Why Recycling Should Be Mandatory

Whenever you hear the word ‘recycling’, what comes to mind? Maybe piles and piles of sorted solid waste, color-coded garbage bins, organic waste is made into compost. ‘Recycling’ is actually a very broad term. In general, it means to convert waste materials into new materials and objects. This could mean using old materials to create a new supply of the material, for example, making glass out of recycled glass, or reusing them to make other materials, like paper for paperboard. It can even refer to reclaiming certain materials from products because of their natural value, like gold in circuit boards, or their hazardous nature, like mercury in thermometers. There is a large range of materials that are recyclable – glass, paper, water, metal, electronic devices – but for the purpose of this paper I shall be discussing only one, plastic because the accumulation of plastic waste has become a very real threat to the environment. I strongly believe that recycling of all materials, but most of all, plastic, should be made mandatory because, besides the fact that recycling plastic waste can save the environment from the damage that mankind has already caused it, it improves a nation’s economy and is the only way to ensure that we do not deplete Earth’s limited resources.

There are various kinds of plastics, but they all have certain common properties that make them particularly useful to humans – they are durable, lightweight and strong, and it is for precisely these reasons that plastic is so dangerous for our natural surroundings. Annually, around eight million metric tons of plastic waste are disposed of in oceans. The amount of microplastics (fragments of plastic smaller than 5mm) in that number varies considerably between 93 and 236 thousand tons (van Sebille et al., 2015). Plastics take hundreds of years to decompose, so just imagine how long it will take for the plastic in our oceans and even our landfills to finally be gone. What consequences will life on Earth have to face while the pile of plastic waste grows larger and the decomposition time gets longer? Somewhere between California and Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean is the largest accumulation of marine debris in the world, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It is extremely difficult to measure exactly how large it is because it is not just an island of plastic bags and bottles, which is how the media likes to portray it. In reality it is “mostly an unstrained consommé of small bits of floating plastic”, with smaller amounts of discarded fishing gear, Styrofoam, plastic wrappers and raw resin pellets (Kaiser, 2010, p. 1506). This problem of such accumulation of non-biodegradable substances in our waters also affects aquatic life greatly. In 2018, Joleah B. Lamb and ten other scientists conducted a survey on 159 coral reefs in the Asia-Pacific region, to assess the influence of plastic waste on disease-risk in 124,000 reef-building corals. They found that “the likelihood of disease increases from 4% to 89% when corals are in contact in plastic” (p. 460). This is because plastic waste can host pathogens (harmful microorganisms that can cause diseases), and these pathogens trigger disease outbreaks in the coral reefs. The more structurally complex the coral, the more susceptible it is to pathogens (Lamb, 2018, pp. 460-462). Disease in coral reefs, amplified by the presence of plastic waste, endangers one of Earth’s most diverse ecosystems. In addition to this, plastic waste in oceans also poses a massive problem to aquatic animals. In places like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, there is more plastic waste than natural prey. Animals like fish and sea turtles, and even birds like seagulls and albatrosses unwittingly consume plastic for lack of real food, and since they cannot digest it, they starve because their stomachs are filled with plastic that prevents them from eating real food. Last month, a dead Cuvier’s beaked whale was found in the Philippines, with 88 pounds of plastic inside its stomach (Victor, 2019). A few days ago, the carcass of a pregnant sperm whale was found around Italy, with 48 pounds of plastic in her stomach (Magra, 2019). While the cause of death of the female sperm whale is still under investigation, it is likely that she died of dehydration and starvation like the Cuvier’s beaked whale, as they could not digest food or absorb water from their food. Accidental consumption of marine debris has always threatened a number of aquatic animal species, and now it also puts endangered animals like whales at risk. Even in areas of the ocean where plastic waste is not as abundant, marine wildlife still consume plastic, including fish that humans eat. In 2016, Daniele de A. Miranda and Gustavo Freire de Carvalho-Souza described in one of their papers, an assessment of plastic pellet ingestion by two important species of fish along the Brazilian coast that were caught by humans for consumption. They found that “the rate of plastic ingestion by king mackerel (Scomberomorus cavalla) was quite high (62.5%), followed by the Brazilian sharpnose shark (Rhizoprionodon lalandii, 33%). From 2 to 6 plastic resin pellets were encountered in the stomachs of each fish with sizes from 1 to 5 mm” (p. 109). If plastic waste accumulates in the food chain, it could pose some serious issues to all of the organisms involved, humans included.

The process of recycling also has been shown to improve a nation’s economy. Recycling, like any other industry, provides jobs to the unemployed, which increases consumer spending as more people earn more money, which in turn stimulates economic growth. The 2016 Recycling Economic Information (REI) report by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that, in 2007, “recycling activities contributed 757,000 jobs (0.52% of all jobs in the U.S. economy), $36.6 billion in wages (0.62% of all wages paid), and $6.7 billion in tax revenues (0.90% of total revenues)”. The estimates also showed that every 1000 tons of recycled materials attributed to 1.57 jobs, $76,030 in wages and $14,101 in tax revenues (EPA, 2016, p. 6) The results of the REI report indicate that recycling has positive economic impacts in the United States, along with environmental and social advantages. Recycling can also bring us closer to a circular global economy. The traditional linear economy that the world has been following for years and years with its ‘take, make, dispose’ model, is slowly reaching its limits, as there is a lack of answers for the growing scarcity of raw materials, an increase in pollution across all aspects of the environment and an increase in demand for material and products (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2013). If we continue to follow the linear model of economy, it could lead to a number of unpleasant side effects like the degradation of ecosystems and a decrease in product lifetime. Since the ‘take, make, dispose’ model generates a lot of waste because the disposal of old products leaves a large pileup of unwanted material that will not be used again, this will eventually lead to mountain-like heaps of non-biodegradable waste in natural ecosystems, which can hinder the ecosystems from performing some of their basic functions like providing food and shelter to organisms, and processing nutrients (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2013, pp. 16-17). As of late, the lifetime of many of the products that we use has decreased immensely. This only feeds into the inherently Western culture of excessive material consumption that many of us have chosen to adopt. Consumers want new products more quickly and they use them for a shorter period of time. Think about how many clothes you buy; do you buy them because you actually need them or because they caught your eye and you wanted to buy them? Or your new smartphone, did you buy it because your old phone was not working, and you needed a new one, or did you just want to own the latest model? This decrease in lifetime of products is due to the decrease in demand for products that can be used for a longer time, which in turn encourages consumers to buy more new products (Het Groene Brein, 2019). The only viable option we have left is to transition from the linear economy to a circular one. A circular economy is “a regenerative system in which resource input and waste, emission, and energy leakage are minimized by slowing, closing and narrowing material and energy loops. This can be achieved through long-lasting design, maintenance, repair, reuse, remanufacturing, refurbishing and recycling” (Geissdoerfer et al., 2017, p.757). In short, a circular economy is an economic system that works towards reducing input of new materials and output of waste and being as resourceful as possible (Haas et al., 2015, pp. 765-777). The motto of ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ plays an enormous role in a circular economy. The concept of a circular economy is slowly gaining popularity, and some countries (mostly European countries like Finland and the Netherlands, and a few Asian countries like Japan) have already started to work their way towards a more circular environment. However, the global economy is still at a low level of circularity – even though roughly 4 gigatons of various waste material are recycled every year, this amount seems mediocre compared to the 62 gigatons per year of processed material and outputs of 41 gigatons per year (Haas et al., 2015, pp. 765-777). Taking initiative and making domestic and industrial recycling a compulsory process will quite certainly propel us towards a more circular economy, which will help to reduce wastage and conserve energy, and what resources we have left.

The Earth is thought to have been formed approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The natural resources that we use in our lives: fossil fuels like petroleum, coal and natural gas, were formed over millions of years by the compression of decomposing buried dead organisms with heat and pressure. This was the Earth’s own natural way of recycling, but now, we cannot depend on the Earth to break down all of our waste. The human population on Earth is probably the highest it has ever been, clocking in at over 7.6 billion individuals around the globe, and the United Nations Organization estimate that by the year 2100, the total population will reach over 11 billion people. The more people on Earth, the more requirements they have to live, and the more natural resources used to fulfill those requirements. More forests cut down to make space for housing, more fossil fuel burnt for energy and more wastage because of higher consumption. The time that the Earth would take to naturally recycle all the waste that we have created is far longer than we can wait. We are, essentially, living off of Earth’s natural capital, and sooner than we realize, we will have depleted the Earth completely of its natural resources, leaving the generations of the future with nothing. Ecological Debt Day, also known as Earth Overshoot Day is a calculated day that marks when our demand for natural resources exceeds the amount that the Earth can renew that year. “Due to significant population growth, our consumption of renewable natural resources has exceeded the planet’s ability for renewal since the 1970s” (Kotecki, 2018). Last year, it fell on the 1st of August, the earliest it has ever been. Earth Overshoot Day shows us that we are living off of resources borrowed from the next generations.

Not everyone would agree that recycling plastic waste should be made mandatory because recently it has actually become easier and cheaper to make new, ‘virgin’ plastic than to recycle plastic (Kramer, 2016). This is because of the fluctuations in the price of petroleum. Plastics are mostly manufactured using petroleum, so when the prices of petroleum change, the costs of manufacturing plastic go back and forth as well. Plastic can, technically, be converted back into crude oil, but the process of doing so costs more than buying new oil, and the equipment required for this conversion is not very widely available, so plastic is mostly recycled by shredding the old plastic, cleaning it to get rid of any labels, food residue and the like, and then melting it down into small pellets that can be used to create other things. Cleaning and preparing used plastic for recycling also adds to the cost of recycling. These resin pellets created by recycling can also only be used to make certain types of products that will not be of the same good quality as new plastic, which is what makes new plastic more favorable to manufacturers. However, despite the extra costs and limitations of recycling, it is the only way we can live on Earth without destroying it completely. Prices of petroleum will not stay low forever, especially when it starts to become scarcer (Kramer, 2016). Recycled plastic can even be mixed in with new plastic to improve its quality, and to help conserve our oil resources. More scientists are also looking to make the process of converting plastic waste back into oil more accessible.

Another reason why people do not approve of making recycling a mandatory process, is that it would be a very difficult law to implement. Even if governments around the world passed legislatures to make domestic and industrial recycling compulsory, it would be extremely laborious to ensure that the law was being properly followed. Law enforcement teams like the police already have enough work to do with more grave crimes like theft and homicide, and it would be futile to assign them a case of something as simple as not recycling. In addition to this, a lot of people tend to complain that recycling is not always the most convenient and easy task, as recycling centers are often few and far between, and therefore a long drive away. Sometimes they are not sure as to what materials can and cannot be recycled, so they simply throw them all in the garbage. People often avoid doing things unless they are extremely easy, which is why, as shown in a 2011 Ipsos Public Affairs survey, that while 87% of American adults claimed to recycle, only 51% recycled daily, 36% recycled infrequently, while 13% said that they did not recycle at all. As the profits that come from recycling, and the consequences of not recycling are both long-term, and the effects are not immediate, it can be hard for people to associate their bad habits of not recycling with its even worse results (Schumaker, 2016). To battle these inconveniences of compulsory recycling, more recycling centers should be opened in a number of new locations, to make it that much easier for people to bring their waste for recycling. There should also be a committee with an authoritative figure at its head to overlook recycling in local areas, with a small or moderate fine for failing to recycle properly, depending on the severity of the situation.

In reality, recycling alone will not be enough. We have to learn how to conserve, how to avoid wastage. Conservation starts from your own home – simple things like turning off the tap when you brush your teeth, and only eating as much as you need. The less we waste, the more we have. However, in the interest of saving the planet right now, recycling is the first step forward. Recycling of all recyclable materials, with special emphasis on plastic, should be made mandatory by law because it improves the economy, it can at least slow down the effects of the havoc we have already wreaked on the environment, and it is the only way we can ensure that we do not run out of our resources and leave the next generations with nothing. Even though it might be an unwelcome change to society at first, I truly believe that we need a law like this one, for the welfare of humans, and every living thing on Earth. We have already caused irreparable damage to the planet, and we cannot afford to cause any more. We have to remember that we need Mother Nature far more than she needs us.