Recycling is the poster child of the U.S. environmental movement. There are over 9,800 curbside recycling programs in the U.S., each accompanied with snappy slogans (think: “reduce, reuse, recycle”, or “recycling plastic feels fantastic”). By most accounts, recycling is an environmental success story. That makes Samantha MacBride’s call to rethink recycling seem like environmental heresy. Why challenge something that, in her own words, is “now solidified into municipal practice and thriving private industry, and reflected in widespread general public support of recycling in general”?

But as she demonstrates in her book “Recycling Reconsidered: The Present Failure and Future Promise of Environmental Action in the United States”, this idealized view of the contemporary recycling movement warrants careful interrogation. It really isn’t easy being green: recent reports detail how many curbside recycling programs have become unsustainable, and only a small fraction of plastics are actually recycled. MacBride argues that these present-day concerns are not new for the recycling movement since its emergence in the 1970s. Although she takes no pleasure in critiquing the recycling movement, she tackles the recycling movement’s many assumptions head-on. How did we come to emphasize recycling as a civic duty, instead of it being a corporate responsibility? Is advocating for a zero waste society a valiant but ultimately misguided goal? MacBride’s sharp questions and engaging case studies provoke us to look beyond recycling as a feel-good action. Instead, she asks for us to view it as an elaborate social project missing its mark.

Glass recycling is an often energy intensive process. Collected glass products are crushed into smaller pieces. (Photo from Waste360)

Take for example her comparative analysis of glass and textile recycling. As she argues, it really isn’t clear why your glass bottle should be recycled over your old clothes: glass is of low environmental concern relative to fabrics that have severe environmental impacts at all stages of their lifecycle. But glass recycling has persisted in spite of its high cost, while textile recycling has not caught on at all. Her answer to how glass gained and retained its importance in the recycling movement? The surge of attention to glass as dangerous litter in the 1960s, the bottling industry trade group’s aversion to bottle reuse, and environmental groups’ fear of losing momentum for sustainable waste management if they admit bottle refill is a much better alternative to recycling glass. This is just one example of how MacBride deftly weaves a narrative of how social phenomenon, businesses, and government bodies have come together to frame certain materials as problems to be solved through recycling – even when it is not the best course of action.

It is MacBride’s sharp and often surprising critique of such hallmarks of the environmental movement that make her otherwise heavy book an engaging read. It is, after all, a book geared towards a more academic audience; she does not shy away from utilizing waste statistics and bolstering her narrative arguments with impressive detail. These statistics can be surprising for the everyday reader: who would have imagined that 7.6 billion tons of non-hazardous manufacturing wastes is produced yearly? MacBride uses such numbers not only to draw attention to how large the problem of waste is, but also to show how the recycling movement has gotten it wrong. For instance, she recycling advocates for often framing this statistic of 7.6 billion tons as stemming from wasteful personal consumption, instead of using it as a call for stronger and more direct regulation of corporate manufacturing wastes.

But MacBride – whose professional life straddles the spheres of academia and municipal government – admits difficulty in positioning herself as both ally and critic of the contemporary recycling movement. “I am deeply allied with those concerned about environmental and social problems involved in waste”, she writes, “But I can’t stay silent on the contradictions I have observed for fear of uttering a discouraging word.” Yet for the reader, it is precisely in the parts where MacBride grapples with this tension that her book is most compelling.

This is best seen in her examination of plastic recycling, where MacBride acknowledges the promise and power of extended producer responsibility (i.e. producers bearing the financial costs of negative environmental impact) and the enactment of material bans utilizing this concept. But MacBride also points out the unintended consequences to such legislation – when cities such as Seattle and San Francisco banned single-use Styrofoam food packaging, it only led to the increased use of heavier, more rigid, plastics. She also finds fault with government agencies over the sheer lack of support for consistent data collection about recyclable plastics. Her critique of plastic recycling is particularly prescient in contemporary times, where a new wave of bans against straws and plastic bags appear to repeat the same mistakes: enacted too quickly, limited in information, and with barely any consideration of how waste cycles through society.

Some cities have instituted bans against single-use plastics – for example, in 2015, foam cups and containers were banned in New York City. (Photo from Grist)

MacBride’s ally-critic balancing act is held together by her unwavering faith in the promise of recycling done right. Even after pointing out all of the recycling movement’s flaws, never once does she doubt recycling’s intrinsic goodness: MacBride ends her book by finding hope in human ingenuity and desire to better waste management. While her suggestions for fixing the recycling movement can be considered controversial (such as advocating for only paper and metal to be collected for recycling), MacBride prompts us to reconsider recycling in all its forms. And with a crash in the market value of recyclable materials forcing municipalities to reevaluate their recycling practices, such a reconsideration is more relevant than ever.

Recycling Reconsidered by Samantha MacBride. Published 2012.