Is it time to rethink recycling?
Recycling sucks. You have to dismantle products and packaging, cut cardboard into little squares no more than 20cm X 20cm, sort glass bottles by colour, remove the labels, or else it won&#x27;t be (expensively) collected. You can also go drop it off yourself, but you have to pay for the pleasure, and own or rent a vehicle.<p>Even after all of that, a majority of what is supposed to be recycled ends up being &quot;recycled&quot; into electricity, by an incinerator. That&#x27;s the case in this neck of the woods, at any rate.<p>Recycling treats a symptom, not a disease. We allow the production of wasteful packaging, we accept planned obsolescence, and we dispose of things that could be yet used for a long time to come.<p>A better solution would be to impose the cost of disposal on manufacturers - this already happens to a degree with WEEE, but try actually getting a manufacturer to collect - it&#x27;s made deliberately difficult as they&#x27;d rather you just fly-tip and save them the expense - even though you paid for that service as part of your purchase.<p>Another better solution would be to pass goods on whole for re-use rather than recycling wherever possible, which has gained some traction through things like freecycle and eBay, but is still a minority case. This behaviour could be encouraged by governments, but is instead actively discouraged, as it hurts sales of new goods, and therefore tax revenues.<p>As per usual, we&#x27;ll only change when forced to - by which point it&#x27;ll be too late. People will use 300 year old toasters in the future, and weep for our wastefulnes.<p>I do what I can, buy very little new (all of my furniture is pre 1960), dumpster dive, pass things I no longer want or need on, but it&#x27;s still not enough.