By Vivian Tu
As busy UChicago students, we often run from café to café for coffee, snacks, and everything in between. This creates a lot of trash from cups, wrappers, and containers, but I’ve always noticed students here making marked efforts to place all of their waste into the proper bins for disposal. Why wouldn’t we? We’ve been taught since grade school to always recycle our trash to help reduce and reuse, right? Who doesn’t want to protect our planet and reduce our carbon footprint? Well, we might have been getting it wrong this whole time.
In his piece “The Reign of Recycling”, for the New York Times, John Tierney argues that despite higher national recycling goals than ever, recycling has gone stagnant in the past few years, and the future doesn’t look good. While recycling paper and metals made some large initial impacts, recycling glass and other plastics often have minimal environmental benefits as well as large costs. The past decade boasted the persistent promotion of recycling as a major environmental advantage, but how much does recycling actually do for us? And is it always positive? Often, before recycling, we must rinse out bottles or cans, which, if the water were to be heated from coal-powered electricity, would completely eliminate the carbon reduction we would have created through recycling in the first place (Tierney 2015). Furthermore, recycling plants and logistics frequently require extra vehicles for transport and can produce pollution from recycling plants (Tierney 2015).
One prime example of a recycling facility potentially having unforeseen consequences is the recently instated Pilsen metal shredder in Chicago. Although the shredder helps break down and consolidate old metal products, it also produces emissions of heavy metals (such as mercury and lead), PCB’s, dioxins, furans and other harmful pollutants known to increase the risk of cancer, chronic asthma and other illnesses (LVEJO 2014). Because the shredder is located in a densely populated area, exposure of Pilsen neighborhood residents is of great concern (LVEJO 2014). Furthermore, recycling facilities are often not nearly as regulated as other industrial works. Some of the dangerous pollutants from the metal shredding process are not regulated under the Clean Air Act, which allows them to be sited in residential neighborhoods, whereas projects such as the Fisk coal-fired power plant felt strict regulatory pressures (Bruno 2015). Indeed other cities have found evidence of increased and dangerous levels of carcinogens near metal recycling facilities (Lobert 2015). While the recycling of metals is beneficial for reuse of raw materials, the location of the facilities has raised questions about environmental justice, since proximate residents may bear a disproportionate burden of the exposure to pollution and resulting health effects.
While the concept of recycling is well-intentioned and advocates for a decrease in our impact on the environment, many of its negative externalities are often masked and never discussed. Some recycling practices place extreme liabilities upon marginalized populations, and other practices may add just as much to the carbon footprint as they help to reduce. Nevertheless, this isn’t to say recycling hasn’t benefited society. For every ton of metal or paper recycled, we save approximately three tons of carbon dioxide from being released into our ecosystem (Tierney 2015). This helps to drastically reduce carbon dioxide output, limiting our greenhouse gas emissions. However, not all recycling is made equal, and even though putting the right materials in the right disposal bins may make us feel better, recycling certain products, such as glass and plastic, may have higher costs for marginal benefits (Tierney 2015). So the next time you accidentally drop your glass bottle into the trash rather than the recycling bin, don’t be too upset, as it may be less of a crime against our ecosystem than you think.
Bruno, Jonathan. “Pilsen Residents Speak Out against Pure Metal Recycling.” ChicagoTalks. 17 Apr. 2014. Web. 13 May 2015.
Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO). “Environmental Justice Struggles in Illinois.” Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination Report 2014 (2014). Web. 13 May 2015. <Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO). (2014). Environmental Justice Struggles in Illinois. CERD Report, 2014.
Lobert, Ingrid. “Danger in Air near Metal Recyclers.” Houston Chronicle. Houston Chronicle, 9 Jan. 2013. Web. 2 Nov. 2015.
Tierney, John. “The Reign of Recycling.” The New York Times 3 Oct. 2015, Sunday Review sec. Web. 1 Nov. 2015.