The Current - Is recycling actually good for the environment?

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

A new state-of-the-art recycling centre in Montreal aims to make the process easier, and hopefully greener. We look at how effective recycling actually is — and whether it inadvertently leads consumers to create more waste.

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And if you don't think it will make a difference, we have the science to prove it does. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, it's Matt here. Thanks for listening to The Current wherever you're getting this podcast. Before we get to today's show, wonder if I might ask a favor of you if you could hit the follow button on whatever app you're using There is a lot of news that's out there these days We're trying to help you make sense of it all and give you a bit of a break from some of that news, too So if you already follow the program, thank you And if you have done that maybe you could leave us a rating or review as well

The whole point of this is to let more listeners find our show and perhaps find some of that information that's so important in these really tricky times. So thanks for all of that. Appreciate it. And on to today's show. It's a familiar sound, the recycling truck trundling down the street picking up blue bins of bottles, cans, plastic and paper. Recycling has never been a perfect system though. In Quebec, a new facility is promising to at least make it easier and ideally greener. Myra Hurd is a professor of environmental studies at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. Her research focuses on waste issues. Myra, hello.

Hi, Matt. How are you? Well, thanks. Walk us through this program in Quebec. I think most of us know what recycling is like. You put the things in the bin, the truck comes, takes it away, that's the end of that. How is this program in Quebec working? Well, it's a new initiative and the idea is that rather than the consumer, all of us in our household having to sort of really sort out and massively clean each of the things that we're putting in various bins at various times of the week. Basically we put everything in one container, they pick it up and the sorting of the various

materials will be done at this new sorting centre. So everything in one bin? Yeah, almost everything. Not aerosol cans, not polystyrene, not chip bags, but, but you know, pretty much everything. Yeah. What is the point of that? Aside from me not having to separate things and perhaps wash out the mayonnaise jar at length, what is the point of this? Well, it's really hoped that, that by, by sort of being, it takes the responsibility off the consumer,

you know, the household to kind of go through and diligently sort of figure out what should be in the recycling, which recycling bin, when, etc. Basically, the hope is that it will really increase the amount of materials that people are putting in to the container and that way it'll increase the amount of recycling that's being done. How does what's happening in Quebec compare with the rest of the country, partially in terms of this idea of the responsibility going on the producer rather than the consumer? It's a good question.

So basically, the Canadian government has set out to change the responsibility from taking it off the shoulders of municipalities to figure out recycling for each community, to putting it onto the manufacturers and producers of products. So across Canada, this extended producer responsibility initiative is being rolled out and different provinces are kind of reacting to it in somewhat different ways and so they're doing different programs and in Quebec the way they're doing it is to say okay well let's just put everything into a bin and we'll sort it at the centre. One of the things they're also doing is trying to

keep as much of the recycled material in Quebec as possible, right? I mean, what difference does that make if you're keeping things local? Yeah, well, it makes a big difference because there's a lot of details about recycling that people aren't necessarily aware of. And one of the big things

is that, you know, things are only recycled if there's a market for them. There has to be some kind of company that's willing to take this recycling and then it, you know, prices are negotiated and all of that. And the further away that we're transporting any kind of recycling product, like, and sometimes we're, you know, we're sending stuff to the United States, we're sending stuff out of province, that increases the carbon footprint and it increases the environmental footprint of the recycling, which means that the environmental gain of doing the recycling has to be minused from the environmental cost of transporting it and all of the environmental costs of that.

So the closer we can do the recycling, the better for the environment. So if the goal, to your point of recycling is to reduce our carbon footprint in this country, is it a wise idea to invest in new recycling programs? Yeah, that's a tricky question. So that ultimately what we want to do is we want to focus on reduction. The 100% environmental win is to reduce. It's not to recycle, it's not to refurbish these things, it's to reduce. But our system has been set up since the 1960s to really focus on disposal,

where we put things in landfills or we burn it, and recycling. And so we've got this very, very, very big infrastructure for disposal and recycling. What we need to be doing is moving away from disposal, away from recycling to reduction, reuse, refurbishment, repair. That's what we need to be doing, but it's like a big ship that we've got to kind of turn. So it's gonna take some time. We have been told for decades

that recycling is a good thing, that you're not throwing the stuff in the landfill, just standing up in the garbage bin, So it's going to take some time. We have been told for decades that recycling is a good thing, that you're not throwing the stuff in the landfill, just standing up in the garbage bin, that you, by putting it in that green bin or the green bag, you're doing something, right? You are actually taking a step by putting that out there. Does, I mean, it's a provocative question,

but it picks up on what you're saying. Does recycling work? Well, it works for composting. So the big recycling success story is in composting. When we compost organic material, all of our food scraps and that, and we make it, we recycle it into soil and agricultural feed, et cetera. Yes, that's an environmental wins.

Assuming that the place that we're, that is doing the composting isn't far away from, from the source, everything else. It's, it's not so clear. In fact, there's a lot of research actually that shows that if you take it, the real, the life cycle actually recycling is worse for the environment than landfill. How is that possible? Because surely, I mean, if I'm not throwing cardboard boxes into a landfill, that they are going into some sort of recycling facility, that's a better thing.

Yeah, it would seem so, but it's in the details. It's in the details of the recycling. So, you know, paper cardboard, it has to be transported to a place that's going to then, what it's going to do is it's going to use chemical processes to, you know, to make the cardboard and paper into this sort of sludge. It's going to use dyes to take all the dye out and then it's got to re-die it, it's got to reform it, etc. And so all of that, you know, uses energy, it uses transportation and it creates waste. All recycling creates its own waste and often that waste is more toxic than the original waste and so then that more toxic waste has to be dealt with. So when we're talking about, you know, paper, cardboard, plastics,

you know, it does, it has an environmental, you know, footprint and it depends on what material and where it's being recycled as to whether it's a net gain or a net loss for the environment. You've also said in past that there is correlational evidence that if people see recycling programs, it'll actually increase their consumption. Is that the case? Yeah, yeah, that's true. I mean, we've done some research. Some of my grad students and I have done some research looking at exactly this question. And in Ontario, you know, we found evidence that when people think that there is, you

know, a really good recycling and when people believe that recycling is really good for the environment, it kind of gives us sort of a social license to purchase more things because if we think, well, we can put all this packaging in recycling and then it'll end up being other products, that's okay. And so people actually increase the amount that they're consuming. So what is a better way to deal with the waste that we are creating? If it's not recycling and if it's not patting ourselves in the back saying, right, took care of that problem

because the truck picked up the blue bin and we're good, what is a better way of dealing with this? Well, actually the regulation that Quebec has introduced that is leading to this different recycling actually gets it right. If you look at the regulation itself, what it's charging companies to do is in order of preference to look at reuse,

then recycling, then disposal. So really what we need to be doing is to focus on reducing the... Most of the stuff that we're putting in bins is packaging. So the big answer is to use less packaging, in reducing the, most of the stuff that we're putting in bins is packaging. So the big answer is to use less packaging, to remove packaging whenever we can. And we all can see that over the decades, there has been more and more and more packaging, right?

So we need to reduce packaging. We need to find ways to kind of eco-design packaging as they're doing in Europe to, you know, make the packaging more environmentally friendly from the get-go. And then we need to find ways to reuse products, to refurbish products, to repair products, so that we can keep them in circulation as long as possible before we go to disposal or recycling.

How much of that is on us, the consumer, versus the people who are packaging those products, shipping us those products, providing us with those products? Well, I think that's an excellent question, because I talk to people all the time who are really, really concerned about the environment and what to do, and they've really, and they, you know, we really have been, there's been such a big push for decades to say concerned about the environment and what to do. We really have been, there's been such a big push for decades to say that the way we can

show our concern for the environment is through recycling. I think what this national extended producer responsibility does well is to really try to shift the burden, the financial burden and the responsibility onto the producers of all of these products rather than the consumers. Now is that going to work? That's an open question. We'll see. We need to sort of see how this rolls out. I mean, it depends on, it, it, it depends on a lot of things and it's predicated of course, that, you know, producers are not going to just offload the cost that they are going to bear onto consumers

through higher prices. So that would typically be how producers respond. So we're going to have to see how this plays out. But to your point, there's been this big push and you've said that Canadians should be angry that this is the story we've been given, that you are recycling and you're doing something good for the environment. Yeah, well, absolutely. And I think, I mean, I've

been researching recycling for the past 15 years or so, and I've seen a real sea change in the way, you know, I talk to Canadians when I give talks and, you know, community groups, et cetera. At the very beginning, you know, the idea that recycling might not be the panacea, the kind of great solution, that was a difficult pill for people to swallow. But I think Canadians are getting a lot more savvy that recycling is not the solution that we've been told it is, and that we really need to be looking for solutions that are better for the environment. Not necessarily great for profit and economy, but really what is best for the environment.

Myra, thank you very much. Thank you so much, Matt. I really enjoy your program. I'm so honored to be on it. Glad to have you here. Thank you. Myra Hurd is a professor of environmental studies at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.