Let’s Be Real About Recycling
Most of us have heard about the shipping containers filled with garbage being returned from South Asia due to them being filled with non-recyclable plastics or have seen this excellent series “Is Recycling Broken” by Carolyn Jarvis and Megan Robinson of Global News https://lnkd.in/eW_yJHn
What we didn’t know so much about is how recyclables – aluminum cans, paper, plastics, etc., are commodities with market-based values that are shipped to processing facilities to be recycled into materials that can be made into other products. Huge volumes are required to make financial sense of recycling which is why most materials can’t be recycled in local markets.
So why are we surprised that recycling is in trouble in many Canadian cities?
Most of us want to recycle and some of us are super keen on doing so, even to the point of throwing stuff into the recycle bin because it should be recycled. This WISH-CYCLING – I wish it could be recycled so maybe it should be, is killing our chances of diverting recyclables from the disposal.
Let’s be real about #recycling, even though that means not everything we thought can go in the recycle bin. It will give a fighting chance for those loads to actually be recycled.