Why we need to reduce and reuse instead of recycle

I remember about 7 years ago when one of my friends first said to me “why bother recycling? It’s not going to fix anything.” I was flabbergasted. What do you mean? I’ve been told for most of my life to recycle. That was what we did in Environment Club in high school - we set up recycle boxes and collected paper so it wouldn’t go in the trash. Needless to say, I argued with my friend for a while and not believing him, went off to do some research. It was the beginning of my journey towards Voluntary Simplicity and the idea of buying less and getting by with what I already have – focusing on the first two parts of the “reduce, reuse, recycle” motto.

This week an article in the New York Times is focusing on one of the problems with recycling: it is still depending on us buying and using new stuff. With the economic recession, there has also been a drastic reduction in the demand for recycled materials.The article states:

"The downturn offers some insight into the forces behind the recycling boom of recent years. Environmentally conscious consumers have been able to pat themselves on the back and feel good about sorting their recycling and putting it on the curb. But most recycling programs have been driven as much by raw economics as by activism. Cities and their contractors made recycling easy in part because there was money to be made. Businesses, too — like grocery chains and other retailers — have profited by recycling thousands of tons of materials like cardboard each month. But the drop in prices has made the profits shrink, or even disappear, undermining one rationale for recycling programs and their costly infrastructure. 'Before, you could be green by being greedy,' said Jim Wilcox, a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. 'Now you’ve really got to rely more on your notions of civic participation.'”

And what happens when things are not made with these recycled materials? They end up in the landfill.

So what is the moral of this story? It is important to be mindful of the life cycle (or linear line) of the things that we buy, see the Story of Stuff. Recycling is not enough. We need to focus more on reducing and reusing.