Our system is broken

Re: Recycling

It is hardly surprising that numerous recyclables end up in a landfill since recycling the way we do it today is broken. Recycling is one of the best ways to have a direct impact on the environment, after reusing and reducing waste. The economic boom after the Second World War brought a tidal wave of quick and cheap goods and suddenly, it made more economic sense to just throw things away and buy new items. Nowadays, recycling has become too easy. So easy that we now throw anything we think might be recyclable and just let someone else sort it out as part of a global market, which allows material to be made into new products. While this works for aluminum and glass, paper and plastic are a different story.

For instance, the plastic bags that we use to tidy our recyclables on garbage day are not recyclable since they just clog up the sorting machines. As such, the entire bag containing our recyclables may end up just getting thrown away. Another issue is due to contamination of products that are actually recyclable, such as pizza boxes with grease stains, disposable drink cups with their wax coating, or yogurt cups with yogurt still in it and the foil lid still on. This just ends up contaminating the whole batch, causing all the recyclables to get thrown away since the purification process is too expensive. The convenience of recycling programs has now become its Achilles heel. So what now? Well, first we need to start rinsing our recyclables in the sink, compost organic things like napkins and pizza boxes, and learn what kinds of materials are recyclable in Hamilton. Second, we need to remember the other two parts of the recycling triangle: reduce the waste we purchase and reuse whenever we can.

Nicolas Randazzo, Hamilton