For the Love of God, Stop Recycling Plastic

It's a marketing scam. Also: a recent visit to my daughter's school to talk about the climate crisis

The Kids Are Alright (but won’t be in the coming decades)

In April, my daughter’s school celebrated Earth Day with an assembly at the end of the month. I’ll admit that I might have rolled my eyes at the simplistic messaging that all we seem to need to do is turn off the lights, throw our trash in the garbage and make sure we recycle our juice boxes. While her school only goes up to Grade 3, I have met many savvy kids who know a thing or two about the climate and ecological crisis, and have more to say about the existential crisis that they, especially, will be facing in the future.

My daughter’s Letter to the Earth was shared at her school assembly in April.

A few kids quietly spoke a more powerful truth during that assembly. In addition to my daughter’s letter to the Earth (about which I might be a wee bit biased!), another girl talked about the importance of climate marches and of reducing our purchases of unnecessary things. And a boy spoke up to challenge the mining of diamonds in Africa!

While I love my daughter’s school (this is by no means a criticism of that school), its curriculum, which is mandated by the Province of Ontario, leaves a lot to be desired. The kids are alright now - look at how bright and self-aware so many are! - but they won’t be as the climate crisis worsens and they are left to pick up the pieces when they become adults.

That’s why I was thrilled to be invited to speak with the Grade 3 classes at her school last week to talk about the climate crisis! My daughter had told the teacher that I am “a climate activist and know a lot about the environment,” and so her teacher, with the principal’s blessing, invited me to speak. With a proud little girl sitting beside me, I spoke openly and frankly about what global warming is and what needs to change. I empowered the kids to not only take individual actions (there were a lot of ideas from the kids about planting trees, and about reducing plastic waste), but to write to their elected officials. Kids have a powerful voice that collectively can demand change. The teacher is now planning a letter-writing campaign (watch out, Prime Minister Carney!).

I am grateful to the teachers and principal who recognized the need for the kids to learn more about the climate crisis (as well as the related problem of plastic pollution, the topic of my essay below) than the current curriculum provides. I have been asked if I’ll return next year, to which I gave an enthusiastic yes!

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For the Love of God, Stop Recycling Plastic

I’ve sprinkled scripture verses throughout this text for us to consider as we think about our call as people of faith to take discipleship action for the sake of the Earth community. As you read this essay, I invite you to read the verses, reflect and pray.

“Oh, don’t burst my bubble! Let me continue to believe that I’m doing something good.” This is what someone said to me when I told them there was no point in continuing to put plastic in the recycling bin.

A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing personal opinion. (Prov. 18:2)

We know that feeling, don’t we? Most of us want to do the right thing with our waste. We’ve been taught for decades about the 3 R’s – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. To whatever extent we try to reduce what we buy or consume, reuse what we can, the greatest focus has been on that third R, recycle. While the slogan “reduce, reuse, recycle” was sparked on the first Earth Day in 1970 to encourage environmental action, it has been picked up by government and industry as a marketing slogan that has turned the emphasis primarily to recycling. It’s okay to consume! It’s okay to buy what you want! As long as you recycle your waste, everything is fine!

Recycling has become the mantra everywhere: in our homes, schools, and churches.

Except that everything is not fine. Recycling has long been meant to be the last resort on the list. And while metal and paper recycling can be useful (albeit not without their own problems), plastic recycling is a marketing scam. The plastics industry has always known how difficult, expensive, and labour-intensive it is to recycle plastic. Plastics have to be rigorously sorted out among their different types (that’s the number inside the recycling symbol on the bottom of the container). Yet there are “thousands of chemically distinct varieties of plastic [that] cannot be recycled together.”¹ It uses a ton of energy, is extremely expensive, and wildly inefficient. Plastics degrade each time they are used, meaning that most plastics can only be recycled into something new once or twice. The idea that plastics can perpetually be transformed into new items is a lie. While some plastics can be recycled, many cannot, and in any case, “it is much cheaper to produce new plastic than it is to sort plastics into their different types, purify them, melt them down, and reshape them.”²

“Canadians produce 3.25 million tonnes of plastic waste each year. Less than 10 per cent of the plastic we toss out is diverted from landfills, and not all of what is diverted is recycled.”³

The plastics industry has been lying to us.

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