What drives recycling?

One way to reduce waste is to recycle. However, the market incentives around recycling in the U.S. do not necessarily promote the minimization of waste. China was a primary buyer of U.S. recyclable plastic waste, but in 2018 the country announced that it would no longer be accepting plastic recycling that was overly contaminated [1] as it was generating enough waste locally to meet demand. As a result of a recycling industry built on market incentives, the recent move to stop buying U.S. recycling has put the recycling industry in crisis.

Recycling plants have begun paying companies to dispose of the recyclable waste which they are no longer able to sell abroad [2]. Regulations and norms about what can and cannot be recycled vary across the U.S., but many consumers are unaware of these rules and contaminate the recycling stream (a phenomenon referred to as “wish cycling”) [2]. Meanwhile, plastic manufacturers have popularized false notions of recyclability, misleading consumers to believe that certain items can be recycled when there are in fact no processors willing or able to do so. We investigated recycling on a local level in Somerville and Boston. The company in charge of recycling - Casella (NASDAQ: CWST) - is in charge of recycling much of the residential single stream recycling in the Greater Boston area [3]. Overall, about 30% of recyclable or compostable waste in the Boston Area ends in landfills, compared to 34% on national average [3]. While some consumers seem disappointed with the system [4], the situation in Boston and Somerville is similar to the national situation: the recycling industry does little to reduce the generation of waste, shipping material abroad or disposing of it in landfills. Only a small amount of recyclable material (for example, just 9% of all plastics) is actually turned into new products, while the false belief that recycling reduces waste encourages individuals to continue to generate waste.