Mother Jones – September 01, 2019

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HOW WE TRASHED RECYCLING

Every little bit did not help.

by jackie flynn mogensen

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if you’re like me, you’ve looked at a paper coffee cup or an

empty tube of toothpaste and thought, “Is this recyclable?”

before tossing it in the recycling bin, hoping someone, some-

where, would sort it out. People in the waste management

industry call this habit “wishcycling.” According to Marian

Chertow, director of the Solid Waste Policy program at Yale

University, “a wishcycler wants to do the right thing and feels

that the more that he or she can recycle, the better.”

Well, I hate to break it to you, but this well-intentioned

reflex is doing more harm than good. Not only that, but

wishcycling is playing a big role in the current global

recycling meltdown.

First, a bit about the process. When my recycling is

scooped up by a truck every week, it goes

to a materials recovery facility (mrf) run

by a company called Recology. After the

goods travel through the facility’s jungle

of conveyor belts and sorting machinery,

they are shipped as bales to buyers in the

United States and abroad, who turn that

material into products like cereal boxes

and aluminum cans.

But in an effort to get more people recy-

cling, companies like Recology have become

victims of their own success. In the early

2000s, many communities switched from a

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