Environmental Protection is Not Just about Recycling

Environmental Protection is Not Just about Recycling

Heavenly Chwang

When it comes to the topic of environmental protection, recycling would probably be the first thing that comes to our minds. On the flipside, environmental protection is way more than recycling, with its downsides that we must not neglect.

What is recycling?

Recycling refers to the process of reprocessing and converting waste materials into new and useful products or materials. Recycling is known as an environmentally friendly practice to reduce the amount of municipal waste and raw materials exploitation. Nowadays, people are encouraged to practice waste separation and increase recycling rate. Recycling is good, but is not the perfect answer to fix environmental problems Although recycling is a good practice to help alleviate solid waste problems and overexploitation of resources, it is not the perfect answer to solve environmental problems. Recycling is not magic; it doesn’t turn waste into useable materials with no time and effort. The whole recycling process, includes collecting, transporting, handling, storing, disassembling, dismantling, sorting, separating, shredding, processing, remanufacturing, and so on. The whole process also consists of water and energy consumption, known as greenhouse gases (GHGs) emission. Even though the energy and resources used in recycling is still much less than that of producing products from virgin materials, the consumption and emission in the recycling process must not be ignored. More than that, before we put our recyclables into recycling bins, most of the time we need to rinse and clean them with water, some people may even use a few pieces of paper towels to dry the recyclables, which means water consumption and more waste could be generated when we practice recycling. Last but not least, recycling reduces our sense of guilt of producing waste. When we put waste into recycling bins, it gives us the false impression that we are practising environmental-friendly behaviour rather than producing waste. And it easily becomes an excuse for us to think it is okay to consume and dispose single-use plastics and other recyclables as long as we recycle them, neglecting all the energy consumption and GHGs emission being generated throughout the recycling process.

This article is not advocating that recycling is bad and wasteful, the level of energy and water consumption, also the GHGs emission of recycling is still much lower than that of manufacturing products from virgin materials. This article is to remind readers not to treat recycling as the perfect answer to fixing environmental problems. There are better ways to protect our environment.

Reduce from source

To reduce the amount of solid waste and exploitation of resources, the best way is to reduce from source, which means eliminating the waste even before it is created. To practice reduce from source, we can: • Reduce the use of single-use plastics • Purchase products with less packaging • If you bought products which you found not suitable to you, try to ask if your friends need it before throwing away • Donate the old products (e.g. clothings, toys) to someone in need rather than disposing it • Do upcycling to give waste materials a new life