Three reasons why we’re not talking about recycling in 2024

2024 marks the start of our tenth year of living without a rubbish bin. We’re already well into our seventh year of The Rubbish Trip, where we continue to share about and advocate on zero waste issues. Along with the deteriorating situation globally (for both people and planet), this milestone has led us to reflect on what we want to prioritise, going forward, in our zero waste mahi.

We’ve decided that for 2024 (and probably beyond…) we won’t be spending any more time or energy on the topic of RECYCLING. In practice, this means that we will:

• Remove the sections on recycling from our flagship presentation and all other workshops.
• Decline (politely!) to respond to any in-person or online queries from members of the public about recycling.
• Turn down all work (voluntary or paid) that is substantially focused on recycling (as well as any council or government requests to share recycling-centred information or policy announcements or initiatives).
• Pass on all media requests for comment on recycling-related news stories (we’ve already turned down three requests from major news outlets this year…).
• Amplify the voices of others working on social justice critiques of the recycling system (e.g. waste colonialism, health and safety concerns for workers, etc.), rather than doing this ourselves.

Given waste is a complex nexus of many intersecting issues, there will be occasions where we do mention or consider recycling as part of a wider story. So, we’re not talking about instituting a total cancellation of recycling in all our comms and activities, we’re talking about a very conscious and intentional de-centring of recycling.

What we won’t be changing is our approach to recycling in our personal lives. Of course, we will continue to recycle any items we find ourselves with for which recycling is the only option (with some exceptions that we won’t go into here…). Recycling is, and always has been, on the zero waste hierarchy, and we use this hierarchy to guide all our decisions around waste minimisation and management. For that very reason, recycling has never been a very important part of our zero waste lifestyle (seeing as it’s not around the top layers of the zero waste hierarchy). Our focus has always been on the principles and strategies of refusing/rethinking, reducing and reusing.

The Zero Waste International Alliance Zero Waste Hierarchy of Highest and Best Use 8.0

Why won’t we be talking about recycling in 2024?

We’ve set this professional intention for three main reasons:

1. Of all the zero waste strategies, recycling has more than enough spokespeople and already receives disproportionate levels of representation – we don’t need to add to the noise

In New Zealand, there was once a time (until not that long ago, following European colonisation) when virtually all waste was dumped in landfill or burned in fireplaces and backyards. Communities had to fight to bring recognition to recycling and to get recycling services up and running in their local areas.

Fast forward to today and the situation has changed dramatically – we’d go as far to say that recycling is mainstream now. Both the concept of, and need for, recycling is well-accepted. Recycling has successfully won the hearts and minds of the public at a scale not really seen for almost any other sustainability initiative. Most people understand and accept that recycling is the right thing to do and, mostly, even non-eco-minded people recycle.

There’s also no shortage of people exploring, demystifying, promoting and funding recycling. Recycling initiatives and the associated infrastructure are pushed by corporates and subsidised by the government. Councils pour millions of dollars into recycling programmes. Innumerable researchers and consultants are hired to study and spit out recycling rates, recycling methodologies, and policies to advance recycling. Media outlets chase recycling stories ad nauseum, and recycling is regularly a hot topic on public forums and community Facebook pages (even if it’s just to complain about someone’s recycling bin not being collected or the local council not providing a recycling collection service for some obscure product).

Sure, the term “recycling” is bandied about in a way that doesn’t always convey deep knowledge nor understanding. Increasingly, the term is used as an umbrella that covers a variety of activities without a great deal of distinguishing nuance (from downcycling multi-material products that were never designed for recycling, e.g. alt-milk cartons, through to single material closed-loop systems for the OG recyclable products, like glass bottles). Some of these activities are more environmentally helpful than others, and the reasons for this do still need constant explaining by somebody. We also recognise the ongoing need to advocate for retaining and establishing quality, community-owned and community-led recycling that is properly paid for by those that put the products on the market in the first place. This type of recycling is often a vehicle for opening up more activity up the waste hierarchy (see, for example, the Zero Waste Network Zero Waste Hubs model), and it continues to be under-represented in the general recycling noise. So, we’re definitely not denying that the debate about how, why and whether we should recycle remains really important.

However, we don’t think that recycling is so starved of people “in its corner” that it needs us to endlessly advocate or demystify it. Recycling will carry on just fine without us and without our platform. More than enough knowledgeable people exist out there who can share expert information about recycling with the media and the public, and who can advocate for real recycling and counteract cynical greenwashing.

On a practical level, people also don’t need us to help them work out ‘what I can recycle where’ or tell them ‘where our recycling really goes’; there are better, more appropriate resources for determining this. For example, our go-to option when we want to work this stuff out for ourselves is to check local council websites and/or visit the local environment hub or resource recovery centre and have a chat with the very informed people that work there.

2. Recycling’s disproportionate airtime creates the impression that recycling is a more important zero waste and climate/sustainability action than it actually is

Photo credit: Tonia Kraakman

We’re not anti-recycling. As we’ve said already, recycling is a zero waste strategy with a spot on the zero waste hierarchy. However, because it’s not at the top of the hierarchy, ipso facto, it’s not the most important or impactful thing we could be doing to reduce waste. Nor are zero waste and recycling synonyms! Yet, so often we see the two ideas conflated. For example, the sheer amount of times people have referred to us as the “recycling people” who are here to “do the talk about recycling”.

Because we hear about recycling all the time, at the expense of other practices like refusing, rethinking, reducing and reusing (which, to be honest, probably receive so much less attention precisely because they are more environmentally impactful as they more directly threaten the wasteful, linear, consumerist status quo), too many people incorrectly believe not only that recycling is one of the best ways to reduce waste, but that it’s also one of the best way to reduce emissions (ARGHHH)! So powerful is this mythology that in the first leaders’ debate of the 2023 election campaign, BOTH Labour Party leader, Chris Hipkins, and National Party leader, Christopher Luxon, name-dropped recycling as the number one personal action they take to protect the environment (along with owning an EV – cringe).

We no longer want to play a role in this circus, amplifying the relevance or importance of recycling beyond its due. We don’t want to lend recycling our trusted platform (when it has only ever been a very small component of our own zero waste experience), and thereby inadvertently imply that recycling is somehow a revolutionary act (rather than an absolute bare minimum – on par with not littering, which we also aren’t going to waste time talking about). To be clear, we aren’t throwing any shade on the NGOs, community groups and educators who run high quality recycling comms and activities. To the contrary, we have loads of respect for them and the work they do to tirelessly counteract and cut through endless confusion, spin and greenwash. We’ve learned so much from these people, and many of them are also the first to say that recycling isn’t the main answer to our waste problems. Unlike us, these people hold real expertise in recycling through years (if not decades) of working on the ground and at the grassroots on recycling, and they’re the right people to be talking about it.

Meanwhile, by publically distancing ourselves from recycling, while still very loudly working full-time on zero waste, we hope to send a strong message that the world of zero waste is SO MUCH BIGGER than just recycling, which leads to our final motivation…

3. Not talking (or thinking) about recycling gives us a whole bunch more time and energy to spend on important, urgent waste-related topics that don’t get the attention they deserve

If you work in the world of waste, it’s very hard to avoid the gravitational pull to talk about or engage with topics focused on recycling. And, because recycling is quite complex and very fraught, talking and thinking about it really does suck up a lot of time and attention, which inevitably distracts and detracts from the types of topics that drew us to the zero waste lifestyle and advocacy in the first place.

Like… actions at the top of the waste hierarchy, living within planetary boundaries, fighting for environmental justice, and highlighting and unpacking the wider social-political-legal dimensions of waste (!)

By deleting recycling from our professional life in 2024, we have more time to redirect our finite time and energy towards topics like:

• The radical act of simply not consuming disposable stuff in the first place and reassessing what we ‘need’ in life
• Embracing the joy of composting and growing kai at a local scale – at home, in our neighbourhoods, with people we know – to encourage the growth of food and soil sovereignty and reduce everyone’s reliance on industrial food and growing practices that are not good for our bodies nor our planet.
• Working to extend the life of products through reuse and repair, and supporting the growth and success of functioning reuse systems for things like packaging.
• Encouraging both businesses and community groups/non-profits to adopt new, less resource-intensive models of making money and/or getting goods to people (e.g. sharing, reusing, maintaining etc.), and shouting from the rooftops about truly innovative ideas that challenge the capitalist death spiral the globe is currently locked into.
• Speaking out about product toxicity and chemical pollution, and the importance of efforts to restore health to critical life support systems, like the soil, water, air, rivers, sea, and so on.
• Raising awareness about exploitative practices across the production-consumption linear supply chain, from extraction through to disposal, by centring the voices of frontline and fenceline communities and workers.
• Pushing to rebalance priorities in law, policy, economics, and the interpretation of key constitutional documents in Aotearoa New Zealand, so that our social, legal and economic systems become more supportive of zero waste practices and businesses, more conducive of lives that are less reliant on corporations and therefore less consumerist and wasteful, and actively focused on holding polluters financially, morally and legally accountable for their pollution so that they stop polluting.
• Supporting constitutional reform in Aotearoa New Zealand along the lines of Matike Mai, standing alongside Tāngata Whenua in their advocacy for mana motuhake and tino rangatiratanga, and calling for #LandBack. Among other things, all of these kaupapa uphold the right of mana whenua to exercise unfettered kaitiakitanga over their lands and other taonga, which Papatūānuku so desperately needs.

TL;DR – Conclusion

It’s 2024. The world is on fire, inequity and injustice are running rampant. Unchecked corporate pollution continues to soar, while people and planet are dying. The situation is beyond urgent. We need collective liberation from entrenched systems of extraction and exploitation, including capitalism and colonialism. These are big, meaty issues and we just don’t have any more time to spend fussing about the minutiae of recycling. Yes, we will still recycle at home and at work, and you should too – don’t wilfully misinterpret the message in this blog post – but don’t expect us to talk about it anymore.