<story><title>Is it time to rethink recycling?</title><url>http://ensia.com/features/is-it-time-to-rethink-recycling/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>madaxe_again</author><text>Recycling sucks. You have to dismantle products and packaging, cut cardboard into little squares no more than 20cm X 20cm, sort glass bottles by colour, remove the labels, or else it won&amp;#x27;t be (expensively) collected. You can also go drop it off yourself, but you have to pay for the pleasure, and own or rent a vehicle.&lt;p&gt;Even after all of that, a majority of what is supposed to be recycled ends up being &amp;quot;recycled&amp;quot; into electricity, by an incinerator. That&amp;#x27;s the case in this neck of the woods, at any rate.&lt;p&gt;Recycling treats a symptom, not a disease. We allow the production of wasteful packaging, we accept planned obsolescence, and we dispose of things that could be yet used for a long time to come.&lt;p&gt;A better solution would be to impose the cost of disposal on manufacturers - this already happens to a degree with WEEE, but try actually getting a manufacturer to collect - it&amp;#x27;s made deliberately difficult as they&amp;#x27;d rather you just fly-tip and save them the expense - even though you paid for that service as part of your purchase.&lt;p&gt;Another better solution would be to pass goods on whole for re-use rather than recycling wherever possible, which has gained some traction through things like freecycle and eBay, but is still a minority case. This behaviour could be encouraged by governments, but is instead actively discouraged, as it hurts sales of new goods, and therefore tax revenues.&lt;p&gt;As per usual, we&amp;#x27;ll only change when forced to - by which point it&amp;#x27;ll be too late. People will use 300 year old toasters in the future, and weep for our wastefulnes.&lt;p&gt;I do what I can, buy very little new (all of my furniture is pre 1960), dumpster dive, pass things I no longer want or need on, but it&amp;#x27;s still not enough.</text></comment>
<story><title>Is it time to rethink recycling?</title><url>http://ensia.com/features/is-it-time-to-rethink-recycling/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ranko</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s a reason that &amp;quot;recycle&amp;quot; comes last in the &amp;quot;reduce, reuse, recycle&amp;quot; catchphrase. There&amp;#x27;s a frightening amount of food, for example, that could simply not be wasted at all.</text></comment>