How to Fix Recycling

Every once in a while, someone encounters the fact that most recycling actually gets dumped in a landfill. Penn & Teller had a ‘Bullshit!’ episode on exactly this back in 2004.

With that in mind, my proposal would flip the entire relationship of how we approach it. I personally find it bonkers that society at large dumps this problem on the laps of consumers and expects them to deal with it on their own instead of putting the imperative on manufacturers. Michael Munger wrote an extensive essay on recycling for Cato a few years back and it's worth reading on its own, but the conclusion that has struck me as the most important was almost a throwaway point at the end.

Ultimately, the solution is to refocus on market incentives rather than moral imperatives.  The organizations with the cheapest means of enacting change, and who have the last best chance to reconsider packaging of all kinds, whether it’s liquid, food products, or microwaves, are the manufacturers and retail distributors of the products we buy.  At present, no one is responsible for disposing of packaging, and so the state does its fumbling best to try to solve the problem.  The solution is to reconsider responsibility for disposal, at the level of initial production.

I haven't stopped thinking about what this would look like. Political realities aside, I would love to see a system like this implemented. Instead of barfing trash all over the consumer chain and flailing around to pick up the pieces at the end, you address the problem at the very beginning and encourage a proper accounting of the full lifetime of the product, including the disposal cost.

An example of what this could look like in practice is a ratings system for different packaging materials. Let's just consider food packaging for now. Biodegradable material like cellophane (no, really) and paper could be assigned a zero rating. Benign or highly recyclable refuse like glass and metals can be rated something slightly higher. Non-degradable plastics or heavily combined materials (think of a tube of toothpaste which is multiple kinds of plastics combined with aluminum in a packaging almost impossible to clean) would probably be given the highest rating from the standpoint of difficulty of disposal. This can put manufacturers on notice and encourage them to seriously evaluate how much packaging is frivolous.

I anticipated that the only feasible way to implement this is for a large state like California to lead the way. This already sort of happens with carbon emission standards for vehicles. California sets up higher standards which de facto become national standards because manufacturers understandably conclude that two-tiered system is not feasible.