Is recycling worth it?

Recycling programs have been widespread in the US for decades, but the practice isn’t perfect

Is recycling worth it? Not according to the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.

“Recycling is pointless,” Musk wrote in mid-December to 207.8 million followers on the social media platform he owns.

The intentions of recycling are good, but the scale of the issue is vast. The world produces massive amounts of plastic, some 507 million tons annually, with half designed for single use each year.

But is the action as purposeless as the SpaceX owner claimed? Well, lots of plastic isn’t recyclable — and even items that are usually end up in landfills — although you shouldn’t stop putting your recycling out on the curb yet.

“By 2050, there could be more plastic in the ocean than fish,” UN Secretary General António Guterres has warned. Pollution is now found “everywhere — all around us and inside us — from our seas to our blood, to our brains.”

Since recycling programs and legislation were first widely implemented in the 1970s, a flood of plastic waste has been produced.

Less than 10 percent of what has been generated globally has been recycled, according to research from 2015. In the U.S., just 8 percent of all plastic was recycled in 2017 and only 14 percent was collected for recyling, according to the nonprofit Sierra Club. The Environmental Protection Agency says only 32 percent of US trash was recycled in 2018.

Plastic is loaded onto a conveyer belt at ExxonMobil’s Baytown, Texas, chemical recycling plant in October 2023. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, said earlier this month that recycling is pointless. The reality is complicated ((Photo by SERGIO FLORES/AFP via Getty Images))

Only 21 percent of residential recyclables are currently being recycled, according to a January report from The Recycling Partnership. The report found that every material type is under-recycled and that the majority of glass, cans, and plastic beverage bottles are lost to trash because not enough homes have recycling services.

Recycling rates vary by location, plastic type, and its use, and most of the world’s waste ends up in landfills or is lost to nature. Sometimes, it is shipped to places where it is burned or dumped.

Most plastic — even those with the recognizable three chasing arrows — is not recycleable, a Greenpeace report found in 2022. The amount of waste that can be recycled has fallen, making it hard for consumers who are keen to even do it.

“Corporations like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé, and Unilever have worked with industry front groups to promote plastic recycling as the solution to plastic waste for decades. But the data is clear: practically speaking, most plastic is just not recyclable. The real solution is to switch to systems of reuse and refill,” Lisa Ramsden, the Greenpeace USA’s Senior Plastics Campaigner, said.

The arrow symbol identifies the type of plastic resin used in the product, which helps determine its appropriate route. But that symbol does not guarantee it will be recycled.

Notably, the quality of what is recycled is often downgraded by contamination with labels or food remains, and recycled products will still have virgin plastic added for quality.

The recycle logo is seen on a plastic container last September at a recycling center in San Francisco, California. But, the iconic three chasing arrows symbol may be misleading ((Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images))

Plastic can leach harmful chemicals as well as the cancer-causing microplastics that have permeated nearly everything on Earth.

A Greenpeace report citing the United Nations Environment Programme said plastics contain more than 13,000 chemicals, with more than 3,200 of them known to be hazardous to human health.

“The plastics industry—including fossil fuel, petrochemical, and consumer goods companies—continues to put forward plastic recycling as the solution to the plastic pollution crisis. But this report shows that the toxicity of plastic actually increases with recycling,” Graham Forbes, Greenpeace USA’s Global Plastics Campaign Lead, said. “Plastics have no place in a circular economy and it’s clear that the only real solution to ending plastic pollution is to massively reduce plastic production.”

Amid the continuing climate crisis, one MIT researcher argues that people would be better served putting plastic waste into landfills. Recycling only reduces greenhouse gas emissions by between 2-3 percent, according to a study published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology.

“The carbon benefits, the greenhouse-gas benefits of recycling are actually very, very small, really not worth it,” Andrew McAfee told Business Insider in 2019. “What is really environmentally unsound is what we were doing up until China put a ban on it, which is packing up all of our plastics, sending it across the ocean, to a country that engaged in environmentally very, very dirty practices, to try to recycle that.”

The consequences of the system have become incredibly clear: bottles and other plastics flowing in our rivers, lakes, and throughout our oceans. The US is the world’s largest producer of plastic waste.

A father and son on a styrofoam boat paddle through a trash-filled river as they collect plastic bottles in the Philippines in March 2015. The US leads the world in plastic waste production ((NOEL CELIS/AFP via Getty Images))

“It’s simply not possible to collect the vast quantity of these small pieces of plastic sold to U.S. consumers annually,” said Ramsden. “More plastic is being produced, and an even smaller percentage of it is being recycled. The crisis just gets worse and worse, and, without drastic change, will continue to worsen as the industry plans to triple plastic production by 2050.”

But, even among all these barriers, there are “modest environmental benefits,” according to Last Week Tonight host John Oliver. Recycling can save energy and cut water use. Recycling plastic is also better than burning it, the Plastic Pollution Coalition says.

“Even though there are many drawbacks, recycling remains an important part of efforts to reduce waste and conserve resources. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that it is not a perfect solution and that there are limitations to what recycling can achieve,” Boise State University’s College of Business and Economics said.

“To make recycling more effective, it is important to focus on reducing contamination, improving infrastructure and exploring other waste reduction strategies. Or, look at other options, like reducing waste, composting, upcycling and others”