After many years of campaigns to raise awareness of the importance of having several garbage cans in our homes, recycling is taking hold in society. For many families it is already a habit that is done automatically: in reality it does not take much effort to throw the tetrabrik and the orange peels in different bags and deposit each one in a different container.
But it’s not enough. In 2025, the member countries of the European Union will have to recycle at least 55% of all their municipal waste, and 65% by 2035. A figure that Spain is still far from reaching, despite the increase in recycling rates in our country.
Many citizens wonder if their waste is worth recycling. The answer is a resounding YES, because thanks to recycling millions of tons of waste are prevented from piling up in landfills. The issue of waste is a headache: we are more and more, and we consume a lot. Our waste is an environmental and health problem: it takes up a lot of space, deteriorates the landscape, pollutes soil, water and air, smells bad, has a high risk of fire, can be a source of diseases, increase greenhouse gas emissions, etc. In addition, a high economic investment is needed in waste management and maintenance, raw materials are wasted and waste buying and selling situations occur that turn poor regions into global landfills.
For all this: yes, it is worth recycling. Thanks to recycling, it is avoided that the volume of waste that reaches landfills is much greater and materials are recovered that can serve as raw materials to enter the cycle again. Recycling is fundamental in the circular economy, a way of producing and consuming towards which we must tend in the coming years , given the delicate state of our planet and the depletion of the resources that we have enjoyed and abused as if there were bars. free in the last centuries.
Recycling should be the last thing
However, make no mistake: recycling is a part, but it is not everything. Cluttering the yellow, green and blue containers with our waste, thinking that this is done, that they are going to be recycled and that is enough, it is not enough.
As we have already commented before, there are many of us, we consume too much , at a much faster rate than the resources have to regenerate again or the recycling plants (which, apart from having an energy cost, cannot recycle 100% of materials) need to return the raw material to us.
To solve the environmental problem of waste (and others), the first thing is to reduce and reuse. The famous 3Rs have precisely that order: reduce our consumption, reuse the products that we are going to throw away, taking advantage of them for other purposes and giving them a second chance (here there is no Marie Kondo worth it, the best thing to simplify our life is to have less things and use them for longer ), and now, as a last option, recycle.
The famous 3Rs have been joined by many others within this way of thinking, living and producing that is the circular economy: redesign, repair, redistribute, rethink … recycling is worth it, of course, and you have to do it more and better, But let’s not forget the rest of the “r’s”!
