The New York Times on the ideology of recycling

The New York Times Magazine recently did a long article on a history and analysis of American "bottle bills" and the way that the growing bottled water market will factor into possible future recycling legislation. It's #6 on the Most Emailed list right now, and actually quite a good read. The best parts highlight the ideological and cultural struggles at work:

By now the players on both sides, in each state, all know one another. They issue reports. They recite dueling statistics. But the debate, wherever it happens to flare up in a given year, is essentially a philosophical one. While recycling advocates rail against society’s wastefulness as a solemn problem, so much of that society relies on the freedom to throw things out as a solution to problems. As naïve as it looks, the bottle bill forces the very contemporary environmental question of whether those who sell a product, not to mention those who use it, should be accountable for its mess — and just how accountable, and at what cost. By Day 3 in Salem, one dumbstruck grocer, pressed after his testimony, finally blurted out: “Are we responsible for all the containers and all the garbage we sell?” He meant it as a rhetorical question. But it’s precisely the question that, for 36 years, everyone has been getting together to hash out.

and later:

“A good number of the Redeemers [those who scour the city for bottles and cans for a living] see that they’re doing a real service,” Kooperkamp said, “cleaning up after us, taking care of the environment.” Some come to see picking up a can — replacing it into the cyclic narrative from which it strayed — “as running totally opposite to our egocentric, convenience-driven, disposable culture.” It can be a deeply connective act. “I went to seminary,” Kooperkamp told me. “I learned all about redemption. Redemption is about taking something that is worthless and giving it value, about taking that worthless thing and changing it into something life-sustaining.” Jean Rice, a canner in the Bronx, summed it up this way: “Five years ago, I used to call myself a canner. But now I call myself an ecological engineer.”

It's good to see that some people are starting to see recycling as more than just "canning," but it's pretty clear especially by this article that the industry, and the legislation, still has a long way to go.

Photo by David Tames.