Recycling Isn’t Enough for the Climate Crisis
- Tram Om
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
Years of climate misinformation points to society in need of systemic reforms
By Tram On
January 9, 2025
Youthcast Media Group®
In Mala Persaud’s little store in the historic part of Vienna, Virginia, neatly labeled dispenser bins line the walls. Wooden shelves are laden with bulk containers of everything from hand soap to vinegar, reusable bags to pasta.
Patrons bring their own jars, bags, bins, whatever they have, fill them up, and pay by weight. In the four years since opening, Persaud estimates having filled nearly 32,000 containers.
“I started Trace because I got tired of seeing all of the single-use packaging and plastic and garbage and trash pile up,” she says. Helping reduce waste was one way she wanted to help, Persaud says, but the store is also a hub for something she believes is critical in making a difference in the climate crisis: information.
“The number one problem is that we're all believing that recycling is enough,” says Persaud. “And it is not.”
Recycling has risen steadily since programs began in the 1960s, when rates were around 6% in the U.S. In recent years, that number has increased to around 32%. On its face, this might seem like success. But despite decades of messaging about the importance of individual efforts like recycling, and how plastic pollution contributes to the climate crisis, the 2025 Cop30 climate summit confirmed the global community missed the “irreversible” target limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature increase.
Part of the reason for this, says John Cook, a Senior Research Fellow at the Melbourne Centre for Behaviour Change, is that major industries are primarily responsible for climate-affecting pollution, but have worked hard to shift the blame to individuals, including by pioneering much of the messaging that emphasizes the importance of recycling.
“They are trying to … say that it is your job as an individual citizen to solve climate change,” Cook says. “It's not our job to transition from burning fossil fuels to clean sources of energy, so that’s actually a form of misinformation.”
For example, the familiar language around carbon footprint originates with a 2004 British Petroleum (BP) public relations campaign. As part of a $200 million campaign to rebrand itself as “Beyond Petroleum," BP released a carbon footprint calculator which purported to give consumers tools to assess how everyday activities like driving to work or eating meat were responsible for global warming.
Accusations of greenwashing came soon after and have persisted. As recently as 2021, environmental activist Rebecca Solnit characterized such efforts as “insidious propaganda”, writing for the Guardian. The Union of Concerned Scientists claims decision-makers across the industry have long “knowingly deceived the public about the climate science and policy” of fossil fuel production and consumption, while also silencing and intimidating scientists in their own companies. Such accusations gained momentum and volume after the catastrophic BP-owned Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, which spilled more than 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico over three months in 2010.
The international scientific consensus is clear that removing and reducing carbon emissions in the atmosphere at scale is what must happen to make meaningful climate impact. The industrial sector contributes a quarter of all global carbon emissions, with nearly 68% of greenhouse gas emissions originating in fossil fuels. Scientists also agree that the risk of, and actual, harm resulting from “human-caused greenhouse gases is beyond scientific dispute.”
“There's a lot of misinformation being generated by both industry and political groups to confuse the public about climate change [and delay] climate action,” Cook says. “Climate change misinformation is a really complicated topic. It involves psychology, culture, politics, technology and developing solutions that tackle all these different aspects.”
Policy’s role is critical, but gets mixed results when it comes to industry, says Younsung Kim, Professor of Public Policy and Management in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at George Mason University. Incentive programs like bottle buy-backs or plastic bag taxes work well on consumers, but in cap-and-trade programs, for example, the concessions allowing companies to purchase carbon credits rather than reduce emissions means many simply choose to bear those additional costs rather than make changes.
While regulating or changing industry emissions has the potential for the most impact, however, consumer behavior is not irrelevant, and when adopted at scale, has shown to be effective.
“The big thing that people really need to re-educate ourselves around is that reduce, reuse, recycle is a hierarchy with reduce on the top and recycling at the bottom,” says Persaud.
Government can support individual action by making things easy for people, and making sure they’re educated, says Catie Torgerson, the Sustainability Program Manager in the Solid Waste Management Program of Fairfax County’s Department of Public Works & Environmental Services in Virginia.
"Taking individual responsibility for the things that we do [makes] a difference,” Torgerson says.
In 10 states, including California and New York, bottle bill legislation has incentivized consumers to recycle more with return rates of 71% in Vermont, 73% in Michigan and 87% in Oregon as of 2023. Perhaps more importantly, says Kim, legislation should encourage consumers to recognize the value of recyclable products as money, not just waste.
Efforts such as these, which reduce not only individual packaging of products, but plastic bag use, can have an impact when adopted at scale. A 2024 report by Environment America on 5 plastic bag bans found that 300 single-use plastic bags from each individual—down from an average of 365—could be eliminated with the right policies.
Torgerson says efforts to educate and clarify messaging around items that can be recycled and outreach about available resources should be ongoing, and constantly trying to improve. For individuals, she says starting small, but aiming big, is a great place to start.
“It's great if you can just stop using single-use plastic altogether, but that's really, really hard,” Torgerson says. She suggests starting with things that feel manageable, like using reusable snack bags for lunches, or committing to not using straws or plastic bags when out dining or shopping.
“If you can just pick one thing and try to make it a habit, that makes it a lot easier,” Torgerson says.
But the critical step to making a difference is a partnership between systems–like industry and governments–and individuals.
“Regulation is a key strategy,” says Cook. “[It’s] not the only strategy, but a very important strategy to trying to reduce fossil fuel emissions…Sending the social signal that we care about [climate change] is important.”
Finding local groups and engaging in collective action, including protests or petitioning representatives or officials is a great approach, Cook says, as they teach possible solutions and provide connection: “Once we start building those…public conversations about climate change, that builds the social momentum, which then gives momentum to political action.”
At the rate that the climate crisis is intensifying, a larger structural approach is critical, says Maggie O’Donnell, a project manager for the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education at Columbia University. Individual efforts that promote substantial solutions include expressing feelings to your representative or suggesting to your bank to invest in more renewable energy projects and less in fossil fuel infrastructure.
Collective action is important as climate change affects all of us, O’Donnell says. Hurricanes don’t care if you are rich or poor, but it’s the less affluent communities that are more vulnerable to climate crises, and have a harder time bouncing back if they lack the proper resources.
“Lower socioeconomic communities have always been harder hit by environmental damage…[they’re] almost always positioned where mining is happening, or where some industrial factories [are] seeping toxic chemicals into the local environment,” Cook says. “They're the hardest hit, they're the least able to adapt, and they've contributed the least to [climate change].”
While O’Donnell understands why thinking about individual action can be disheartening, she cautions against buying into the belief that a single effort is insubstantial against the scale of climate change.
“I think that often gets in the way of you being able to take more long term, bigger impacts with your community,” O’Donnell says.
Cook agrees, and says that our history of success using collective action gives him hope.
“As individuals, we make a difference, and history tells us that a small group of people can make a big difference.” Cook says. “It's challenging, it's difficult, but it has happened before, so we can do it again.”
Tram On is a sophomore at Annandale High School in Virginia, one of Youthcast Media Group’s journalism class partners. She worked with YMG mentor-editor Hannah Gaber on this story.
Comments