I just saw a wonderful site called ourplanet.com. They have an environmental atlas that keeps track of what is actually happening around the world. Here’s what they have to say on what recycling is really achieving.

Poor communities recover every valuable item from waste. Asian recyclers use rubber from scrap tyres to make shoes, make their own recycled paper and flatten cans to make metal sheets for roofing.

Annually 200 million tons of waste cross OECD borders en route to reprocessing facilities, a business worth over US$20 billion.

Waste paper travels from North America to the Far East; Europe’s surplus glass is sent to South America; some of the West’s waste plastics are shipped to China.

A shortage of reprocessing capacity limits recycling, and industries established to process consistently clean virgin materials cannot readily adapt to the vagaries of secondary materials.

Cost is another issue: collecting small quantities of materials from many locations is logistically and economically more difficult than obtaining large quantities from a single source.

Indeed recycling may not always be resource-efficient when collection and reprocessing involve long-haul transport. Recycling is not keeping pace with waste increases in most countries.

Time to acknowledge that it’s just not happening, folks. Time to realise that reduction and reuse makes a lot more sense than recycling.

Stumble it!