Recycling

Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Recycling Is Easy & Worthwhile

Quite a catchy little phrase and quite a good one too. On the route to reclaiming a safe climate, recycling is a useful tool that can be implemented quickly although in the longer term the solution may well be to change we think about making things. Our current model of technology uses a ‘cradle to grave’ mentality. That is, we use brute force to extract materials and reform or shape them into something else, which is then used and thrown away.

Recycling is an incrementally better use of materials in that in virtually ever case, less energy is need to recycle a material than make new but it still continues with the extract/ process/ throw away cycle that is, ultimately, unsustainable (if the whole world used raw materials at the rate of the average US consumer, we would need 5 planets to provide the raw materials; Europeans are a little more restrained but still would need 3).

There is an emerging design movement called ‘Cradle to Cradle’ and another called ‘regenerative’ that seeks to bring human technology systems into line with natural ones. That is, one where what is waste to one part is food for another and we seek to live with the planet rather than on it.

Britain currently has a long way to go to improve upon recycling rates, as the following graphic shows.

Infographic by Recycle - Don't bin it, recycle it