’t that a win-win for everyone? Well, no. For many reasons. First of all, most people around here are pretty good about putting their recyclable things in the right bin, so they aren’t really saving much from the landfills. We also have specific public recycling bins all over the city, that are regularly collected, and these homeless people are taking from those, which is kind of stealing. And the homeless are coming into our backyards to dig through our recycling bins for bottles and cans. Again, they’re stealing from recycling companies who are already paying people to come and collect them, and we really don’t want dangerous strangers digging around in our backyards. Not all homeless people are dangerous, but enough of them are that this is a bad thing. Homelessness is a big problem in my city, and this helps to make it worse.
From my experience, most people will just naturally recycle things, if the proper bin is made available. The vague notion of protecting the planet is good enough motivation. But if they’re paying a deposit for the recycling, and then recycling in a public recycle bin rather than taking it down to the depot, why are they forfeiting their deposit? The deposit is supposed to encourage people to continue recycling, but they’re doing it anyway. So I say just remove the deposit. Take the income away from the homeless people, and give it back to the consumers. Get the homeless out of our backyards, and out of the trash bins, and that would be a win for everyone.