The Ptolemy-Liability Trap: Simplified Recycling Lifecycle Narratives Tend to Revolve Around You

The Vermont free-mail, coupon-funded newspaper "Hometown" is published and mailed by the Burlington Free Press - which, with its Headliner newspaper, follows the opposite, paywall approach, online. So I'm in a bit of a quandary in presenting the snapshot, below, of the opening paragraphs of the article. Well, it's a fair use claim, and also it's common practice for newspapers to show the "lede" (opening paragraphs), so here's what catches my attention this morning.

Burlington Free Press Thanksgiving "Hometown" Edition

Joel Banner Baird of Burlington Free Press may well have started a "recycling" story for the same reason that @AdamMinter told me those stories normally appear around holidays.... they are easy to write, require little more than a google page one of research, and seem to appeal to everyone. They are not time sensitive, so a reporter can write it a week ahead, and get home for the holidays faster. But at least in the opening paragraphs, Baird bluntly avoids the normal "gotcha" narratives common in holiday journalism (someone made millions of dollars recycling trash was the go-to in the 1980s, your recyclables didn't really get recycled in the 1990s, lather-rinse-repeat for every buyers-market, sellers-market cycle). It leads, but does not bleed.

The opening interview with Michael Noel (nice holiday namesake) of TOMRA, the master-redemption center recycling provider and owner of most supermarket reverse-vendor container machines, avoids falsely choosing between either "It was the best of times."  

...Or, "It was the worst of times".

Which is the most environmentally sustainable Container for my holiday beer?

Michael Noel tells Joel Banner Baird "The short answer is, it's complicated". That is an honest answer to the decades of environmentalists (spoilt brat) privileged demands to "choose" the "best" beer container, vs. the equally misguided alt-right "recycling is Bulls**t" waste-makers. Both camps are uber-susceptible to cognitive dissonance (or perhaps vice versa, those prone to cognitive dissonance probably lean toward extreme positions). The more they choose one answer (only use this one vs. nothing matters, environmentalists are wrong), the louder they both get. Outrage is not Expertise.

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The poetry value of engineering is visible to the eye of a recycling veteran who pre-cared about resource extraction and the environmental damage of externalized mining back in high school. Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.

It's the recycling rate, or recovery rate, of aluminum that tells the story of the beer can. IF the aluminum can IS indeed recycled - and due to its value (without deposit), it is the most likely of the containers to be recycled - it's a nearly perfect container.  A 100% recycled-content aluminum can takes 5% of the energy and carbon, and none of the mining, compared to producing one from scratch (the fact it didn't go to a landfill is a nontoxic nothing burger). 

But if only 50% of the aluminum cans sold are indeed recycled, it's a horror show. Your participation tells the environmental story of aluminum.

But most recycling lay-up (easy to write) narratives this year focus on the uncertainty of recycling a plastic container.  Not much beer is sold in plastic bottles these days... but more is than a decade ago. PETE bottle plastic, the type used in nearly all deposit containers, is VERY recyclable, despite being "plastic".  But it is being profiled as "plastic", along with the plastic containers that are difficult or impossible to recycle.  Press is not distinguishing it, because "Plastic Problem" is simple. There's consequently a brewing environmentalist lazy wannabe backlash to it (which amounts to nothing, save resentment gassing). The environmentalist "bad news" about (plastic) recycling fits the "ain't right" wing who refuse to participate in recycling "bs", and the bad consequence of sensationalizing disposal stories is that MORE of us give up on participating, and throw our aluminum beer can in the trash.

Journalists are like doctors (with a little less schooling). Primum non nocere - "first, do no harm". A good doctor looks at nutrition, the "inbound consumption" of the patient, not just the excrement. Both diet and colonoscopy... both things. The best of times, the worst of times, in the same paragraph.

TBH I have not finished Joel's article. But just the lede deserves a bravo. Journalists have to explain science more and more this year. I'd suggest that every byline link to a SAT-like score on history and science, that every reporter be certified annually with a test that the public can check, to eliminate flat-earth or Super!Simple!LoseWeightEasy! QAnon answers. Readers should be able to click a journalist's name and see how they answered normal questions in the past year. 

Kind of like a "citizenship test". #Datajournalism. Rather than each reporter pretending not to be biased, or equally expert in every topic they report on, make accessible their opinions and test scores.

So, continuous Good Point Ideas Blog readers of the past 14+ years may notice that I'm writing shorter blog posts, but more frequent tweets.  Twitter has been good for me. Like poetry, it forces short blunt factual attractive wording - only. I've buried too many chestnuts in too many angry blogs. They did result in mining of the blogs by professors, experts, and authors (who recognized that truth, buried, is the gold nugget of publication). And I'm happy with the "fishing for swordfish, buried in tilapia" strategy.

It's easier to make consumers (newspaper readers) care about environmental damage that affects their property values, or poses liability (fingerprint fetish). That's not environmentalism 3.0. This is the gold nugget of the past 5 years of blogging (thanks Dr. Graham Pickren for the "fetishism", which added to the psychological references in imperfect environmental policy making).

This isn't providing a "quick answer" to the container question. But reporters need to eliminate lies, like "plastic isn't being recycled" (see photo, this would be a heck of a lot of collection, shipping and refining to do for "sham" recycling). 

If you have no litter collection, other than ocean storm water run-off, glass is best.  It will wind up as pretty beach glass. If you have high recycling rates, aluminum is best. If you have high transportation mileage to consumers, plastic has a very legitimate argument that plastic is best. It is a by-product of gasoline manufacture (essentially pre-recycled). But in poor coastal or river-based emerging markets, plastic is a mess.

Thankful for this exception to the "gotcha" industry of clickbait recycling headlines. Instead of a holiday button-pushing recycling narrative, "the short answer is... it's complicated". It does not both end & begin at the landfill. The Ptolemy-liability of post-ownership, or fetishism, ignores mining, carbon, lifecycle analysis.

Joel Banner Baird

@bfp_news

and Michael Noel of deposit container recycling redemption firm TOMRA nail the environmentalist fundamental questions in the opening paragraphs of this article. As

@AdamMinter

said, simplistic recycling stories are go to layups during the holidays.

I'm reminded of what a wise Journalism Mentor, Andrea Carneiro, used to say about news stories.

Half the people didn't see the newspaper. Of the half who saw it, half didn't buy it. Of the half who bought it, half didn't see the article. Of the half who saw it, half didn't read it. Of the half who read it, half didn't understand it. Of the half who understood it, half didn't agree with it.