Recycling Tricks To Consume More

How many of the products labelled with recycling sign are being recycled? Recycling tricks us to consume more.

Do you sort your trash? Where does it end up? Why?

We were waiting for a bus in a bus station in China. While sitting in waiting room we were watching locals performing their duties. In the middle of the hall there was a trash can with two departments: one for recycling materials and the other for mixed trash. At the end of the day a cleaner came and emptied them both to the same trash bag.

Not Only In China Or New Zealand

That woke up our interest. After China we have been travelling in Europe in France, Spain, and Italy, and met travellers from all over the world. We have been asking about how recycled materials are handled in different countries. Most of them did not know, but those who did told, that after recycled waste is collected, it is put together and burned for energy.

Europe is not an exception in burning trash. The same happens in green New Zealand. When we lived there we noticed, that recycling is a matter of honour for locals. Our neighbours were keenly washing their trashes, packing them to green plastic bags, and a recycling car collected the bags to recycling centres where the trash was put on display for a few months so that anyone could go there and pick it up if they needed them. Finally all leftovers, which usually totalled all the collected recyclables, were shipped over to Australia for burning them. “The system has it weaknesses, but it’s better than doing nothing”, commented the local official who was responsible for the recycling scheme.

Cleaner Conscience Instead Of Nature

In Italy mafia is in lucrative recycling business. They make money disposing super poisons. The stuff is loaded into old tankers which are sunk to the sea. Less dangerous poisons are buried into mountains like nuclear waste in Finland. Near Naples they are also disposed to ditches carrying them to sea. The results are similar to burning trash: all poisons end up to nature and return to the circle of nature, because it is cheaper that way.

Do you know how that works where you live? How big amount of the trash you sort ends up re-used, where is it processed and used, and what is made out of it? Or is it just burned together with all other trash? A phone call to your city hall will help clarify this matter. Please share the information by for example leaving a comment to this story.

If the trash simply is burned, recycling is actually harming nature more than helping by tricking people to consume more, driving consumerism. In that case the only sustainable solution is polluting less by reducing consumption.

Keywords: recycling, environment, ecological, ecology, circle of nature, sorting trash, green, trash, waste, poison, pollution, Italy, France, Spain, Finland, New Zealand, Naples, Italy, Mafia, nuclear waste, super poison, consumerism.