Benefits of recycling build a strong case for action

It would be nice if the benefits of environmental strategies were straightforward, but unfortunately, the interaction of our industrial systems with the environment is highly complex—just ask any practitioner of life-cycle analysis. Despite this complexity, it is possible to make generalizations about environmental best practices.

There are significant environmental benefits associated with using recycled materials. This is a general best-practice statement that is widely accepted. However, on occasion, this general statement may be challenged by the specific details of a case example, like a product-level life-cycle analysis. There are examples where the use of recycled materials may not result in the optimal environmental benefit for that particular product. But that doesn't mean the general rule doesn't hold.

The environmental, social and economic benefits of using recycled materials include the conservation of virgin resources and energy to the diversion of materials from landfills. Benefits also may vary, depending on the point in the life cycle where the benefit occurs. A commonly cited example is aluminum. Recycled aluminum requires 95-percent less energy per kg to produce than a kg of virgin aluminum. Beyond energy, the use of recycled aluminum conserves all of the cumulative environmental impact, and can reduce the transportation miles that might also be involved. From this perspective, using recycled aluminum helps minimize our current impacts based on the existing system. However, what if the scale of that system is growing across an industrializing planet?

The question brings us to another perspective on recycled materials. Using recycled materials sends a signal that materials are valuable because of the investment in environmental impact made in their creation and their disposition, and the cumulative nature of those impacts, such as climate change. From this point of view, the use of recycled materials is an investment in a strategy to drive both system and economic change.

There is no doubt that raw materials industries are very environmentally impactful. However, these businesses also are the backbone of our industrialized society. So, where is the sustainability balance?

We have a woefully inadequate infrastructure for recycling today in the U.S. This is one of the greatest barriers to realizing truly sustainable packaging for many materials. We do not even have a national vision for what a sustainable-materials economy might look like. The Chinese adopted a framework for a circular economy in 2002. They purchase a lot of our post-consumer materials, use them as feedstocks in a new cycle of production and help grow their economy by selling them back to us.

Using recycled materials isn't only an essential part of a strategy to reduce today's footprint—it also drives changes needed to engineer systems that rationalize the economics of recycling. It means an economic supply chain from cradle-to-cradle and a more sustainable materials future.