Growing up, I was bombarded with the 3 Rs - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Even now, Jack Johnson’s little jingle comes to mind as I say those words. There are literally hundreds of songs for kids about the 3 Rs.

A majority of Americans believe recycling is one of the most effective ways they can fight climate change.

Sadly much of what we try to recycle ends up in the landfill or can’t be recycled.

Myth #1: It’s Easy to Recycle

So, the 3 or 4 Rs sound easy, right? No, it’s confusing as heck.

Every single city in the U.S. has exactly different rules about what gets recycled and whether it needs to be rinsed.

Even worse, about a quarter of Americans lack access to any recycling services.  

For years, people were told pizza boxes were too greasy to be recycled, but now many recycling centers accept them.

But contamination is one of the biggest reasons waste doesn’t get recycled - for example when plastic gets mixed in with paper and clogs the machines.

Again - mixed messages.

Recycling experts ask people to do a “little bit of homework”. With each person producing 5 pounds of trash each day or 1,825 pounds a year, most people don’t have time to keep up with the rules.

The Problem with Plastics

Only around 5 percent of plastic waste in the United States gets shredded or melted down so that it can be used again. The plastics that do happen to get sorted and processed can only be “downcycled,” since melting them degrades their quality.

Multi-material plastic packaging is among the most difficult types of waste to recycle.

Recycled plastic, it turns out, is more toxic than virgin plastic, liable to leach dangerous chemicals, so it can’t safely be turned into food-grade packaging. It’s also more expensive to produce.

Because of this, there is virtually no market for recycled plastics beyond those marked with 1s and 2s; the rest are incinerated or sent to landfills.

When China banned the import of most plastics in 2018, it revealed problems that had long remained hidden.

The United States had been shipping 70 percent of its plastic waste to China — 1.2 billion pounds in 2017 alone. Estimates show we will produce 26 billion tons of plastic waste by 2050.

Glass, Metal, and Paper are Better

Even for a recycling standby like glass, less than a third gets broken down into fragments for new jars and bottles. 28 billion glass bottles and jars go to landfill each year.

Paper and metal are different.

Paper is relatively easy to process, with more than two-thirds making its way into new products in the U.S. Though sadly, nearly 1 billion trees worth of paper is thrown away each year.

For metals, it is estimated that around 75% of all the aluminum ever produced is still in use today. Whew, some good news! Yet still Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild the US commercial air fleet every 3 months.

We do a great job recycling steel, but are just figuring out how to recycle metals used in electric vehicle batteries. In fact, steel cans are the most recycled packaging product in the world.

Myth #2: Recycling Should be the Focus of the 3Rs

Until recently most of the consumer focus has been on the recycling aspect. But the most effective components are reduce and reuse.

As a former Sustainability Officer at a government agency we used the 4 Rs principles - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rot. Yes, yuck but also needed. Others say the fourth R should be Rethink or Repurpose.

At the end of the day, reducing the amount of waste generated is the most effective way to reduce the environmental impact of waste. This is because when waste is generated, it requires resources to collect, transport, and dispose of it.

Both consumers and companies can reduce. The less waste products we produce, the better. When we focus on how much waste we create—and try to cut back—we have the potential to cause other critical reductions in energy use and emissions.

Reuse includes reusing items like paper, cardboard boxes, and packaging materials for storage or shipping. Office equipment, furniture, and electronics can also be refurbished or donated instead of being thrown away.

We wrote about the many ways to repurpose your old clothes.

Learning to reuse can help you save money. Instead of buying (or making) something new after using an item one time, you can reuse it before you replace it.

A new focus is on Rot - or reducing food waste from entering landfills. Food waste is a growing issue around the world, and while waste occurs at every stage of the process (from production to consumption), consumers generate the most waste by far. Currently 80 billion pounds of food is thrown away in the US each year. About 94% of the food we throw away ends up in landfills where it rots and releases methane and CO2.

Creative folks are now trying to make a fourth R, but there’s no consistency yet. You can even create your own, or perhaps we just keep adding them to create a spiderweb instead of a triangle.

Circularise has come up with an even more comprehensive approach to reducing waste. The best options are at the top and as you can see recycling is way at the bottom because as we said it’s so confusing and inefficient!

Myth #3: It’s All Our Fault

In a recent survey of consumers by Barnett, a recent PhD grad from University of Virginia, many consumers believe the waste issue can be dealt with in the product design phase. This makes sense given that the way products are designed has a big effect on whether they can be composted or recycled. For example, that coffee cup at Starbucks might have plastic to protect your hands from heat — a design feature that makes it hard to compost or recycle.

The challenge is that companies have been using advertising and messaging to manipulate consumer opinion for decades, so this will likely take time to change. Recent greenwashing laws might be able to make a difference though.

How to Make a Difference in Reducing Waste

The best answer is always to reduce - purchase less.

My love language is quality time - that means I enjoy activities and spending time with someone over gifts. So start giving people the experience of their lives and not a pile of crap to trash or recycle.

Many of us are familiar with Marie Kondo’s approach to getting rid of items that do not bring joy - but to be honest, this misses the point by focusing on getting rid of items rather than seeing if an item brings you joy before getting it!

I could give you a laundry list here, but that’s not helpful. You need to find your pathway of what is possible for you. Think about how you can stop buying new items that are not necessary using strategies such as creating a shopping list and sticking to it or waiting a week before purchasing.

Consider how you can move on the spectrum so you start with rethinking and reducing. That’s the ultimate way to reduce waste and impact on the environment.