Is Recycling Really Good for the Environment? Pros and Cons Explained

Introduction

Did you know that although we are asked to recycle a great deal of our waste these days that recycling is not actually the best environmental option for our waste? Recycling is actually a sort of ‘middle level’ option that is certainly much better than waste ending up in a landfill or having the energy recovered in an incinerator but not as good as waste not being created in the first place, its amounts reduced or waste items being reused.

The Environmental Impact of Recycling

When you think about recycling it still requires resources to be used such as energy, water and waste produced. These come from activities involved in recycling such as the collection of the waste, its processing into the same or a new type of product and disposing of that product when it has been used. 

I suppose the benefits of recycling are that we do not have to keep going back to nature and extracting or growing, processing and transporting materials that make up a product. Essentially, we are cutting out a fair chunk of the lifecycle that often has some significant environmental impacts. Recycling is even better if we can keep the product made from recycled materials in a circular loop such that when products made from recycled materials come to the end of their lives they get recycled and so on and so on in an almost infinite loop. If we kept going back to nature every time, we made a product and that product is not recycled at the end of its life then the environmental impacts are hugely magnified. 

Is Recycling Better Than Landfill?

However, on the flip side of the coin. If we did not recycle the waste that we do at the moment then this would lead to much more waste ending up in landfill. Treating waste in landfill is the least desirable environmental option.

For a start off landfill sites take up large areas of land. They also create many different types of environmental issues that must be managed such as the creation of large amounts of toxic liquid from the biological breakdown (biodegradation) of the waste in the ground, often known as leachate, this must be treated. The biodegradation of the waste also leads to the formation of landfill gas which consists of many substances, most notably hydrogen sulphide, which has an unpleasant odour and methane which is flammable, explosive and significantly contributes to climate change. We should also not forget that the collection, transport and disposal of waste to landfill  has a very high carbon footprint as greenhouse gases are emitted when these activities are being undertaken. 

In comparison to recycling then we have impacts all the way along the lifecycle of a product disposed of to landfill that are not present when waste is recycled. It is also essentially the end of the line for resources, all those used items in a landfill will stay there and slowly get broken down over time, rather than reused like we have with recycling. 

Final Note

Generally, then I would say that recycling is a fairly good technique from an environmental point of view. Although it does have its negative environmental impacts such as a poor use of resources and the creation of pollutants, it is certainly better than sending waste to landfill and all the resultant impacts associated with this. However, to me it should be thought of as a ‘stopgap’ if society is really going to get to the root of dealing with the ever growing amount of waste that we create that needs to be prevented, reduced and reused rather than being created and then recycled.

John Binns BSc (Hons) MSc MIEMA is an experienced environmental tutor and consultant.