> Part of the problem is that the rules are complicated and there's no feedback loop.
For me this is the entire issue. The rules are more nuanced that I can easily remember. Also, I may be mistaken, but it seems like different cities have different rules, which leaves me even more confused even when I'm at home.
You could simplify the rules to “recycle aluminum, trash everything else”.
It takes about 2x as much energy to manufacture new steel than to melt down old steel.
For aluminum, that number is 20x, which means that recycling aluminum prevents a lot of greenhouse gas. Even after you account for the overhead of driving a bunch of collection trucks around and running recycling facilities, you’re still probably coming out ahead.
With steel, paper, glass and plastic, is recycling really beneficial to the planet? It’s difficult to say.
If you recycle paper, you end up with some sludge of degraded fibers. The sludge can be composted, it's just cellulose after all. Sounds like a good deal, doesn't it?
It is, until weird coated papers get into the recycled feed stock. Those are not supposed to be recycled, but who knows all the rules and their exceptions? So weird and wonderful chemicals get into the sludge, and then into the compost, and then onto agricultural land, and into the drinking water supply. One of these chemicals is PFOA (see todays story about the toxicology of perfluorinated compounds), another BPA.
I know of at least two instances where drinking water supplies in Germany were contaminated with PFOA through this route. Much finger pointing ensued, but nobody knows how to remove PFOA from either water or the affected land. But they said recycling is good, didn't they?
Not if it was incinerated. That's definitely where the sludge should have gone, but it's also where paper waste could go. That would also avoid problems with greasy pizza boxes, window envelopes, and impossible to remove toner.
Landfilling organic material is illegal in Germany (or possibly throughout the EU). That definitely applies to both paper and the sludge from recycling it; it might even apply to the black "residual waste" bin.
For me this is the entire issue. The rules are more nuanced that I can easily remember. Also, I may be mistaken, but it seems like different cities have different rules, which leaves me even more confused even when I'm at home.