Certain resources are non-renewable and some renew very slowly. Other materials are not naturally occurring or may be rare. Some materials are damaging to the environment or health if disposed of as waste. Substances needed regularly must be used again and again over time. The cycles which bring the needed materials back for reuse must either occur naturally, like the cycles of water and carbon, or they must be maintained through mindful recycling programs.
All countries produce large quantities of agricultural and industrial wastes as well as growing quantities of consumer wastes, none of which are adequately utilized. Common recyclable materials include engine and lubricating oils, plastics, paper, clothes and rags and organic rubbish for use as compost. Any precious, expensive, toxic and hazardous materials are also natural candidates for recycling.
For recycling to offer true environmental benefits, whatever the material involved, a number of factors must be taken into account. Most broadly, the resources used to collect, sort and recycle must be less than those used to produce virgin material. In practice this means (1) post-use waste must be easily collected and sorted; (2) the recycling process itself does not required excessive use of resources to produce recyclate.
Recycling replaces virgin materials in the manufacturing process. For example, recycling aluminium is 95% more efficient than using virgin aluminium, recycling plastic is 85% more efficient, paper 50%, and glass 40%. But the recycling process still consumes energy (and other resources), and costs money. And for many materials, particularly plastic and to some extent paper, recycling is also a downgrading process. These materials can only be recycled a certain number of times before they degrade beyond all use, and generally then end up in landfill. At this point, they can’t be recovered for waste to energy.
In the last decade, recycling rates of many materials have increased substantially in developed countries. Recycling in many developing countries depends foremost on collection by many scavengers along city streets and at dumps. Thus, for example, whilst less than one percent of officially collected municipal solid waste (MCW) in Brazil is recycled, its industry association figures show that 30% of apparent paper consumption is recycled, 49% of its aluminium cans, 20% of glass containers and 20% of plastic soft drink bottles.
Examples of successful recycling programs include:
San Francisco, California: San Francisco is widely recognized as one of the most successful recycling programs in the US, diverting up to 80% of its waste from landfill. The city implemented a comprehensive recycling program that includes curbside collection of recyclables and organics, mandatory composting, and stringent enforcement of recycling regulations.
Sweden: Sweden's recycling program is one of the most successful in the world, with over 99% of household waste being recycled or used for energy recovery. The country has implemented a "waste-to-energy" system that uses incineration to convert waste into energy, which is then used to power homes and businesses.
South Korea: South Korea's recycling program has achieved a recycling rate of over 60%, making it one of the most successful in Asia. The country has implemented a comprehensive waste management system that includes curbside collection of recyclables, mandatory recycling for certain materials, and strict penalties for non-compliance.
Germany: Germany has one of the most successful recycling programs in Europe, with a recycling rate of over 60%. The country has implemented a comprehensive system that includes mandatory recycling for certain materials, deposit systems for bottles and cans, and strict regulations on waste disposal.
Japan: Japan has implemented a comprehensive waste management system that includes strict separation of waste, mandatory recycling, and penalties for non-compliance. The country has achieved a recycling rate of over 70%, making it one of the most successful recycling programs in the world.
Developing countries cannot continue to depend infinitely on many of the raw materials that are currently used. Products from the petrochemical industry used as adhesives and binders in the production of increasing numbers of building materials, for example, are becoming too expensive to be used for low-cost construction in many areas. While these limitations affect developed and developing countries equally, ways have not yet been found to utilize fully the enormous amounts of waste produced as substitutes for the expensive imports.
Recycling is more expensive for communities than it needs to be, partly because traditional recycling tries to force materials into more lifetimes than they were designed for – a complicated and messy conversion, and one that itself expends energy and resources. Very few objects of modern consumption were designed with recycling in mind. If the process is truly to save money and materials, products must be designed from the very beginning to be recycled or even "upcycled" – a term we use to describe the return to industrial systems of materials with improved, rather than degraded, quality (William McDonough).
The cost of recycling is going up, in part because of labour costs, but the value of recyclables goes up and down.
Recycling is just another form of materialism. It simply represents an obsession with excretion as opposed to consumption.
Recycling does not always make environmental sense and in developing European packaging waste legislation the European Parliament recognized that some packs are not recyclable if environmental gain is the end goal.
There are many reasons why compulsory recycling is likely to be bad for the environment and for the economy. For example, the extra pollution, congestion and risk created by separate vehicles which collect and deliver sorted domestic waste must outweigh any supposed advantage of recycling. These extra vehicles consumed other resources: clean air, silence and safe roads. If it requires compulsion or subsidy, recycling is not just economically wrong, it is environmentally wrong too because it diverts resources away from their most efficient use.