Recycling

Recycling refers to both physical and social processes that have the capacity to remake or modify materials, most often at the point of disposal. This article will therefore examine definitions of the physical recycling process before exploring the various cultural, political, economic, and social issues that make recycling such a major part of everyday life for citizens around the world.

In simple terms, recycling is the reuse of materials through some form of natural, mechanized, or industrial process. Accordingly, recycling differs from reuse, which refers to the use of materials for the same purpose without any physical modification to that product. A useful example of this distinction is the reuse and recycling of glass; the reuse of glass bottles or jars involves the refilling or repacking of the same, unmodified glass object with either the same or different products. Although the trend is waning somewhat, numerous countries have relied on the reuse of glass bottles for delivering milk and storing beer or other liquids. In contrast, recycling glass involves a natural, mechanical, or often industrially based process of modification: glass is broken down, modified, and remade, either into another glass product or an entirely different object. This is perhaps what people most readily think of when the term recycling is used—a trip to the bottle bank to recycle wine or beer bottles.

Recycling is therefore a physically based process relying on some form of natural or mechanized change to remake or modify materials. However, this seemingly simple physical process is complex in a number of ways, and the rest of this article explores the various issues surrounding recycling that have made this topic a major area of study for academics concerned with green consumerism.

The first major issue that the study of recycling presents is positioned at a philosophical level and concerns the ways in which both societies and individuals view the underlying issue of waste. In debates concerning how people and societies manage their waste, academics and practitioners have derived what is termed a “waste hierarchy,” which places waste reduction at the top as the most preferable form of activity and the landfilling of waste at the bottom, as the action of last resort. Within this hierarchy, reuse is placed below reduction and recycling below reuse. Accordingly, within the broader issue of waste management, recycling is the third preferred option, after reduction and reuse. Recycling is not, therefore, representative of the most environmentally sound alternative to disposal but is an option to be preferred before landfilling waste. This has led many academics and practitioners to argue that, in principle, encouraging recycling is less preferable to reducing level of consumption (and therefore the products and materials used) or the reuse of products. Such assertions are challenging because they imply that citizens [Page 381]should seek to consume fewer products and reuse those that they do purchase, thus altering the dominant consumer culture of capitalist societies.