During Earth Week, our staff takes time to reflect on why we do what we do; why we're drawn to the work and mission of Methow Recycles. What it comes down to is feeling like we've made a difference. It truly is the everyday actions, no matter how small, that makes us feel like we are creating a better world.

To help our community make an even bigger impact every day, this summer we are launching the first-ever residential compost program in the Methow Valley. And from now until May 3rd, you can join us in creating this program by donating to Give BIG. Even better news, through a match from a generous donor, donations will doubled, up to $5,000. Every bit counts towards our goal of meeting this match. Thank you for building a healthier, low-waste life for all in our beautiful valley!

When Methow Recycles was created over two decades ago, it was largely thanks to the efforts of a handful of concerned and determined citizens who believed recycling and conserving resources is simply the thing to do. It turns out they were not alone in their beliefs. In fact, there was rarely a time where there wasn't some form of organized recycling happening in our country.

In this enews, on the eve of Earth Day, we take a look at the history of recycling to better understand the challenges facing the industry today and what the future of recycling looks like.

This is the first of a two-part enews series. Next month, we'll take a deep dive on the concept of a circular economy and why sharing and reuse programs are gaining popularity.

When did America start recycling?

The rag man

Before the onslaught of material wealth and disposable items that we are so accustomed to seeing, cultural values were vastly different centuries ago where material goods were much harder to come by.

Environmental historian Carl Zimring explains that "metal was a scarce commodity [in the colonial era], which is why Paul Revere would have had a scrap-metal yard. It’s likely that the horse he rode to announce that the British were coming was wearing horseshoes made out of what he collected".¹

Things just were not thrown away as they held their use far beyond the intended purpose. Times magazine writes: "Even well-to-do Victorian-era American women who would buy a dress from Paris would send it back to the city to get alterations that incorporated whatever the new fashion trend was, whether it was new sleeves or collars, rather than buying a new dress".²

In cities before the 19th century, the "rag man" was the nearest thing to our modern day curbside recycling. These rag men or rag pickers would go door-to-door to buy old cloth to be made into paper.³ The image above shows a rag picker in New York City around 1897.

First modern recycling systems

At the turn of the century, discarded furnishings and animal waste began to pile up in cities, prompting organized garbage pick up and management. Because some of this waste still had value, items were sorted on conveyor belts and any reusable materials were sold to various industries.

During the Great Depression, values of thrift and repurposing continued. Manufacturers would specifically market their items as "dual purpose": cookie containers doubled as lunch boxes, sacks for flour could double as fabric to make clothes.⁴

The onset of WWII saw a nation wide effort to reuse material that held any value to help with manufacturing for the war. Scrap metal, nylon, and paper were all collected-- even cooking grease was used as a component in explosives! Not only was this essentially the first successful national recycling campaign it was one that Americans participated in dutifully; citizens were eager to help out by conserving and reusing.⁵

Post WWII: landfills are full

The affluence that Americans enjoyed in the decades following the second World War was the first of its kind. The values of previous generations seemed archaic compared to the convenience and affordability of the modern lifestyle marketed by manufacturers. Gone were the messages of patriotic thrift and reuse. People were encouraged to buy and keep buying without any thought of what might happen to the items after they broke or became out of date.

As Time magazine puts it: "What happened in the 1960s and ’70s wasn’t that recycling was invented, but that the reasons for it changed. Rather than recycle in order to get the most out of the materials, Americans began to recycle in order to deal with the massive amounts of waste produced during the second half of the 20th century."⁶

The amount of waste that accumulated in the post WWII era was so gargantuan that leaders began to fear that, should the trajectory continue, there would be no room to put it all. At first, the early adopters of separating recycling from trash did so for environmental reasons. They wanted to be a part of the solution, even if the average American kept throwing everything into the landfill.

Then, as landfills began to fill to capacity in the 1970s, legislators took note; they knew something needed to change, passing the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act in 1976. Recycling was leaned on as the solution. It diverted materials from the landfill, there by extending the life of the landfill. As author Martin Melosi says, “Landfilling was the most popular form of disposal after World War II. [Recycling] takes things out of the waste stream, preserving landfill space. So recycling begins to have an economic and strategic role, different from just saving the environment.”⁷

Corporations began to heavily promote recycling as the solution to America's waste problem. A coalition was formed that was comprised of various companies. It was called Keep America Beautiful and it ran many national campaigns urging citizens to do the right thing and recycle items that could have an extended life outside of the landfill.⁸

Deposit programs and curbside recycling

Changing behavior is not easy. To encourage citizens to adopt recycling habits, state governments passed legislation such as beverage container deposit laws that placed a small fee at the purchase of a bottled beverage. The idea was that the fee would incentivize consumers to return the bottles for a reimbursement.

Curbside recycling programs began to get traction in early 1980. Hoping to increase participation by offering a convenient service, municipalities collected glass bottles, aluminum cans, and newspaper directly from households to be recycled. Some states even passed mandatory recycling laws during this time.⁹

The recycling system in place today has not changed all that much since the 1980s. There have been various legislative attempts, both on the federal and state levels, to increase the amount of materials being diverted but essentially, recycling functions much the same.

It is interesting to note the shift that happened in the 1970s, as our nationwide system for retrieving recyclables was being formed. The Keep America Beautiful campaign accomplished more than just putting pollution at the forefront of Americans' minds. Environmental historian Bartow J.Elmore says, "The companies behind the campaign successfully framed waste as a problem for consumers rather than one for the companies that manufactured the items being wasted, and thus framed recycling as something that taxpayers should pay for."¹⁰ This shift in responsibility away from manufacturers and onto consumers remains at the root of recycling challenges today.

Even though our national recycling rate has increased significantly since the 1960s (6% of municipal solid waste was recycled in 1960 compared to 35% in 2017)¹¹, after over 50 years it still remains dismally low.

The Environmental Protection Agency chalks it up to these reasons (from their website)¹²:

• Most Americans want to recycle, as they believe recycling provides an opportunity for them to be responsible caretakers of the Earth. However, it can be difficult for consumers to understand what materials can be recycled, how materials can be recycled, and where to recycle different materials. This confusion often leads to placing recyclables in the trash or throwing trash in the recycling bin or cart.

• America’s recycling infrastructure has not kept pace with today’s waste stream. Communication between the manufacturers of new materials and products and the recycling industry needs to be enhanced to prepare for and optimally manage the recycling of new materials.

• Domestic markets for recycled materials need to be strengthened. Historically, some of the recycled materials generated in the United States have been exported internationally. However, changing international policies have limited the export of materials. We need to better integrate recycled materials and end-of-life management into product and packaging designs. We need to improve communication among the different sectors of the recycling system to strengthen existing materials markets and to develop new innovative markets.

• Entities across the recycling system agree that more consistent measurement methodologies are needed to measure recycling system performance. These more standardized metrics can then be used to create effective goals and track progress.

Ultimately, the solutions to these challenges will be multi-pronged and require collaboration across sectors. What we see most at Methow Recycles is the need for more recycling infrastructure to increase accessibility for rural and sub-urban communities as well as increased participation from manufacturers. Simply put, manufacturers need to make and package products with materials that can either be readily recycled or composted. This would drive up participation simply by making it easier and much less confusing for consumers.

History tells us, recycling will always be a part of the solution!

As Americans learned in the 70's, sending everything we no longer need to the landfill is not a viable solution. Valuable materials lay unused in the ground while more resources are extracted to make more new materials-- it just does not make sense. And our drastically changing climate is the wake-up call to the disastrous effects of a consumptive model built on endless extraction.

There will always be a need to recycle, whether it be for environmental, cultural, or economic reasons. It's just the thing to do! It's an easy daily action that extends the life of our planet's natural resources. Here in the Methow Valley, we are lucky to be situated near regional markets that allow us to recycle even tricky items like glass and plastic film. Our staff can guarantee that what you send us to be recycled does in fact get recycled.

So this Earth Day, as you plan clean ups in your neighborhood or by the river, be sure to separate out the recyclables and bring them to us for a new life!

Stay tuned next month for a look at where recycling is headed in a circular economy!

Sources

1,2,4,6,10. https://time.com/4568234/history-origins-recycling/

3,7,11.https://www.history.com/news/recycling-history-america

5,9.https://nerc.org/news-and-updates/blog/nerc-blog/2019/11/19/a-brief-history-of-recycling

8.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-1970s-created-recycling-we-know-it-180967179/

12.https://www.epa.gov/circulareconomy/us-recycling-system