Recycling Vs. Non-Recycled Content: #SubsidyRecapture Wet Cornflake on the Wall Part 2

The worst recycling is better than the best mining (and forestry).

I've been both convinced and constantly aware of this since I was a teenager reading Lester Brown's State of the World, searching for statistics for high school debate.

Sure, I moved from Arkansas where MSW cost $16 a yard (could take a year) to dispose and came to Boston where waste was $65 per ton before I got an MBA. I always explain the move into "waste management" as a strategy to gain the advantage lost to raw material subsidies like the General Mining Act of 1872 and the defense budget focused on the Persian Gulf.

But my biggest gripe today is that the environmental movement is completely focused on waste and completely ignored major events in raw material recapture policy. Last year, on the 150th anniversary of the General Mining Act of 1872, the Biden Administration Interior Department (headed by Native American Secretary Deb Haaland of the Pueblo de Laguna) made a major effort to reform the 1872 subsidy.  I sponsored a MassRecycle Podcast on it to interview the new Earthworks Action Director Aaron Mintzes.

Once again, what I think is the "wet cornflake" which should stick to a wall better than any piece of environmental policy spaghetti code, falls mostly on deaf ears.

There are some exceptions. The City of Cambridge MA hosted a Massachusetts Webinar on Earth Week which featured Adam Minter, Brooke Nash, and Meera Singh... (Stories of Our Stuff - Recycling & Secondhand Industry Across the World). The mantra that "The worst recycling is better than the best mining (and forestry)" was a major theme (and attributed to an even more credentialed source) at the conclusion of the webinar.

But even this webinar had a title and focus on "Our Stuff" - not what our "stuff" is made of, but the MSW fetish of where stuff goes after we are done with it.  Important, but not the most important.

There are some other well credentialed "swordfish" out there, which is why I'm still maintaining a blog I started in 2006.  

But every morning when I open LinkedIn, I see a community completely focused on downstreams, the "waste business" of recycling.  It has been almost 45 years since I made that devil's bargain and chose a career in recycling, reuse, and international relations, instead of applying for work with Earthworks, Mineral Policy Center, Mineral Policy Institute.  People my age then are retiring now, and the cornflakes are drying up.

Yesterday, on a hike in Vermont with my partner/wife, we saw plastic containers on the roadside and aluminum containers on the roadside.  The litter is all hopefully addressed by the bottle bill, though the nickel deposit is pretty long in the tooth and plastic and juices are not even covered (an expanded bottle bill is another crusade of  mine).

But I explained to my wife that the environmental benefit of recycling the aluminum cans is hugely more important than the plastic.  Everyone is focused on the plastic these days.  But if I have a limited amount of space in my garage or the truck of my car or backpack, I'd rather throw away a plastic bottle I myself consumed and use the space to pick up someone else's aluminum can.  I think that's unique, I don't see anyone out there preaching that.

In 1978, when I read about the GMA, there was an OPEC oil embargo that was causing record inflation, and would doom the second term for President Jimmy Carter. His successor, Ronald Reagan, would appoint mining lobbyists to run the Interior Department.  Because Joe Biden is "so old", he knows this history and his appointment of Deb Haaland should be enough to earn the vote of every single environmentalist out there.

Instead, environmental reporters are talking about plastic packaging bans, and reporting aluminum as a perfect recyclable... Aluminum is more important to recycle than plastic, but it costs more because of the energy (and carbon) it consumes in virgin production.  

About 14 years ago I posted quotes from the Musical 1776, the character of second-president-to-be John Adams singing "Is Anybody There? Does Anybody Care?"  I can't remember who sent me a nice comment in the blog. I pretty much have turned off the comments these days because of the flood of spam Blogspot became notorious for. It may have been anonymous. But it meant a lot to me.  

I'm now 61, the anagram of the 16 year old who searched for a meaning in life and found environmentalism to be something that generations in the future - long after my "name" and "ego" perished in meaning - would appreciate me spending my time on. They will care about waste, but waste is a problem that matters less to Endangered Species than material extraction and refining.  They will in retrospect see a lot of navel gazing and fetishism going on in our current environmental leadership, I'm afraid.

https://www.allmusicals.com/lyrics/1776/isanybodythere.htm

There is a big E-Scrap Conference opening this morning in New Orleans.  I chose not to go this year, sent our CFO Rachael Gosselin instead.  I introduced her to Adam Shine of Sunnking for one reason - Adam had been on NECN news and talked about the importance of copper recycling, the environmental savings from keeping the material in the economy.  That's good. But why doesn't the brass at Resource Recycling or ISRI invite Secretary Deb Haaland as keynote?  That's a conference I'd pay to attend.  Seeing speakers still focused on waste is getting very old.

Adams:
Is anybody there?
Does anybody care?
Does anybody see what I see?

They want to me to quit; they say
John, give up the fight
Still to England I say
Good night, forever, good night!
For I have crossed the Rubicon
Let the bridge be burned behind me
Come what may, come what may

Commitment!

The croakers all say we'll rue the day
There'll be hell to pay in fiery purgatory
Through all the gloom, through all the gloom
I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory!

Is anybody there? Does anybody care?
Does anybody see what I see?

I see fireworks! I see the pagaent and
Pomp and parade
I hear the bells ringing out
I hear the cannons roar
I see Americans - all Americans
Free forever more

How quiet, how quiet the chamber is
How silent, how silent the chamber is

Is anybody there? Does anybody care?
Does anybody see what I see?