“Why recycling is a waste of time.” It’s from the Federalist website, and author Bre Payton echoes sentiments Roy Cordato first shared in 1995.

The secret is out: recycling isn’t working, because it was never really supposed to.

The Washington Post reported that more recycling companies, including Waste Management, are turning away from recycling, as the enterprise has ‘become’ totally unprofitable. They place the blame on the (well-meaning) masses who acted like apes when they were given larger recycling bins. …

… While many are throwing shade at those big glue bins, the truth is, much of consumer recycling has been a waste of time all along. The article goes onto explain that glass probably shouldn’t have ever been recycled. It’s heavy and breaks easily, contaminating the rest of the materials in the pile. Most of it has no value, and often costs money to haul away. The stuff that is valuable is “trucked to landfills as daily cover to bury the smell and trap gases.”

So basically all the time my mom spent fishing glass bottles out of the garbage and washing them so they would be good enough for the recycling companies to reuse, she was actually just providing a covering to trap garbage odors into the ground.

Don’t get me wrong, not all recycling is bad. Manufacturers for years have been taking their scrap materials to get reused in exchange for cash. Typically, they sort it out by type, and will sometimes process it a bit themselves before delivering it to the recycling plant or arranging it to be picked up. Not only is this practice eco-friendly, as it cuts down on waste, but there is a clear economic incentive to continue doing so, for both parties involved. However, implementing a consumer recycling program en masse has caused serious problems, not to mention decreased its value.