It's time to trash recycling

传统的回收是现代绿化的最大例子。

Recycling is championed as the strategy to enable a cleaner, healthier world by those businesses that have profited the most from the extractive, take-make-waste economy. In reality, it is merely a cover to continue business as usual. Corporations espouse the efficacy of recycling via hollow "responsibility commitments" in order to avoid examination of the broader negative consequences that their products and business models have wrought.

不过，回收对一件事是有益的 - 它有助于我们避免消费猖and的责任。

我们要解决什么问题？

Now is the time to challenge our core assumptions of the global waste management and recycling industry. After nearly 50 years of existence, recycling has proven to be an utter failure at staving off environmental and social catastrophe. It neither helps cool a warming planet nor averts ecosystem destruction and biodiversity loss.

This house of cards is beginning to tumble. In the past two years, several end markets for materials thought to be readily recyclable — plastics, glass, cardboard even low-quality aluminum — have evaporated.中国最近禁止外国废物进口places the unsustainability of our material management markets front and center. Other countries have followed China’s lead: Malaysia and the Philippines shipped thousands of tons of waste back to the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, shattering any illusion of the useful blue bin.

经过将近50年的存在，回收已被证明是避免环境和社会灾难的完全失败。

作为a result, many cities do not know what to do with the waste their citizens generate. U.S. municipalities have paused or scrapped their recycling programs in favor of indefinite storage, landfilling and burning.

为什么会发生这种情况？简而言之，全球回收市场依赖于积极而卑鄙的营销，剥削性劳动力实践和全球能源价格，以保持竞争力。如果有过度简化的风险，如果与回收材料相比，从维珍材料中生产商品更有利可图，回收利用将无法正常工作。作为斯蒂夫·威尔逊from the Story of Stuff put it: "…if you want to stop plastic going into the ocean in Indonesia, you need to ban fracking in the Ohio River Valley." The low price of petroleum, coupled with stricter international material management policies, means that ineffective recycling markets are here to stay unless systemic change occurs.

隐藏成本

回收不仅是完全无效的，还直接有助于全球健康降解并关联societal injustices.

在进行回收利用的地方，材料和产品的聚集，分离和重建主要是在中国和东南亚的低成本劳动力进行的。这个劳动力始终暴露于危险的工作条件andtoxic chemicals最少的薪水。为全球废物和回收系统提供动力的剥削性劳动力系统的不公正现象很少（如果有的话）纳入方程式。结果是我们当前的材料管理系统的真正成本被隐藏了。

即使在美国，回收劳动力条件也是惨淡的。在我检查美国物质恢复设施（MRF）的时间里，我几乎受到了一个不当锁定的机械，称为A下跌式打包机。当我站在一个未标记的爆炸区域时，机器的巨大金属门被大象的动力动力打开。幸运的是，正当1,000磅的金属开始摇摆时，我向后退了半步，最终只会感觉到脸上的风。我很幸运能够毫发无损地走开，并有幸不再检查这种设施以谋生。

并非每个人都有选择退出的能力。全球最高的废物管理公司有目的地将这些环境和社会风险从资产负债表中转移到无法负担不起的人，这是一种让人联想起食品品牌拒绝对提供包装业务的工厂农场负责的实践。回收行业的基金会建立在不透明的，不平等的劳动力系统上，该系统始终将全球劳动力及其社区暴露于危险和有毒状况。仅此一项就应该质疑其功效。

Distracted

Perhaps most important, recycling has become a distraction during a time in desperate need of collective urgency and focus. It continues to perpetuate the façade that society can consume with abandon and without consequence. TheIPCC估计我们有10到30年to act if we are to stave off the worst scenarios of global climate change and biodiversity loss. In this all-hands-on-deck moment, recycling initiatives continue to siphon a disproportionate amount of public goodwill, entrepreneurial focus and investment dollars away from meaningful solutions.

We need to implement strategies and invest in existing technologies that can help solve the root causes of climate change and pollution. These solutions fit into two buckets: circular design and green chemistry.

圆形设计

Let’s not mince words — we have a consumption problem. We must dramatically reduce the number of materials and products we consume through design and education and rid ourselves of our reliance on the blue bin. Products should be designed for longevity, advanced disassembly and reuse rather than obsolescence. Complementary policies need to protect a consumers’ right to repair while enacting attainable extended producer responsibility.

作为a society, we need to untether happiness from the act of purchasing goods and embrace business models that promote higher resource use, reuse and true repurposing. Product manufacturers can take inspiration from the natural world to create products designed to optimize for human happiness and environmental health using resources such asIDEO的圆形设计指南andMBDC的摇篮到摇篮协议。Several organizations are putting these ideas into practice includingMetabolic，，，，Fashion for Goodandref。Technologies such as阿拉格洛，，，，Vessel，，，，Yerdle，，，，杜鲁门的andLoopcan help consumers participate in this journey as well.

绿色化学

回收材料本质上是有毒的，这意味着我们只是给危险物质毒害了另一个毒害环境和身体的机会。我们必须努力使用非危害化学品和恢复性制造工艺从更安全的材料中生产产品。

“生物经济”旨在利用在自然界中很容易发现的化学物质和材料，改善发生生产的生态系统健康，并消除有毒污染物，而不管如何在使用结束时如何管理材料和产品。组织等组织GC3，，，，本土，，，，安全的and仿生学院正在领导过渡。

浪费时间

不幸的是，公司责任策略继续以传统的回收计划和其他几乎没有其他作用来控制。加倍回收利用而不是投资上述策略的风险较小。

这Alliance to End Plastic Waste,an NGO created by the major petrochemical manufacturers in 2018, is an example of how organizations are muddying the waters.除了针对根源因果关系的解决方案以外，组织将致力于其他任何事情。他们同时有希望的海滩清理，而其主要成员（包括壳，埃克森美孚和萨比克）宣布计划建造新的数十亿美元的聚乙烯和石化植物，这些植物生产廉价的，有毒的产品，这些产品在同一海滩上洗净。

这organizations that profit from exploitative recycling business models have a massive economic conflict of interest in shifting toward a fundamentally different system that promotes circular design and green chemistry. Their shareholders will not allow it, so they’ll continue investing in peddling the lie that is modern day recycling.

不幸的是，我们已经用完了像往常一样娱乐业务的时间。如果我们以我们受污染的生态系统需求的紧迫性注入讨论，那么很明显，从无效和剥削性系统中挤出效率的回收效率是完全荒谬的。

借钱Ellen MacArthur，，，，one of the most prominent voices in the circular economy: "We’re not going to recycle our way out of this."

让我们停止像这样。