Recycle

When I was a child all the cloth, paper and glass were recycled. From then on one changed from reuse culture to culture wasting materials. As a result, we are using in half a year what the earth can tolerate for one year. Environmentally thinking, our wasteful ways should be over.

Wasting materials has been the cheap alternative largely because the long-term damage to and costs incurred by the environment have not been part of any economic calculations. For example, the gross national product does not take into account, e.g., the water pollution caused by industrial production. For this reason, paper and pulp mill directors said in 1970s that: "One cannot build effective wastewater treatment plants, since our products will then become so expensive that they cannot be sold". If environmental damage had been part of economic calculations, that would not have been the case.

But from wasting to recycling. There are already examples, which show that recycling can function. In Finland we have returnable bottles and aluminum cans. As the result, at least 95 % of drinking bottles are returned. Glass bottles can then be washed and refilled. Aluminum cans are pressed, and new cans can be produced. Plastic bottles can also be washed and refilled. Most paper is reused. One is paying recycling fee when buying tyres - the old tyres are then used, e.g. on road surfaces.

For some reason the recycling of cloth has been all but forgotten. This is surprising, as the treatment of cloth so that fibres could be reused is not more expensive than making cloth from native cotton plants, and would be more environmentally friendly. It would just require a change of attitude. Also, reusing all the metals would markedly diminish the need for mining and associated activities. Again, it would not be more expensive, but would need new way of thinking.

All in all, in much of advocating recycling, we are not talking about things becoming more expensive, but about a change in attitude. Recycling needs to be done not because we are poor but because it helps to give our children a habitable planet.