Penn & Teller TV - The New York Times - United States Environmental Protection Agency - Neil Seldman - Daniel Benjamin - M H Huesemann - P H Brunner - Dirty Business: What Really Happens to Your Recycling TV - Secret World of Your Rubbish TV - Recycling: Is It a Con? TV - Trailer Park Boys - Panorama TV - The Story of Stuff TV -
Just plain bullshit. Penn & Teller Bullshit! s2e5: Recycling, Showtime 2004
It just seems like the thing to do. ibid.
Does it save energy? No ... Sorting, storing and cleaning ... It takes more energy to recycle a plastic bottle than to make a new one. ibid.
It costs you eight billion dollars a year. ibid.
Cans ... There is real money in aluminium. ibid.
Recycling paper is bad for the environment. Recycling is a manufacturing process. ibid.
Americans make about 200 million tons of rubbish a year. ibid.
We have three times more trees today than we did in 1920. ibid.
Recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern America. A waste of time and money, a waste of human and natural resources. The New York Times
cf.
The Solid Waste Dilemma: An Agenda For Action ... Recycling is absolutely vital. United States Environmental Protection Agency
People feel good when they recycle. Neil Seldman, president Institute for Self-Reliance
Recycling does not save trees. Professor Daniel Benjamin
Most of what makes people feel good about recycling is based on misinformation. Daniel Benjamin
They are wasting resources when they recycle. Daniel Benjamin
It is more expensive to recycle than it is to landfill. Daniel Benjamin
Complete recycling is impossible from a practical standpoint. In summary, substitution and recycling strategies only delay the depletion of non-renewable stocks and therefore may buy time in the transition to true or strong sustainability, which ultimately is only guaranteed in an economy based on renewable resources. M H Huesemann, The Limits to Sustainable Development
Every year, millions of tons of materials are being exploited from the earth's crust, and processed into consumer and capital goods. After decades to centuries, most of these materials are ‘lost’. With the exception of some pieces of art or religious relics, they are no longer engaged in the consumption process. Where are they? Recycling is only an intermediate solution for such materials, although it does prolong the residence time in the anthroposphere. For thermodynamic reasons, however, recycling cannot prevent the final need for an ultimate sink. P H Brunner, In Search of the Final Sink
Hong Kong: This is absolutely astonishing. I never thought we would see this. It’s sitting here doing nothing … People have put this in their recycling bins; they thought it was going to be recycled and yet it’s just stuck in this log-jam. Dirty Business: What Really Happens to Your Recycling, Sky News 2018
We produce twenty times more plastic today than we did fifty years ago. ibid.
A system that pushes the problem off our shores. The end result: plastic piling up and it isn’t going away. ibid.
China: whole villages grew dedicated to sorting through the world’s dirty plastic. ibid.
In July 2017 China rocked the recycling world by announcing it would impose tough restrictions on the import of foreign waste. They called it National Sword. ibid.
Globally we dump a colossal two billion tons of rubbish every year. But what we chuck away has got to go somewhere. Secret World of Your Rubbish I, Channel 5 2019
In our capital city thousands of dustbins go out every day of the working week to collect around three million binbags full of rubbish. ibid.
Now a tightly regulated industry. ibid.
Landfill waste is bursting at the seems. ibid.
We recycle less than half of our household waste. ibid.
We send around seven million old mattresses to landfill every year. ibid.
Air Salvage International – a company that recycles on an epic scale. ibid.
Underground fires can last for up to twenty years. And are almost impossible to put out. ibid.
All too often they [Crapper & Sons] find stuff that should never have been thrown out in the first place. Secret World of Your Rubbish II
We dispose of over fifty-two million tons of rubbish in landfill every year. ibid.
The need for more and better recycling is more urgent than ever. Not least because Britain is due to run out of landfill space by 2024. ibid.
We uncover a vast hidden world of waste. And we meet the army of workers on the front line clearing up after us day in day out from everyday scraps to radical recycling. The war against our trash never ends. Secret World of Your Rubbish III, Channel 5 2019
Britain is due to run out of landfill space by 2024. ibid.
There are over forty energy from waste facilities in the UK, a fifty per cent rise in the last five years. ibid.
The British waste industry turn over £9 billion a year and employs 70,000 people. But work on the tugboats is not for the fainthearted. ibid.
87% of Brits believe we should take responsibility for recycling. Secret World of Your Rubbish s2e4
Glass: it never loses its quality or purity no matter how many times it’s recycled. The average UK family uses 500 glass bottles and jars every year. And we manage to recycle 67% of it. ibid.
We Brits generate over one and half million tons of plastic waste, much of which ends up buried in landfill or being burned from energy and waste plants. ibid.
Every year more than twenty-eight billion glass bottles and jars end up in the nation’s landfills. ibid.
Our seas are being overwhelmed with plastic rubbish and it is estimated that UK landfill sites will be full by 2022. Recycling: Is It a Con? s1e3, Channel 5 2019
Over half of our rubbish doesn’t go anywhere near a recycling plant. ibid.
You haven’t started the recycling programme. The park is a complete mess. Trailer Park Boys s3e2: Temporary Relief Assistant Trailer Park Supervisor, Barbara
How much do you know about what happens to the plastic in your cupboards? There’s a good chance you would have bought stuff with this logo on it. Terracycle, the company behind it, says it can recycle anything. But in the US the company has been accused of greenwashing. Panorama: Recycling: Where Does My Rubbish Go? BBC 2022
Recycling will never be enough. The Story of Stuff, 2007