Confessions of a Wishcycler

March 2020

I’m a Recycler. I take it seriously. Just ask my family about my PLASTIC BAGS DO NOT GO INTO THE RECYCLING! rages. I mean, it’s not that hard. I love those people, but really….

I have to confess that I like how recycling makes me feel—like all that separating and rinsing is making some small, positive (but important!) difference. Still, I know, deep down, that recycling more is not an answer to the climate crisis. So I filled my reusable mug with fair trade coffee, added a splash of dairy-free creamer, and set off on a journey in search of answers. Well, more like I sat down on my couch, in my pajamas, and hopped on Highway Google. Because, you know, all epic journeys start from the couch. 

What I found was not only sobering but shocking: I am a wishcycler. Turns out, my municipality doesn’t recycle all the little caps and the black plastic containers and disposable forks I had been mistakenly, yet righteously, wishcycling for years. Oh, the shame! 

So I researched recycling in hopes of transforming that information into something useful. Here’s what I found: 80-90% of earth’s plastics are not recycled. And for every pound of plastic that is recycled, more than a pound of recycling is incinerated, releasing a fresh batch of toxins into the atmosphere (after the initial release upon manufacture). Kind of like how my dog vomits and then reingests what she just spewed out. Prior to China’s 2018 ban on most recycling imports, 40-50% of the “dirty” plastics we shipped to China ended up in Recycling Villages where the poorest of the poor eke out a living sorting through our contaminated recycling, tossing the non-saleable recycling into rivers which flow into the ocean. So that plastic clamshell of organic strawberries that I recycled years ago now resides in tiny pieces in the bellies of whales and dolphins and sea turtles. I am so sorry, sea creatures. I had no idea. 

The only solution to the problem of consumption is to consume less. It’s simple math that my first grader, Jed, easily understands and more or less accepts: two cookies are the limit. He’d like to have six cookies and skip dinner, but he just can’t. We need to cut down on the cookies (reduce), eat up our leftovers (reuse) and then feed any waste to the dog or compost it. (recycling). My favorite cookies come in glass bottles with flavors like chardonnay and merlot. But the second, third and fourth cookies in my life are cans and bottles of sparkling water. As much as I love  sparkling water, for the sake of baby penguins, I can live without it. Or I can get a soda stream. 

We are told that the wise and all-knowing Free Market Forces will bring about the technologies that will save our sorry, lazy, overconsuming asses in the nick of time. I may be a wishcycler, but I’m not delusional and I’m definitely not a Free Marketeer. But, I do have buying power. More importantly, I have not-buying power. We all do. We need to save ourselves from ourselves. We need to stop wishcycling our way to unsustainability. We are addicted to consumption and, like an alcoholic suffering from liver cirrhosis, the only way to save ourselves is to STOP INGESTING POISON. We are the authors, not the characters, of this story and it’s time to write a new ending filled with plastic-free baby otters, polar ice caps that remain frozen and cattle-free rain forests.