The Conclusion About Waste? It’s Never Simple
So which kind of waste is the most problematic?
“All of them,” Corrigan said, laughing. “It’s kind of tongue-in-cheek to say that, but it seems like every time we do a story about a particular material we get bogged down in how difficult it is. That may be because of the rise of single-stream recycling.”
By and large, municipalities are switching to single-stream recycling, Morales said, which can actually make it more difficult for recycling centers to separate and sell materials for reuse.
Organic waste, which has been a hot topic in waste in recent years, also caught the couple’s attention.
“I just became more and more impressed over our trip at what portion of MSW (municipal solid waste) is organic,” Morales said. “The negative effects of putting it in a landfill where it will decompose, it’s just a waste of nutrients. I think I found organics to be the biggest shame.”
The trip also provided some surprises for the pair, and one of these surprises was about recycling as a whole, according to Corrigan. Before the trip, he assumed recycling was a great thing, but after talking with people in the waste industry, the benefits of recycling started to seem less clear.
“Just to find a lot of instances where you think [recycling] is doing good,” Corrigan said. “But then it starts to get muddier and muddier and muddier, and you think wait a minute, what am I doing?”
Biodegradable plastic, for example, seems like a good idea on the surface, but when it ends up in the recycling stream it can contaminate a batch of plastic and cause real problems for recyclers, Corrigan explained.
We focus on recycling in the United States, and to a certain extent this makes sense. It’s easy for people to throw things in the blue bin. But perhaps reducing and reusing might be even more important. Corrigan pointed out that even the EPA suggests this in its Waste Management Hierarchy.
With their blog – whose posts from the summer they are currently in the process of finishing – Corrigan and Morales hope to make people think a bit more about their waste.
“I think that we – this is definitely all of us, everybody I meet – I think it’s just really easy to enjoy all of the benefits of the things we’ve developed. We don’t realize that that does come at a cost,” Corrigan said.
Because the trip gave them many ideas about topics to address, the couple plans to continue their blog with follow-up posts.
“I would say now, after [traveling] for a few months, we have a lot more questions and a lot more specific questions than when we started,” Morales said.
To learn more about where your trash goes when you throw it away, visit The Trash Blog.