Recycling and the unrecycleable

[mouse]

This article focuses on TerraCycle, but imagine that most non-mainstream recycling plans have similar issues. I thought it was a really good introduction to the issues of recyclability and greenwashing and the way companies offload the full lifecycle into a social problem when they’re ones who control what’s created. It’s also notable for self-delusion, stonewalling and defensiveness by the CEO. I have a feeling he’s going to wind up in the news more.

www.vox.com/the-goods/22598748/terracycle-greenwashing-recycling-lawsuit

Environmental advocates believe TerraCycle’s core business is actually just providing greenwashing services to corporations that want to look like they are doing something about plastic waste. In fact, they believe these corporations are making and selling ever more disposable plastic products — and then making it your problem instead of theirs.

“Pretty much anything is technically recyclable if you throw enough money, hours, and energy at it,” says John Hocevar, Greenpeace USA’s oceans campaign director. He has been working with corporations to get them to phase out single-use plastics, and increasingly sees them turn to TerraCycle instead. “That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea or that it makes sense from an economic or environmental perspective.”

[sillygoosegirl]

Well, that's the most depressing thing I've read in a while...

[mouse]

Oct 12, 2021 15:26:24 GMT -5 sillygoosegirl said:

Well, that's the most depressing thing I've read in a while...

At least I understand more why people keep saying “recycling is not the answer.” Which, I guess I kind of knew in that there’s a higher environmental cost to producing new things, even without the associated costs of obtaining virgin materials. But I wanted to believe that at least it was getting reused. And that reusing was less wasteful and maybe there would be a point where production ramped up enough that it was less downcycling and actually replacing the need for virgin materials. I keep getting stuck in wishful thinking that there’s a way to engineer our way out of this mess that doesn’t cost me too much lifestyle pain. And the truth is, we just need less of everything.

[minzy]

@
Along the same vein, I have to say I’m a little skeptical of Crayola’s old Colorcycle program. I say old because they paused for covid and I’m guessing they’ll take cover under that for awhile and won’t reinstate it. It seemed like a great idea - send your old markers back to them! Yay for rainbows and recycling! I even implemented it at our school (and tried not to get annoyed each time a huge coupon for more markers popped up when I was just trying to get info about recycling).

I tried to find out what the heck they actually do with the dead markers. I even spoke to someone at Crayola about it, and that person just fed me boilerplate language from the website. For awhile it sounded like they partnered with a company that melted or burned them. That’s a waste to energy program, which still emits a lot of nasty crap, and is not true recycling. More info here: www.energyjustice.net/crayola
Then their website changed and they talked about all their solar panels (and again, merely visiting the page prompts coupon pop ups). www.crayola.com/about-us/sustainability.aspx

I will say, for crayons, I can’t find anything wrong with
thecrayoninitiative.org/ We’ve had collections for them for years and I really like both the front and back ends of their mission (recycling crayons and making art accessible for sick kids).