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Recycling is more complex, because the process itself consumes energy and resources. Not sending items for disposal avoids creating those emissions. If 1 million metric tons of waste are landfilled, direct emissions equal about 274,000 tons of CO 2-equivalent, Miranda Gorman, a senior fellow with the group, explained to me. The recommendations also account for recycling’s tricky relationship with waste reduction-on its face, waste reduction alone saves much more in emissions. It gives more weight to solutions such as onshore wind turbines for that reason. Project Drawdown’s list centers on strategies that are feasible to adopt and have room for growth within the existing market.
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But when the group analyzed more than 80 separate means that could help keep the world from passing the oft-cited threshold of 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius of warming, the recycling industry’s projected contributions fell below the median, trailing geothermal power, efficient aviation, forest protection, and dozens of other actions. Project Drawdown, a nonprofit group that conducts reviews of climate solutions, includes recycling in its recommendations for reining in emissions. “Any time you use renewable resources, or secondary resources, there’s less carbon emitted than if you use primary resources,” Adam Minter, the author of Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade, an insider’s account of the international recycling business, told me.ĭespite the carbon involved in collection, transport, and processing, recycled aluminum, for example, is about 95 percent less energy-intensive to forge than its raw alternative. It is one of the easier climate-friendly acts individuals can undertake, and it reduces the extraction of virgin materials. “But we also have to acknowledge that recycling is not among the highest-priority actions.” “There are a lot of climate benefits to bolstering the recycling system,” Beth Porter, the author of Reduce, Reuse, Reimagine: Sorting Out the Recycling System, told me. Still, as climate actions go, even the most committed recyclers caution that this one has clear limits. This makes a certain intuitive sense, as recycling has well-documented benefits for the planet and can reduce carbon emissions. And among recycling enthusiasts, one group is particularly keen-people already concerned about climate change. This simple act is popular with Democrats, Republicans, free-market diehards, and environmental advocates alike, data consistently show. One of the few things Americans largely agree on is recycling.