The recycling of items beyond repair i.s sensible practice. But in the past few years, manufacturers and retailers in Britain have promoted recycling as the "green" remedy to the problem of domestic waste. Recycling is a solution they can live with, .since it favours centralized production and long distance distribution; reuse, on the other hand, gives an advantage to independent, locally-based producers - an advantage that corporate business stigmatizes as a "trade barrier". Large companies also prefer recycling because it allows a continuing expansion of industrial throughput and provides a convenient environmental excuse for planned obsolescence. Environmental groups who emphasize recycling over durability are playing into the hands of big business.

Recycling gets a spectacularly good press in developed countries. Thousands of advertisements, press releases and scientific papers extolling its virtues are posted each week by environmental groups, local councils and, above all, businesses. Large companies vie with each other to flaunt their green credentials: Alcan Aluminium announces that it is recycling 56,000 cans brought back to Britain from the Antarctic; British Nuclear Fuels sponsors "treecyclers" - cardboard depositories for office waste paper, which are sent out free. Others promote schemes to recycle polythene film into rubhish bags, plastic cups into coathangers1or paper into cow litter. Much of the advertising is directed at children. Television's cartoon eco-hero, Captain Planet, exhorts: "The best way to deal with waste is to recycle it! Don't forget, Planeteers, the power is yours."

This barrage of propaganda has touched a chord in the public conscience. "Apparently, people experience guilt knowing that wasteful packaging will end up in a landfill," says packaging consultant Inge Brissou. 'They seem to question whether all packaging is strictly necessary, and the act ol recycling seems to exonerate that guilt in some way". Many consumers now believe that the complex problems ol overconsumption in the North can be solved simply by saving newspapers and smashing bottles in a bottle bank.

The public, however, are being deliberately misled. A CUI sory examination of some of the more .scrious studies on waste is sutficient to refute Captain Planet's claim that recycling is the best way to deal with it. The US Environmental Protection Agency, tor example, has defined a hierarchy of waste management systems which places source-reduction, including reuse of packaging, above recycling, incineration and landtill, in that order. A report commissioned by Tetrapak, the drinks carton manufacturers. concluded that, in the UK, both reusable bottles and non-recyclable paper cartons were less environmentally-damaging than recycled containers "McDonald's hamburgers and the Environmental Defense Fund, working together. agreed that throwaway paper and plastic t:ast food wrappers are less harmful than recyclable polystyrene containers "And Friends of the Earth UK have published a document entitled "Bring Back the Bring Back", arguing strongly for reusable packaging '

If recycling is recognized as a less than ideal solution in many situations, why has it received such widespread backing'? Why are there not massive advertising campaigns to promote reuse or to reduce the consumption of unnecessary packaging'? Undoubtedly, environmental campaigners have tound that advocating recycling is an easy way to enlist support; and local councils have found that the establishment of bottle and can banks is a painless way to demon.strate concern tor the environment. But the fanatical enthusiasm of business for recycling demands a more searching explanation

Recycling Versus Reuse

The British Government Management Paper No. 28 defines recycling as "the collection and separation of materials from waste and subsequent processing to produce marketable goods". I ' This detinition rightly excludes any form of reuse. Reuse means conlinuing to use an item rather than destroying or reprocessing it. Refilling bottles. washing plates or passing on unwanted clothesaleailforlllsofreuse When a car is scrapped, the chassis and bodywork are recycled, that is to say melted down into raw steel; the engine or carburettor, however, may be salvaged or reused by being placed in another car.

The distinction between reuse and various forms of recycling could hardly be more basic, yet it is frequently undermined In a detailed study comparing the environmental benefits of various packaging systems, researchers David Pearce and Kerry Turner choose to group recycling and reuse under the same heading. by means of a mathemalical equation which allows no distinction hetween the perlormance ol relillable bottles and that of recyclable bottles.

Consumers may become confused as well. They are, of course, aware that recycled toilet paper is not the same as reused toilet paper But when they are asked to "recycle" old clothes in a "textile bank". from which a proportion are sent to the needy ...

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