Recycling encourages people to buy sustainably

The argument

Recycling educates people about how we should take care of the environment, and this argument holds that the education does not stop at the bin. Sorting waste puts a person in regular contact with the consequences of what they have consumed — how much packaging came with it, what that packaging is made of, whether any of it can be recovered — and that is information about purchasing as much as about disposal. With that knowledge people become prone to buy more environmentally friendly things. The examples are ordinary ones: metal and paper straws in place of disposable plastic, taking more initiative to use cars less or to buy an electric one, and sorting through their rubbish as a matter of course. What links them is that each involves a decision taken before the waste exists, which is where the larger environmental gains lie. The mechanism is consistency. Someone who spends time each week separating materials has adopted a view of themselves as a person who takes the problem seriously, and that self-understanding carries into unrelated decisions in the shop, the showroom and the kitchen. The small habit is valuable not only for what it recovers but because it makes a broader set of choices feel like the obvious ones. By encouraging a culture of recycling, then, people become more conscientious about the other products they use as well, and the effects extend well beyond the material collected. A household that buys less disposable packaging in the first place has prevented waste rather than merely processed it. Recycling therefore works on consumption and not only on refuse, and its wider positive effects follow from the awareness it builds. Because it encourages people to buy sustainably, recycling does work and improves the environment.

Premises

Counter-arguments

No matter how much people learn about and want to recycle, it’s mainly up to industries to carry the recycling movement. Although paper and metal straws are used in a few areas of the world, plastic and waste is still produced by big companies. Advertising encourages people to buy products that harm the environment. Unfortunately, eco-friendly lifestyles aren’t advertised much, making them unpopular or unknown to the public. Plus, electric cars are very expensive, and for many it wouldn’t be convenient to switch to different ways to commute.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] It’s ultimately up to people to practice what they learn. Most likely, they won’t recycle as much as hoped. [Rejecting P2] Changing a lifestyle on a large scale is tough and shouldn’t be expected of people.