pros and cons of recycling essay

Pros and Cons of Recycling Every Eco-Conscious Person Should Know

We’ve long been told how important it is to recycle, but is recycling really the green practice we’ve been led to believe? Recycling definitely has plenty of positives, but there are also downsides too.

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The world is facing a waste crisis. An exploding population, combined with rapid development and increased reliance on materials like single-use plastics has meant that we’re facing literal mountains of trash every day.

The average American produces 4.51 pounds of trash a day up from 2.68 pounds in 1960. Recycling has long been touted as the solution, but there are downsides to recycling too.

Pros and cons of recycling

Recycling can be an important part of waste management: effective recycling of all kinds of materials can prevent them from clogging up landfill, polluting the environment, and can avoid the environmental strain caused by manufacturing new items.

However, there are many issues associated with recycling. It’s important to understand these complexities in order to make more eco-friendly decisions not only around how you deal with your waste, but in how you live your life more generally.

Advantages of recycling

Before we dive into the issues and challenges associated with recycling, let’s take a look at the benefits of this approach and why it can be valuable in some circumstances.

Recycling helps reduce pollution

Traditionally, the world has dealt with its trash in one of two ways, both of which cause pollution:

• Incineration : Burning trash, whether in your backyard or an industrial incinerator releases heavy metals and other toxic chemicals into the atmosphere, leading to acid rain and other environmental issues.
• Landfill : Landfill is a benign term which essentially means dumping huge piles of trash on land, or sometimes dug into the earth. As the waste breaks down, it releases toxic materials into the air such as methane and carbon dioxide, and may also leach contaminants into the ground, causing soil pollution and potentially contaminating groundwater .

In addition to these types of pollution, landfill also causes other kinds of environmental degradation. Most notably, large tracts of native habitats are cleared to make way for landfill, resulting in deforestation , which can, in turn, threaten endemic species, lead to water scarcity, and contribute to climate change.

One of the major benefits of recycling is that it can greatly reduce the amount of trash we send to landfills or incinerators, helping to reduce pollution as well as avoid other environmental problems associated with these approaches.

Additionally, responsibly recycling hazardous waste ensures that it won’t pollute the environment and threaten human health. For example, one quart of engine oil can contaminate over two million gallons of fresh water if not disposed of properly.

For advice on how to recycle or otherwise responsibly dispose of tricky household items, see our posts on LED light bulbs , kitchen knives , propane tanks , and broken glass .

Recycling cuts energy and resource use

By recovering materials rather than sending them to landfill, we don’t need to mine or manufacture new ones, thereby protecting our planet’s limited resources.

Furthermore, the mining and manufacturing industries damage the environment in a range of ways from clearing native habitats to leaching toxins into the soil and waterways and emitting greenhouse gasses which contribute to climate change.

Therefore, recycling materials can help to scale back these activities and reduce their negative impacts on the environment.

Recycling also helps to save on the energy needed to make these new products and materials. Although the recycling process uses some energy, this is generally much less than manufacturing new materials.

Glass, for example, requires less energy to recycle than manufacture, as existing glass melts at much lower temperatures than its raw materials. In this way, recycling helps to reduce fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as having economic benefits.

Recycling raises awareness of environmental issues

Getting people to recycle can have impacts far beyond the initial effect of recycling that plastic bottle or BRITA filter . By getting more involved in this process and making an effort to dispose of our trash more responsibly, we become more conscious of our eco-footprint.

Essentially, going through our trash and recycling what we can makes us think about the environment and how we impact it, on a regular basis. It makes us think about how much waste we create, and may well encourage us to take steps to reduce this.

Furthermore, for anyone who wants to be more eco-friendly, recycling can be an easy first step to take, as well as being a great way to teach kids about environmental issues. It can also be an important part of a mindset shift that may open people up to be more environmentally-friendly in other ways too.

In some cases, this can pave the way for other lifestyle choices that go even further to protect the planet, such as composting , installing solar panels , or avoiding palm oil .

Recycling can save you money

Not only can recycling be beneficial to the environment, but it can also be advantageous to your wallet.

You can make money through recycling certain materials, most notably some types of metals – learn how here . You’re unlikely to earn large amounts this way, but it’s something!

Some towns also offer cash incentives for recycling glass items or aluminum cans. Products made from recycled materials are often cheaper, so opting for these kinds of products can save you some cash.

The recycling industry creates jobs

Recycling is a labor-intensive process: large numbers of people are needed to run recycling facilities, from transporting and processing waste to creating new products from recovered materials. In this way, the industry can create a range of skilled and semi-skilled jobs.

Ecocycle.org estimates that we would generate around 1.1 million jobs in the USA if the recycling rate increased to 75%. Currently, we recycle around 30% of solid municipal waste.

According to the same organization, recycling and reuse creates nine times more job opportunities than incinerators and landfill sites.

Furthermore, the recycling industry has the potential to drive economic growth, creating new jobs as it does.

Pitfalls of recycling

While recycling can be environmentally, socially, and economically beneficial, the wide-spread and aggressive campaigns promoting it over the past few decades have overlooked its risks and downsides. This has also led to it becoming something of a band-aid solution that can allow us to overlook the more challenging, underlying causes of our waste problems .

Our recyclables may be exported

China took almost half of the world’s recycling waste for decades until they banned the process in 2018. In the years immediately before the ban, many Western countries exported large volumes of their recyclables there: in 2016, the US alone sent them 16 million tons of paper, metal, and plastic.

Of these, around one-third were not recycled due to contamination and ended up littering the Chinese countryside and oceans instead. We continue to send our recycling to low-income countries across the world, such as Kenya, Senegal, Ethiopia, Ghana, Laos, Bangladesh, and Cambodia.

Not only does this pass the waste problem on to others who are probably less equipped to deal with it, but it means we lose control of the process and how much of these materials are actually recycled. Not to mention the greenhouse gas emissions generated by transporting literal mountains of trash across the globe.

We also lose control of how this waste is handled, as the Chinese example shows: around 1.5 million metric tons of plastic is dumped off the coast of the country every year. It’s disturbing to think how much of this may be our own waste that we dutifully sent to recycling.

Furthermore, as more countries institute bans against accepting foreign recyclables – Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia quickly followed China and introduced laws against importing plastic waste – we need to look for other options. As a result, we’re increasingly relying on countries with poor environmental protections, opening this situation up to even worse impacts on the planet.

Recycling inadvertently encourages us to use disposable items

Critics say that recycling gives us a false sense of security, as it makes us feel like we’re solving our waste problem when really it’s only slowing down or delaying the damage we’re causing the environment. 

Recycling isn’t really the ultimate solution to pollution and waste management as it uses large amounts of energy, is expensive, and can be hazardous to people and the environment if not done properly.

Furthermore, plastics can only be recycled a limited number of times: usually once or twice, so we still need to keep manufacturing more plastic items.

It can even encourage us to use non-recyclable materials. For example, not all plastics are readily recyclable, but many people don’t understand this, so may use them under the false assumption that they can be recycled.

In this way, recycling can potentially do more harm than good by allowing us to justify using disposable items, not to mention using energy and resources as well as producing pollution and greenhouse gasses during the manufacture of these items and during the recycling process itself.

Recycling programs also fail to address our biggest source of waste. In the US, food waste makes up the biggest proportion of municipal trash.

Food can’t be recycled, so by focusing on recycling as the main solution, we’re overlooking this key issue. Food waste not only clogs up landfills and emits pollution as it breaks down there, but producing much more food than we need has a range of negative impacts on the environment, from the use of toxic fertilizers and pesticides to contributing to climate change.

Recycling requires consumers to carefully prep their recycling

Another major problem is it relies on individuals to prepare their recyclables properly before putting them out curbside or sending them to a recycling facility.

Recyclables can be contaminated by food waste or because they’re mixed with materials the recycling facility won’t accept, such as straws and plastic bags. Such items are a huge red flag for recycling centers as they could get stuck in machinery and damage very expensive equipment.

If items are not thoroughly cleaned and properly sorted it not only makes that item unrecyclable, but it contaminates the whole load. Essentially, one greasy food container could mean that an entire truck of recyclable materials gets sent to landfill.

Recycling uses energy and can generate pollution

Unlike reducing and reusing, recycling is a fairly energy-intensive process. Unless this energy is produced from renewable sources, it means relying on finite fossil fuels , which also generates greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to climate change.

Waste to energy plants could be a solution to this issue, but are not common in the USA.

Although recycling generally consumes less energy than sourcing and producing new materials, it’s better to avoid this energy use at all, for example, by reducing our consumption.

Properly recycling everything from plastic to silicon does not generally cause pollution and eliminates the soil, air, and water pollution caused by other forms of waste disposal. However, if the recycling process is not managed properly, it can contaminate the environment in a range of ways.

Electronics, for example, are sometimes sent to developing countries for recycling, where non-recyclable components may be thrown out, polluting land and waterways if that country doesn’t have strong regulations in place to prevent this.

Likewise, if plastics are not processed properly, they can release VOCs, volatile organic compounds, when they melt, which pose a risk to both human health and the environment. This can be damaging to human health, as well as pollute the local environment, threatening plants and animals.

Along with environmental risks, there can also be safety risks for workers if facilities are not properly managed. For example, If facilities don’t take proper safety precautions, workers may be exposed to toxic components when they hand-sort trash or handle recyclable materials.

Recycling is actually expensive

Recycling is an expensive process, and this is even more true of the initial costs required to set up recycling programs and infrastructure in the first place.

Import bans from China and other countries have also made recycling less economically viable. Just a few years ago, local governments across the US could make money selling recyclable materials.

These sums were generally modest – not a substantial revenue stream, but enough to make it worthwhile for sanitation departments to recycle all kinds of materials. However, now the situation has completely reversed, with towns needing to pay huge sums of money to run their recycling programs.

The US’ dependence on exporting recyclables for so many years meant that, unlike some European countries for example, we never developed extensive recycling infrastructure, exacerbating these issues.

The comparative cost of recycling also depends on other waste disposal options and how expensive they are. For example, in the US, it’s relatively easy and affordable to find space for landfills, making recycling programs a less attractive option.

This cost-benefit ratio relationship means some materials are more difficult to recycle than others and makes the future of recycling uncertain. Around 100 towns have already suspended their curbside recycling programs.

The real question is how long will cash-strapped local authorities sponsor our addiction to disposable materials?

How can we fix the recycling problem?

One solution that would address some of the issues associated with recycling in the US would be to invest in recycling systems and infrastructure. This would make the process more efficient and cost-effective, making it more viable for local authorities to sponsor local recycling programs.

In turn, this would reduce our reliance on exporting our recyclable materials, giving us more control over how much of our waste is actually recycled and under what conditions, and avoid dumping our waste problems on other countries.

This investment would also need to be matched by a commitment by authorities to sponsor recycling programs, as even with better infrastructure, these processes are still costly. 

Encouraging businesses to use recycled materials in their products would also help to expand the domestic market and make recycling more economically viable, though it’s unlikely to cover all costs.

Legislation to restrict or eliminate landfill could also be part of the solution. Making it more expensive to send our trash to landfill would make recycling comparatively more affordable.

Simply put, as things stand, we make it too easy to send waste to landfill, passing the cost on to the environment instead.

A more radical approach could be to pass the cost of recycling disposable materials on to the companies that produce them, such as by requiring brands to pay a deposit or penalty for selling products in certain types of packing or containers. This would ultimately pass the cost on to the consumer, as manufacturers would undoubtedly put their prices up accordingly.

However, it would also encourage both brands and their customers to explore other options, including truly zero-waste solutions.

Although these steps can help to make recycling more efficient and cost-effective, a big part of the solution should also be pursuing alternatives in order to reduce our reliance on recycling.

Viable alternatives to recycling

While recycling undoubtedly has its place in both waste management and living an eco-friendly lifestyle, it’s not the end of the story. In fact, recycling should arguably be seen as a last resort after you’ve tried other approaches to dealing with and eliminating waste.

Go zero-waste

A zero-waste approach can go a long way to minimize our impact on the environment. There are a range of ways to achieve a zero-waste lifestyle, such as:

• Only buy products in reusable containers, and get refills of everything from grains to shampoo
• Compost your organic waste
• Look for zero-waste products such as toothpaste , deodorant , and even toilet paper
• Get creative and reuse, repurpose, and upcycle whenever possible
• Buy second-hand clothing and accessories rather than new items

Going completely zero-waste can be a challenge, especially at first. However, avoiding single-use plastics with reusable bottles, coffee cups, and shopping bags can be a good start.

Opt for quality over quantity

Another powerful way to reduce both our rate of consumption and the amount of waste we produce is by buying quality products.

Society has become geared toward cheap, disposable products. Much of what we buy today, from clothing and electronics to single-use plastics, is only built to be used for a short period of time before it breaks, wears out, or stops working.

On the surface, this doesn’t matter, as we can easily buy a replacement for a nominal cost. However, the cost is passed on to the environment through the additional drain on resources and energy needed to manufacture new items, not to mention the waste that is produced.

In contrast, when we buy good-quality items that last a long time, they don’t need to be replaced so often, so we throw away less. Additionally, less energy and resources need to be used to produce the replacement items we buy.

We can even go a step further and try to cut down on the amount of stuff we buy entirely. It’s important to buy quality-made products, but in some cases, we can avoid buying anything at all by adopting a more minimalist approach.

Repair rather than throw away

All too often, we throw away items that could be as good as new with a little TLC. Your toaster breaks, and instead of taking it to the repair shop, you jump online to buy a new one.

Likewise, the heel comes off your favorite pair of boots (an easy fix), and you buy a new pair, or rather than mending a ripped seam in that near-new sweater, you get a new one.

The low cost and easy availability of all kinds of consumer items are largely to blame for this: it’s often quicker and even cheaper to buy a replacement than to have it repaired (or fix it yourself).

However, the cost to the earth is immense: every new product we buy takes energy and materials to make and probably produces pollution in the process. What’s more, our old item becomes trash that ends up in landfill or pollutes our waterways.

In contrast, repairing things typically involves minimal use of energy and resources, making this a huge net gain for the environment.

Should we skip recycling?

The short answer to this question is no: we shouldn’t ditch recycling entirely. Recycling can be an effective way to deal with trash and can form a vital part of a multifaceted approach to waste management and looking after the environment more generally.

However, over-reliance, particularly using recycling as an excuse not to pursue other tactics, is highly problematic, especially over the long term.

Arguably, we should see recycling as a short-term solution while we restructure how society functions, from production to consumer habits, in order to slash the amount of waste we produce or, better still, eliminate it entirely.

Check out our guides to recycling difficult items like cork and razor blades , and learn more about going zero-waste .

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Pros and Cons of Recycling

The major questions related to the topic primarily concern the environment and investment issues of recycling. As a part of the analytical essay, it is necessary to understand both sides of the perspective and assume that even the most praised ideas might have drawbacks (Lunsford et al. 451). Therefore, the major questions that I have when I think about the topic are “What are the benefits of recycling? What are the disadvantages of the approach? What are the obstacles to implementation?”

Consequently, it is crucial to analyze them separately and examine them in greater detail to answer these questions. For instance, most people understand that recycling is beneficial for society but might not be aware of the exact benefits. Therefore, the smaller questions include “What are the actual benefits of recycling regarding environment, investments, social norms, and other associated areas?” This approach of asking narrower questions is prominent in the analytical essay because it allows one to visualize the problem more clearly (Lunsford et al. 452). It is possible to use the same pattern for the questions of disadvantages and obstacles to recycling to reveal the most relevant mini-topics within the chosen themes.

In addition, it is possible to break down the questions into more manageable pieces via the techniques of analytical research. For instance, several methods, such as reflection, general questions, brainstorming, subject description, and conclusions from life experience, are effective methods to acquire more information about the topic (Lunsford et al. 465). Moreover, for the current theme, it is crucial to examine academic literature to understand the problem in greater detail. It would allow to identify additional sub-categories within the questions and address them separately, which makes the process of analytical writing easier and more accurate.

Lunsford, A. et al. Everyone’s an Author (3 rd edition). W.W. Norton & Company, 2020.

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The Pros and Cons of Recycling: Is it Really Worth It?

Recycling has been a major focus of environmental initiatives for decades. It is a practice that is lauded for its potential to reduce pollution, conserve resources, and slow the rate of climate change. But is it really worth it? There are pros and cons to consider when it comes to recycling, and it’s important to look at both sides of the issue in order to make an informed decision.

One of the major pros of recycling is that it reduces the amount of waste that gets sent to landfills. This reduces the environmental impact of landfills, which are known to produce harmful toxins and release greenhouse gases. Recycling also helps reduce the amount of raw materials that need to be extracted from the environment, as recycled materials can often be used in place of new ones. This can help to protect habitats that would otherwise be destroyed for the sake of producing more products.

On the other hand, there are some cons to consider when it comes to recycling. For one, it can be an expensive process and may not always be cost-effective. Additionally, some materials are more difficult to recycle than others, and if they are not properly sorted they can end up in landfills anyway. Furthermore, the global demand for recycled materials is not always high, which means that recycled materials may not always be able to be sold or reused.

Overall, the pros of recycling outweigh the cons. Recycling is a practice that has the potential to reduce pollution, conserve resources, and slow the rate of climate change. It also helps to keep landfills from becoming overfilled and provides a source of materials that can be reused or repurposed. While there may be some drawbacks to the process, the environmental benefits are undeniable. For these reasons, it is definitely worth considering when it comes to reducing our environmental footprint.

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Disadvantages Of Recycling? 10 Pros and Cons of Recycling.

October 4, 2022

Graham Sawrey

Recycling might seem like a no-brainer. If recycling will save the planet, then why not toss the plastic bottle in a recycling bin instead of the trash?

Well, the recycling system isn’t all it’s made out to be, heating up the arguments for and against recycling.

Some claim that recycling is the only thing we can do to preserve natural resources and stop toxic waste dumping.

Others argue that it’s just pushing our waste materials off-shore and the benefit we get isn’t worth the time and money we spend to recycle.

In this article, we’re going to take a closer look at the advantages and disadvantages of recycling .

Recycling Definition

Recycling means converting waste products into reusable material . Instead of being taken to a landfill to sit and decay, recyclables are sorted and reprocessed into raw materials.

Disadvantages of Recycling

Recycling has quite a few disadvantages that aren’t popular to discuss. Here are the 5 biggest disadvantages of recycling.

• Recycling programs are expensive to implement and support
• Recycling programs create greenhouse gases while transporting, shipping, and processing recycled materials
• US recycling is usually sent overseas and becomes a major pollutant
• Recycled products are often of lower quality, but this is not true for metals that can be recycled infinitely
• Many areas don’t have curbisde recycling which makes people bring recyclables to unsanitary and even unsafe recycling centers to drop off items

Many argue that we can solve these recycling dilemmas, and we agree. The problem is the cost and ongoing financial commitment required to establish and maintain functional recycling programs.

Most municipal governments don’t have the money to establish and maintain expensive recycling programs.

As the market for recycled materials has shifted, they’re forced to pay for recycling or abandon recycling programs altogether.

We believe that the best way to facilitate discussion is to investigate both sides of an issue to help identify problems, solutions, and points of agreement. Let’s take a balanced look at the pros and cons of recycling .

Check out this fantastic segment produced by NPR on the complications that surround recycling. Most Americans think our recycling programs are working, but they’re not. This video tells you why.

Pros and Cons of Recycling

Advantages – what are the pros of recycling.

• Reduced Energy Consumption
• Decreased Pollution
• Slows The Rate Of Resource Depletion
• Fights Global Warming
• Decreases Landfill Waste

Recycling is one of the best things we can do as individual citizens to decrease pollution on our planet.

It’s notably very environmentally friendly, and it reduces our energy consumption on a global scale.

There are numerous social benefits of recycling as well, which include community pride, increased health, and a sense of social empowerment .

Let’s take a closer look at the most important and widespread advantages of recycling.

1. Reduced Energy Consumption

This first benefit is what catapults recycling into the discussion of green energy .

As humans, our demand for energy is ever-increasing. This continues to be the case as more countries are being modernized and introduced to the wonderful world of technology.

Recycling plays its part in the green energy debate by reducing the amount of energy required to manufacture certain products.

This is especially true for the rare and valuable minerals used for manufacturing electronics. One of the benefits of recycling electronics is that it allows us to recover these metals.

Recyclable metals can be purified and reused indefinitely. This decreases our carbon footprint by limiting mining, processing, transportation, and methane from decay.

This reduces greenhouse gas emissions generated by the manufacturing process and lowers global energy consumption.

Recycled metals cost much less than their virgin ore counterparts. What’s better is that there is 100 times more gold in a ton of e-waste than in a ton of gold ore!

This is just one example of ways that energy consumption is drastically decreased by processing and using recyclable materials. The same is true for glass, aluminum, tin, and paper.

2. Decreased Pollution

Coke bottles, soda cans, and those plastic ring holders. What do all of them have in common?

They’re one of the worst sources of pollution, water contamination, and soil contamination on our planet.

When you recycle these things you do your part to keep them out of landfills, waterways, and incinerators.

Glass bottles, soda cans, tin cans, aluminum foil, and other glass and metal materials can be recycled forever . There is no reason to not recycle them.

Plastic is a different story, but we’ll get to that later in our discussion of the disadvantages of recycling.

The fact is that the less waste we throw onto the planet, the cleaner and safer it will be for future generations to come.

Air pollution causes and effects are usually blamed on vehicles and burning fossil fuels. However, landfills are notorious for high methane emissions which contribute to global warming.

The more we can recycle, the more we keep out of landfills – a win for the land and the air.

3. Slows the Rate of Resource Depletion

Recycling is an act that can heavily impact the deforestation problem on the earth. One of the benefits of recycling paper is that fewer trees that need to be cut down and processed.

Sooner or later, the earth will run out of raw materials .

• Some materials, like uranium, are known to have decades’ worth of untapped reserves
• Other materials, like lithium, are expected to become rare by 2025 . Considering how dependent we are on these rare earth minerals, we should be more concerned about preserving what we have.
• By recycling, you limit the need to mine those raw materials to make new products. Instead, your recycled material is used.

The same can be said for all metals and glass that you recycle. They’re just as good after recycling as they were when they were brand-new.

One of the benefits of recycling steel is that once it’s collected and shredded it gets remelted to make new steel bars and sheets. These have the same value as new materials because they’re just as good.

Metals are perfect candidates for creating a circular economy around recycled materials.

4. Fights Global Warming

Global warming continues to be a heated debate across the planet.

We’ve already mentioned that recycling reduces greenhouse gas emissions by reducing transportation and mining emissions.

The other way recycling helps reduce carbon footprint is by reducing the amount of waste that’s burned to make room for new garbage.

• Many countries, including Germany, have tried to solve energy and waste problems at the same time by burning trash in waste-to-energy power plants .
• This is just a fancy form of incineration which releases toxic greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, increasing global warming.
• Waste-to-energy is detrimental to our non-renewable resource supply because reusable materials aren’t recovered – they’re just incinerated and gone forever .

The fact is that there is so much waste on the planet that burning it becomes one of the only options to avoid creating more massive landfill sites that are contaminating our soil and groundwater.

By recycling, less material becomes waste that needs to be burned, and instead, it’s used in ways that are more beneficial to the environment.

5. Decreases Landfill Waste

Recycling used products means less trash in landfills. This is a very good thing since landfills slowly destroy the natural environment.

Nearly 17% of methane emissions in the United States come from landfills. That’s 109 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent released into the atmosphere from our garbage.

Landfills also leach toxic chemicals into the ground as the garbage decays. These chemicals end up in the watershed by rainwater runoff or leaching into the water table.

Existing recycling programs prevent tons of waste from being dumped into landfills each year, and they’re only getting better.

The more we focus on ensuring that our personal waste gets diverted into the recycling stream, the more we will help decrease the carbon emissions coming from landfills where we live.

Cons of Recycling – The Disadvantages of Recycling

• Recycling Can Be Expensive
• High Up-Front Costs
• Needs Global Acceptance
• Recycled Products Are Often Of Lesser Quality
• Recycling Sites Can Be Unsafe

Now let’s get into the disadvantages of recycling – a more interesting and controversial side of the topic.

1. Recycling Can Be Expensive

There are many hidden costs and processes associated with recycling plants. They have to be sorted, bailed, trucked, shipped, stored, processed, and reshipped as new materials.

Metals and glass make a lot of sense to recycle and there is a great market for these recycled materials. After recycling these materials are just as good as raw materials and can be recycled forever.

Plastics are a different story. Even though many are recyclable, the problem of plastic is getting worse, not better.

When China was taking the majority of America’s plastic recycling, we were selling them our recyclable plastics , making a nice income while pushing our plastic waste to a different shore.

China stopped taking our recyclable plastics so most of them are going to places like Indonesia or getting put into landfills.

Municipalities are now paying to get rid of plastics instead of making money on them.

This means that many are now putting plastics into the landfill or stopping recycling programs altogether because they don’t have the money to maintain the program .

• In 2021, 85% of plastics used in America went into landfills – even those sorted for recycling.
• That same year about 10% of plastics were incinerated.
• Only about 5% of the plastics used in the US were recycled.

China has one of the largest plastic recycling programs in the world and is no longer accepting US plastics, but it recycles only 30% of its domestic plastic waste . The rest is incinerated – producing greenhouse gases .

This problem has been fueled by several factors.

• It’s more expensive to recycle plastic than make new plastic.
• Plastic recycling uses a ton of water, so the US is not interested in building plastic recycling plants.
• The high cost of plastic recycling is found in all areas of global economics – from polluted natural resources and atmosphere to the pollution of drinking water.

The fact is that the only way to solve the problem of plastic pollution is to stop using it. Yes, it is recyclable, but no, the recycling usually isn’t worth the cost to do so.

2. High Up-Front Costs

We’ve already discussed the fact that recycling is expensive. Let’s dive a little further into the high initial cost of developing recycling programs.

While all recycling programs are expensive, some pay off in the long run .

For instance, battery recycling , paper recycling , and steel recycling plants create highly reusable products that bring a great income to producers.

Even recycling clothes can produce new fabrics indefinitely – with zero waste.

However, establishing new recycling protocols and infrastructure has a high initial cost .

It takes trucks, machinery, shipping containers, employees, and all of the attendant expenses to acquire and maintain the entire system.

If a municipality doesn’t have a reliable buyer for recyclable goods then they have to pay someone to haul the recyclables away – an unenviable position that’s a reality in many recycling programs.

3. Needs Global Acceptance

Some areas of the world are careful to reduce what goes into landfills to an absolute minimum.

However, not every region has the same focus on the environment and sustainability.

Without truly global participation in recycling, source reduction, and personal consumption reduction, the problem of pollution and trashed recyclables will simply shift from place to place.

Recycling programs aim to make participation as easy as possible , but it also results in a lot of recycling contamination from dirty food items and non-recyclables.

When this happens, entire loads of recyclables can be hauled to the landfill instead of recycled because the cost to sort out every contaminated item is just too high.

So, while we do need global participation in recycling programs, there are two more things we need to make recycling programs truly valuable.

• Education – Many people want to recycle but are confused about what they can recycle and where to put it. This leads many to avoid recycling so they don’t mess up.
• Packaging Reduction – Metals are completely recyclable, forever, and so is glass. Plastic could be in theory, but there are so many types. Some are highly valuable PET plastics and others are low-value cling films and wrappers.

When the world rejects the use of thin film plastics and uses only recyclable plastics we’ll be well on our way to making recycling work.

Ideally, we’ll get to a place where we have reliable alternatives to plastics that we can use while avoiding any harm to the environment.

4. Recycled Products Are Often of Lesser Quality

This point is absolutely not true for high-value recyclables like glass, all types of metal, lithium, and even uranium. Metals and glass can be recycled forever with no decrease in quality.

However, for paper and plastic goods it can certainly be true that items made from recycled materials won’t hold up as long as those made from new materials.

We contend that the lack of quality is not due to the recycled material but the overzealous source reduction that often accompanies recycled products.

Here’s an example: we never promote using single-use water bottles, but we’ll use them as our example.

• You purchase a virgin-material water bottle and notice that the bottle has a nice weight to it – it doesn’t spill or crush when you open it. It’s a premium experience.
• You finish your water and drop the bottle and cap in a recycling container.
• The plastic is recycled and turned back into plastic pellets.
• The plastic pellets are used to make new water bottles, but source reduction measures are put in place to make the recovered plastic stretch to make more bottles.
• The next time you get a bottle of water made with recycled plastic you open the cap and the bottle crushes in your hand – water goes everywhere.

This isn’t a case of the plastic being inferior, but the source reduction methods use less of it to produce the bottle.

Consumers can make a difference by choosing products made with recycled materials that are also robust and can be reused for months or years before they’re recycled again or discarded.

5. Recycling Sites Can Be Unsafe

Some states also have designated recycling drop-off areas for deposit containers like cans and bottles. Residents must go to these facilities to drop off cans and bottles to get their deposit back.

These facilities are usually smelly, full of bacteria, and often in unsafe areas . This discourages more vulnerable residents from using recycling services.

Areas that require residents to come to the city landfill to drop off sorted recyclables have the worst levels of participation. These sites are dirty, inconvenient, and surrounded by unsafe conditions.

Final Thoughts

Recycling is good. When it works.

The problem is we’ve used recycling as an excuse for consumerism, convenience, and overconsumption . We’re producing more waste materials than we can process. Our waste output per person is increasing yearly.

We can debate the pros and cons of recycling until the end of time, but the solution has to include a reduction in our personal demands.

The production of single-use containers won’t diminish until we stop buying them. The production of cheap, thin, throw-away clothing won’t stop until we stop buying into it .

The good news is that recyclables like metals and glass are infinitely recyclable, so the more of us participate the better off earth will be.

The only material that’s really debatable when it comes to recycling is plastic. When the issue of plastics is sorted out we’ll see a huge leap forward in recycling and resource preservation.

Where do you stand on the matter? Let us know in the comments below!

Pros and cons of Recycling

Huge volumes of waste are sent to landfill every year. In 2018, the US created 292.4 millions tons of trash, of which nearly half 146 million tons ended in landfill. In recent years, much effort has gone into encouraging people to recycle, and rates of recycling have increased significantly (in the US from 9% (1980) to 32% (2018). However, just because it feels like a good thing to do, is it actually worthwhile for the economy and environment?

Costs of recycling

Recycling that ends up in landfill. The first problem is that all the products we diligently put in recycling boxes often ends up in landfill, either in UK/US or abroad in Asia.  In 2017/18. Westminster council sent 82% of all household waste – including that put in recycling bins – for incineration ( What really happens to your rubbish? ) In the UK Latest figures show 525,000 tonnes of household recycling collected was rejected at the point of sorting in 2019/20, partly because households failed to adequately sort. ( local.gov.uk ) It is a similar story in the US, where waste put in recycling bins, can be difficult and expensive to deal with and so ends in landfill.

Recycling takes time and effort itself. Recycling aims to save waste, but the process itself uses resources. As a report by ( NPR) stated  “Recycling plastic is “costly,” and sorting it, the report concludes, is “infeasible.” The US only recycles around 5% of its plastic consumption, but as Jan Dell, founder of the Last Beach Cleanup, writes

“We don’t have factories to do it. It’s also very water intensive, so we’re not going to build more plastic recycling facilities in the US.” ( Guardian )

Given water is an increasingly scarce resource, recycling plastic could do more harm to the environment than putting in a landfill.

Recycling green glass also gives a very poor return. You can recycle green glass, but it ends up as a fairly useless dull black substance called ‘cutlet’. It is usually more expensive to make new glass bottles from this recycled product rather than from raw product – sand. Putting glass in landfill is actually quite harmless as it eventually decomposes to sand. Carl Munger claims that in some US cities, citizens are forced to recycle glass bottles, these bottles are then picked up by recycling trucks to a recycling facility, which is then taken in another truck to landfill. This stems from a desire to recycle. But Munger claims

“In effect, citizens are paying the city extra to throw away the glass, so that they can pretend it’s being recycled.” ( Cato Unbound )

This problem is exacerbated in the UK which is a big net importer of wine and so has more supply of green glass than demand. The point is that not everything is worth recycling as the time and effort are greater than any benefits.

Energy used in the recycling process . There is also the business of collecting waste and taking to recycling centres. This in itself uses energy and resources, and more vehicle pollution from the recycling lorries.

Time wasted. The costs of recycling include the time and space required by householders and firms to sort the waste. Steven Landsburg in the Armchair Economist claimed recycling is a waste of time because the benefits are small, but the householder faces a time cost of collecting the resources. If we spend one hour a week on sorting and putting out the recycling, then if we value an hour of labour at $25 the costs of recycling are greater than perceived. He also claimed recycling paper may lead to fewer trees being planted, which is bad for the environment.

Over-supply A few years ago, recycling became a victim of its own success, with a large increase in the supply of recyclable plastic flakes causing the price to fall and it soon became uneconomical to go through the process of recycling. Councils who encouraged us to recycle were having to send all these so-called ‘recyclable’ materials straight to landfills. There was too much to usefully use.

In the past couple of years, this has actually changed quite dramatically due to a rise in raw material prices and an increase in demand by companies wishing to make plastic bottles with some recyclable materials. The problem now is that the cost of using recyclable plastic is considerably higher than using newly made plastic (which is very cheap).

Exporting of waste. Because of the difficulties in recycling materials, there have been efforts to export waste recycling products to Asia and other developing economies. First China and more recently other countries in Asia, such as Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia. In 2021, the U.S. exported 74,000 shipping containers of plastic waste to low-income countries (about half of US recyclables). ( USA Today) However, this raises ethical concerns about the export of hazardous toxic waste to poorer developing economies. It has become a sore point and many Asian countries have banned the import of recycling waste as it often gets burned.

Benefits of recycling

The volume of household waste continues to rise.  Allowing waste to go straight to landfills risks filling the earth with toxic materials, and causes a rise in methane emissions a notorious side effect of landfill. Landfill is the US 3rd largest emitter of methane (which is 34 times more potent as CO2 as greenhouse gas Recycling and climate change. ) Even if recycling is not particularly high returns, it avoids the external costs of sending it to landfill.

Saves energy and CO2 . Opposition to recycling often comes from cherry-picking products which give low returns, e.g. plastic, green glass. Products like an aluminium can, give a very good return, with around 95% of energy is saved by recycling because it is so energy intensive to make aluminium in the first place. According to The Balance Small Business , around 69 percent of the crude steel used in the U.S. in 2019 was made from recycled material. The EPA estimates that 68 percent of all paper and cardboard is actually recycled. This shows that recycling is reducing consumption of raw materials, and saving energy. Overall recycling is better for the environment. The Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) asked the Technical University of Denmark and the Danish Topic Centre on Waste to conduct a series of analyses on the value of recycling. They found in 83% of all scenarios that included recycling, it was indeed better for the environment. (Economist.com – The Truth about recycling )

Overall it is estimated that recycling saves more than 18 million tonnes of CO2 a year (similar to taking 5 million cars off the road. ( link )

Reduces consumption of raw materials and limits imports from abroad . Rather than relying on imports of raw materials, it helps countries make use of materials they have already imported.

Technological improvements . In recent years, technological improvements have increased the efficiency of recycling. For example, automated robots have become skilled in automatically separating waste, using high-speed jets of air to push plastic into collectors. This improved technology has meant many councils have been able to switch from multi-bin recycling to single-bin recycling. This reduces the time cost of recycling (for both households and recycling firms) The technology also helps to improve labour productivity, making it more realistic. Like anything, expanding recycling centres enables economies of scale and learning by doing. There is also scope for future technological progress to turn plastic back into oil. Adrian Griffiths, the founder of Swindon-based Recycling Technologies, claims they are working on a method to recycle all kinds of plastic back into oil and gas. ( Guardian, 2019) When solar panels first were produced they were very uneconomical, but allowing the industry to grow means we have more

Improved production can improve recycling. It is true, that many objects are currently hard to recycle, but, that could easily change if we can encourage producers to redesign their products. William McDonough, the co-author of a book 2002 called “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things” (2002) suggests that if we make things with the idea it must be recycled or re-used then it will be much easier and more efficient to recycle. The European Union have taken this idea and has passed laws stipulating products should be durable, reliable, reusable and recyclable. It claims in 2021 alone, existing ecodesign requirements saved consumers €120 billion and 10% lower annual energy consumption. ( EC )

Prevents methane and CO2 emissions. In 1980 America recycled only 9.6% of its municipal rubbish; in 2007, the rate stands at 32%. In 2018, the US generated 292.4 million tons of trash, of which nearly half 146 million tons ended in landfill, the rest being recycled,  composted or sent for burning (energy recovery).

Recycling as a valuable activity . The libertarian approach to recycling is to weigh up pros and cons and if the costs (including time effort) are greater, then just throw it in landfill. Steven Landsburg even explained it may be worth sacrificing some wilderness to landfill for the “luxury of not sorting your trash.”

However, another way to view recycling is that of a public good. Efforts to recycle encourage a civic-minded approach, which cultivates an attitude of minimising waste and looking after the environment. The benefits of recycling from a financial point of view may be limited, but if it creates more concern for the environment and encourages a more sustainable lifestyle, it will have other knock-on benefits for the long-term. Also, should we see sorting recycling as a chore, which is similar to an hour’s labour? Recycling can give a feeling of altruism, making a contribution to the environment, and many view it as  a fulfilling task in ints own right (e.g. more fulfilling than sitting in front of tv.) The Finnish economist Anni Huthala argues that recycling gives high social benefit, but she includes the act of recycling as a positive good in itself because consumers get satisfaction from recycling.

Thomas Kinnaman makes a similar observation (Kinnaman, T (2015) “ Economist says we need to rethink how we recycle ”, ) though he also admits there is another possibility where the act of recycling covers our other sins of excess carbon emissions from taking several long-haul flights. In the fight against global warming, recycling makes only a relatively minor contribution. It is something highly visible, but not something that actually will make any major change. Even as environmental author Beth Porter admits

“But we also have to acknowledge that recycling is not among the highest-priority actions.” ( How useful is recycling, really? The Atlantic)

Project Drawdown examined the effectiveness of different strategies to reduce the pace of global warming. In their list of most effective strategies , Recycling is listed only as number 26.

Despite some products being difficult to recycle, recycling is overall a beneficial endeavour. It helps to reduce carbon emissions, methane emissions and reduces the number of toxins leaking into the environment from landfill. But, there is more to it than a cost-benefit analysis. It is a different way of looking at the world, encouraging a mindset of sustainability and working with nature for the long-term, and not just a consumerist, throw-away attitude.

2 thoughts on “Pros and cons of Recycling”

BEST.ARTICLE.EVER! Helped me in school project

I’m happy you brought up the fact that recycling can reduce the amount of room it takes up in landfills. We haven’t attempted recycling in our new house yet, but I’ll surely tell my husband about this to help reduce our environmental effect. I’ll look into experts who might be able to assist us as well. I appreciate you sharing.

Comments are closed.

Home — Essay Samples — Environment — Recycling — The Debate Over Mandatory Recycling

The Debate Over Mandatory Recycling

• Categories: Conservation Recycling Resource Management

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Words: 750 |

Published: Aug 31, 2023

Words: 750 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Environmental benefits of recycling, resource conservation and raw material reduction, economic considerations, waste reduction and landfill management, challenges and opposition to mandatory recycling, behavioral change and public education, balancing regulation and individual choice, case studies and success stories, conclusion: weighing the pros and cons of mandatory recycling.

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