Why Recycling Feels Impossible

We’ve all heard the phrase, “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!”

We’ve all seen the posters, the videos, the stickers or bins all encouraging us to do what seems so easy to say, yet difficult to enact. Such a seemingly simple phrase, and still it can be hard to understand the effect of reducing your belongings or creating something new out of them altogether.

I can sympathize with the feeling of wanting to keep anything slightly significant. Perhaps your item belonged to a friend who was about to move out of the country. I can understand how heart-wrenching it can be to cut up an old blanket with which you spent so many hopeful, dream-filled nights for something seemingly much less significant. I can understand the feeling of not wanting to throw away that one pair of pants although they’re worn and mangled.

But think about it. When was the last time you intentionally looked at that item and thought about that friend? Why can’t those old memories make this new project just as, or at least, almost, as significant? What if throwing away those old trousers only made space for your new favourites?

The reason we put such intense value into our items, apart from sentimental reasons, of course, is because of something called the Endowment Effect. This is when we put much more value onto items that we own compared to those we don’t. An effect that Rosie Leizrowice describes as, “a simple premise, yet one which causes us endless problems.”

Our self-destructive minds convincing us that our memories aren’t enough could lead to the end of the human race.

According to theatlantic.com, there were “just shy of 130 million” unique books in 2021, including each unique edition of ‘Hamlet’ and so on. However, this did not take into account the multiple copy of every book which, according to the Guinness World Records, could reach a high of 5 billion (which the Bible did if you’re curious) per book. If every single unique book in the world had that number of copies, there would be an approximate high of 650 quadrillion books.

Now imagine, there was just one copy of each book, each and every one stored in a public library. There, anyone could check out any book they wanted. If the specific one they wanted wasn’t there, instead they could check out one of the other 130 million. Imagine how many trees could be saved that way, how many greenhouse gasses would never be released. And not to mention the amount of old withering books that could be recycled to make newer releases or heavier, untouched editions that could be made into furnishings for the library or, better yet, furnishings for those who actually need them. While this could only ever remain hypothetical, taking the steps towards something like that doesn't have to.

Recycling isn’t about threatening your current possessions, it’s about paving the way to a newer world, hazing fresh possibilities, and, most importantly, making sure we can live to see those days.