Sorting vs. Prevention: The Battle for America’s Waste Management Future

The desire to impose complementarity between two processing methods is not the prerogative of ONGs. Government officials invited communication to be complementary between prevention and recycling: continue to promote the reduction of waste at a time when we are preparing to speaking out again on sorting and recycling, takes on its full meaning insofar as they are perfectly complementary aspects in waste management and which must therefore be carried out jointly in communication. But recent research invalidates this statement, as we will see soon.

This desire to impose complementarity between prevention and recycling is akin to denying scientific facts.

The prevention-recycling complementarity: a scientific denial

The EPA noted this in a publication in 2022: the messages encouraging recycling of the last 20 years could play a role in legitimizing waste and therefore send a counterproductive message, reducing the feeling of waste of a little or no purchase used by the possibility of material revaluation, thanks to sorting.

In a recent book focused on waste prevention, junk disposal specialists agreed with this observation. Having pushed for the deployment of sorting in the 1990s, they see the impasse in these terms: after a while we see that sorting is on the right track but that sorting can become a alibi for waste, that is to say “I can waste, it doesn’t matter since I sort and recycle”.

In addition, a research report financed by the EPA calls into question the complementarity of prevention and recycling: it is appropriate to question the compatibility of wanting to establish at the same time a social standard for sorting and for prevention. In fact, promoting sorting (and therefore trivializing waste production) can lead to a counterproductive effect on prevention and therefore waste reduction. This can be compared to a compensation effect. Another voice, an academic, completes this statement in his field: subsidizing recycling amounts to discouraging sobriety and prevention.

The use of the conditional for the study is not used in another American study. This 2016 research study demonstrated that positive emotions linked to sorting dominate negative emotions linked to throwing away and can increase material consumption. One interpretation of the authors is that the communication on sorting does not sufficiently emphasize the costs (financial, time, efforts) linked to sorting, which would allow priority to be given to reduction over recycling.

Sorting waste or not, that’s the question

The social standard for sorting for recycling has established itself everywhere, in the private and public sphere. Sorting containers have invaded our domestic sphere and also public spaces. Containers for sorting are everywhere, bags, bins, voluntary drop-off point, dumpsters. They are expected to increase with the out-of-home sorting obligation by 2025. This creates a public standard of disposability before our eyes. We can say without too much risk of being mistaken that the salience of prevention in the public space is less, it perhaps concerns more of the private sphere. Shared composters and book/donation boxes can qualify this analysis.

The place of sorting for recycling: a matter of balance

Denigrating recycling has an interest in moving the lines and showing its limits, on the other hand it cannot serve as an excuse for not sorting anything and directing ever more tonnage towards incineration or landfilling, management methods the worst for the environment and public finances. Recycling should now leave room for waste prevention if we follow the logic of the hierarchy of waste treatment methods. He is currently in a position of abuse of power.

During a recent webinar, a PhD student in cognitive sciences, declared in response to a issue as follows: the question of representations associated with recycling, for example, proves decisive, to prevent it from being perceived as a panacea and therefore impacts the problem of volume, or that it is considered totally ineffective. It’s all about balance, don’t throw everything away and don’t present sorting for recycling as the solution to everything.

However, the recent actions of the government have been marked by a policy almost exclusively oriented towards recycling, with prevention still having difficulty finding its way into budgets. The future could implement a shift in favor of the first method of waste treatment because prevention cannot be imposed if sorting for recycling does not make more room for it.

Written by scienceguy