Is Recycling a Lie?

Why refilling, and closed loop systems that actually work, are the real answers.

The hope and promise of recycling are really nice: that we can just toss any of the plastic items we use in the correct bin, and know that there’s no waste problem anymore! Plastic will just be broken down and reused for other plastic items, right? 

If you’re on this page, chances are you already know it’s not that simple. 

So, you’ve turned to companies like TerraCycle, which collects “hard-to-recycle” waste and finishes the job. As the founder and operator of a sustainable makeup company, I’ve turned to TerraCycle in hopes of true recycling, too. 

But this would be a real different blog post if the answer were: “and then recycling worked, and everything was fine!”

Don’t worry– after the bad news, there’s really good news. And answers that do work.

Why Can’t All the Plastic Just Get Recycled?

TerraCycle’s promise is that they’ll figure out how to recycle anything for you. It sounds like a great idea! Even big corporations, like L’Oreal, as well as so many small companies and individuals (you might have seen a TerraCycle return box out in the wild), have signed on to send their hard-to-recycle waste along to the great recycling savior who will 100% promise to find a way to break down and reuse what you’ve sent them. 

The first problem is that most plastic is not actually recyclable. 

According to internal petroleum industry documents (find more info at that link), the majority of plastic products are designed in a way that prevents their being recycled in the first place. 

There are businesses TerraCycle partners with that melt down bits of reusable plastic into pellets that other manufacturers will use— but even when the trash coming in from TerraCycle is categorizable for that reuse case, as we begin to understand the scope of the damage microplastics are causing in our ecosystems and even our bodies, it’s absolutely not a good move to just shred old plastic and keep it around.

Meanwhile, TerraCycle doesn’t even do their own recycling. They outsource it and just invite their customers to perform any checks on whether the recycling is successful. Huge amounts of the trash sits in sorting facilities, waiting to be processed in some way, if it even can be– and there are questions as to whether some of it just ends up in landfills after all that. 

Ultimately, there’s far too much new plastic being produced to actually keep up with, and even recycling the plastics that can be broken down and reused, the amount of successful plastic recycling in the U.S. has never reached above 9%. 

It would be significantly better for the environment, by every measure, to just stop producing plastic completely, and focus on designing reusable or waste-free packaging and manufacturing with sustainable materials. 

Why do companies keep making packaging that’s so hard to recycle? 

Because they can. 

It’s easier for them to slap a little TerraCycle symbol on their old packaging and get a greenwashing halo in the customers’ eyes than to actually reformulate or redesign the materials they’re using to create responsible, reusable, and biodegradable packaging. 

Thanks to production systems in place as well as subsidies for the petroleum industry, plastic is super cheap and easy for companies to make. They’ve got no incentive to change what they’re doing unless we stop buying from them– voting with our dollars for them to behave differently. 

Most of the time, they respond with as little effort as possible to make consumers believe their values are being supported. That’s how we end up with greenwashing, instead of companies actually redesigning their packaging and production systems.

So you’re saying we’re doomed to live on a planet covered in garbage?

Not in the least! Don’t forget that everything humans have ever done on this earth that seemed like it would last forever has ultimately changed. And the fact that we’re trying to recycle, and latching onto ideas like TerraCycle so strongly, actually speaks very highly of our collective choice and power! 

If we weren’t demanding better options for our planet, companies wouldn’t be scrambling to appease us. 

Now, do they cut as many corners as possible and lie to us in the process? Yes. This is one of many reasons to shop small, shop local, and know where your products are coming from. 

Speaking of which! We’re moving on to the good news! 

Refilleries work way better than recycling to prevent waste. (What’s a refillery?)

A refillery is a store where customers can bring their own reusable containers to fill and refill with goods like food, spices, personal cleaning items, and home cleaning products. Refilleries also usually have zero-waste items you don’t need to refill, like shampoo bars and zero-waste deodorant, and reusable items like plastic-free food storage wraps and bamboo dishwashing scrub brushes. 

Refill stores offer items that come in bulk to save packaging– rather than a shelf of many little plastic bottles of dish soap, they’ll have one giant drum of it, ready to pump out into your soap dispenser you brought from home. Then you just pay by weight for your soap without having to pay for the cost of a container!

We’ve got a great list of our refill store partners here so you can find one near you, btw.

When you bring your own containers and jars to a refillery, you’ve just eliminated the need for new containers to be manufactured. 

You’re preventing plastic and other waste and saving carbon emissions that would have gone into creating a new container, all before you even set foot in the refill store.

And you don’t have to go out and buy a bunch of new mason jars, either– for example, clean and save a jar of spaghetti sauce you just used, bring it to the refillery, and fill it up with something like granola, rolled oats, lentils, anything you want. The next time you want to go to the refillery, you just can use that jar again.

Some refilleries even have a donation bin for jars they’ll clean and offer as an option to shoppers who need a jar that day. You can donate your extras, or grab one if you find yourself in need of an extra. 

What are Closed Loop production systems?

A Closed Loop is a system where everything is completely reused, like cleaning and reusing product containers instead of manufacturing new ones, and finding sustainable ways to reuse or repurpose every bit of waste, like upcycling old fabric into clothing or other goods instead of making unnecessary new fabric. 

TerraCycle, to be absolutely fair, has been trying to introduce closed-loop practices to large corporations; for example, they developed a stainless-steel reusable ice cream container for Haagen-Daazs, which in theory can be refilled with ice cream and returned to grocery stores many times to be industrially cleaned and reused. 

Again, I’m not personally going to the well of large corporate systems to try and change things, but I don’t mind anyone’s work in that direction. 

To toot the horn of refilleries, shopping small, and shopping local: refilleries can be closed loop, or very nearly closed loop! They even wash and reuse the big bulk containers that you get your personal refills from, meaning they’re preventing the waste of thousands of single-use bottles by the time any of the big containers wear down too much to use. 

And at Zerra, growing our successful Container Return Program is our way of aiming for a closed-loop system. 

It’s my personal and professional mission in life to make this earth a healthy, sustainable, waste-free place for all of us. 

It’s progress, not perfection– that’s the very best thing for us as people and for the world, because progress is possible and perfection is not!