Do Packaging Bans Make Sense on an Island? It's the Metal Stupid

The past few years, the Recycling Community made a lot of progress on a couple of fronts. Mainly, the decade-long furvent conviction that "environmental justice" meant boycotts - and arrests - of geeks of color in Emerging Market Tech Sectors has been recognized as an #OwnGoal.  Last month's post of the Recycling Today podcast, and this month's recognition in Recycling International's Top 100, mostly paid tribute to a cold revenge against the 80% Waste Hoax.  He who shall not be named has disappeared from the Top 100 list.

This weekend I'll try to use a common challenge - recycling on an island - to explore how my recycling philosophy can bubble-sort ethical dilemmas using logic and statistical likely outcomes. I can already see some prospect for "long-form blogging". But it's the only December blog, and there are still people discovering the evolution of recycling ethics.

My takeaway: Ptolemy is the perspective of gravity around one's own ego.  Like "Spiritual Materialism", wanting to do the right thing is necessary - but by no means sufficient - to having the most sustainable impact. Too often we view our environmental efforts from within our own silo - or on our own island - relative to other humans acting for other various reasons.  In a karma-Judeo-Islam-Christian morality, God is going to grade on the curve. My moral licensing is measured by my effort to excercise on my care for the planet, etc. Better than nothing. A Ptolemy map of the cosmos is better than no record at all.  We'll test that out today.

The ancient greek astronomer went to geometric and algebraic lengths - or heights - to explain why stars and planets would curiously pause and zigzag in their paths circling "us". He was without doubt one of the most educated people in the history of the planet at his time. But when Copernicus paused to ask "what if we are actually orbiting the sun, and not vice-versa?", the orbits all became much simpler, if not closer to earth. In the same way, exports of raw materials were defined as "wastes" not commodities because the environmentalists in charge were more focused on their liability, their gravity, their consciences, than what made sense for an African critical mass of users seeking to enjoy the benefits of telecommunications. The laws and certifications and insurances and investigations were extravagent costs and measures based on a flawed assumption.  And the root cause was a false assumption that became the only source of information on an island of preciously important white saviors... Ok, this blog made a difference in exposing that fetishist raw material paradigm.

Keeping this blog grounded in Puerto Rico, this morning I took this photo of four types of recyclables my family separated. An example of metal (steel Goya bean cans), a 3.78L (gallon) PETE bottle of water, an empty glass bottle of Modelo Negra, and a paper receipt.

A common RCRA/Basel Convention analysis sees these as all "waste" with prospect to be diverted. It's common to look at recycling through a lens of "waste diversion" (avoided disposal cost).  I don't have a scale here so I'll estimate some weights, and pro-rate the weight per volume of liquid/food delivered.

Sample Puerto Rico Packaging Waste - Metal Plastic Glass and Paper

Ptolemy was kind of aware that earth was an island. But that island was only the center of the ocean from his perspective. That's how the Ego blurs our vision.

The root causes of the E-Waste Export Hoax remain.  "Environmental Justice" is a healthy goal, but the causes and remedies for justice continue to be misdiagnosed.  This week I'm with my family outside of San Juan, Puerto Rico for the holiday. And so I have time to consider Islands - literally and figuratively - and the challenges they present to Life Cycle Analysis measures of Sustainability.

Islands are isolated. The word "Isolate" comes from the Latin root word for Island. In English, "isolate yourself" is a verb meaning to limit your access to ideas and communication and trade. To be on an island, with people who think like you, temporarily, can bring focus. But being on an actual island is a matter of physical trade limitation. Creating a choice, in goods or in services, is more difficult and expensive.

So anyway, if you take away the "my waste" diversion, it's clear. Recycle the metal.

There are a lot of scrap automobiles in Puerto Rico, which create the critical mass of metal recycling.

Drop the plastic, it's too expensive for an island to recycle unless someone has already put in brick or otther domestic reuse.  Glass isn't even really recycled in Vermont, it's ground into pebbles and dropped on top of a landfill as "daily cover" rather than separated by color for glass-to-glass recycling. If we aren't actually recycling the glass in New England, don't hang that albatross on the necks of Puerto Rican Islanders.

If we stop the Ptolemy "My Diversion" waste distraction, and concentrate on the planet, we see that the metals - steel and aluminum - are the key.  And lo and behold, when I use Google Maps to search "recycling" in Puerto Rico, I find multiple metal scrap recycling companies.

Scrap Metal.

The "free market" is a beautiful thing. The cost of blowing up mountains to strip mine ores with less than 5% metal content is huge, and that is why metal recycling is historically older than "environmentalism", far older than plastic or plastic recycling.

So I dumped the glass and plastic, and used my limited car boot to collect other peoples discarded aluminum and steel containers.  If I had insisted on MY plastic and MY glass being recycled, I would have had less capacity in my rental car for anyone else's metal to recycle.

Copernicus would approve.