September 27th marked national crush a can day which serves to help raise awareness of recycling and recycling practices around the country. The practice of recycling has been around for ages- converting natural materials into something new or reusing old materials to make something else. Early records of recycling practices date back to Pluto in 4 BC. During this time when resources were scarce, archaeological studies of ancient waste dumps show less household waste (such as ash, broken tools, and pottery), implying that more waste was recycled in place of new material. Since this time, the practice of recycling has been seen and utilized. In pre-industrial times, there is evidence of scrap bronze and other metals being collected in Europe and melted down for continuous reuse. The rise of industrialization around the 19th century pushed for the demand of affordable materials. By the time of World War I, there were thousands of peddlers roaming around cities in the US taking advantage of markets forced to recycle post-consumer materials into the production of industrial goods.
However, the modern process of recycling has only been around for a few decades. This process helped to decrease energy usage after World War II. However, in late 2017 and early 2018 changes in the recycling market led to a recycling crisis. China introduced a new policy focused on imported materials for recycling which set new standards giving them permission to deny and ban materials for being too hazardous or dirty. This caused a huge disruption and shift within the global recycling market causing prices of certain materials to decrease. At the same time countries were accepting more materials with no proper way to dispose of them so these countries shipped their waste to third-world countries that had fewer environmental regulations in place (which has been a practice that pre-dated this crisis). The increase in waste materials put pressure on these third-world countries because they did not have a proper way of disposing of these waste products. This often led to an abundance of waste leading to an increase in health-related issues due to poor waste management.
Not all is in vain. Although some current recycling practices may not be focused on reducing waste, there are ways to improve waste management and decrease waste production. First, make sure you understand the varying recycling practices and management that are in place around your county by investigating what can be recycled and how to do it properly. Secondly, try analyzing the ways you can reduce your waste by reducing one thing at a time. Finally, be aware of the things you are buying and not getting pulled into “green marketing”. This idea is something that companies use to portray the fact that they are eco-friendly when in fact they are not. This can be done by using cute pictures of nature, fancy awards or certificates on their packaging, or using green or “natural” colors in the marketing or the actual product they sell. These ideas all promote the idea of the company being environmentally friendly when that may not be the case.
Sources Used:
- Black Dog Publishing (2006). Recycle : a source book. London, UK: Black Dog Publishing. ISBN 978-1-904772-36-1.
- ^ Wood, J.R. (2022). “Approaches to interrogate the erased histories of recycled archaeological objects”. Archaeometry. 64: 187–205. doi:10.1111/arcm.12756.
- “The truth about recycling”. The Economist. 7 June 2007.
- Carl A. Zimring (2005). Cash for Your Trash: Scrap Recycling in America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-4694-0.
- ^ Hook, Leslie; Reed, John (24 October 2018). “Why the world’s recycling system stopped working”. Financial Times. Archived from the original on 25 October 2018. Retrieved 25 October 2018.