“Waste” is, surprisingly, a modern idea. Sure, animals have always created waste, but when a squirrel poops in the forest, that poop is an input nature can benefit from. Likewise, for most of human history, our waste has been useful to nature: an apple core, the carbon dioxide we exhale, our body and excreta, even our products—like the wood of a chair or the cotton of a shirt. You could litter all of these in a forest and nature would have uses for all of it.

Garbage, as we know it today, came onto the scene about seventy-five years ago. We were fully seduced by the new concept of “throwaway living” brought to us through plastic-based products. Disposability was convenient and cheap. What more could we want?  It took close to 20 years for us to notice that these new materials we were throwing out were piling up around us.

We first noticed this problem in litter. Litter laws came about, then the first Earth Day in 1970 birthed the modern environmental movement, which itself birthed modern recycling. But recycling, while an important part of the circular economy, simply couldn’t keep pace with our consumption.

Until recently, there’d been little progress. But the movement of the ’70s has been reborn. Surrounded by more trash than ever, and with the internet to push this reality far and wide (think the 2015 video of a plastic straw being bloodily removed from a sea turtle’s nose), it’s once again become impossible to ignore the effects of our consumption and disposal patterns on the planet.

The Heart of the Trash Issue

No one would tell you that they’re happy with the current state of things: plastic piling up in landfills, collecting in giant ocean gyres, and degrading into microplastics that have been found in our blood.

But our open-loop economy is motivated entirely by convenience and profit maximization. Let's look at each stakeholder:

• CONSUMERS: Product price, quality and brand still rank well ahead of environmental impact when we’re choosing what to buy. We’re used to the convenience and low prices of the disposable products available to us today. We tend to only recycle if it’s convenient, or if we get an incentive, such as bottle deposits or other deposit return systems. There are no laws telling us we must recycle, and the idea of being legally required to recycle seems ludicrous. Ironically, don’t we get fined for littering? Yes, sometimes fined to an extreme: In 2015, a man in Singapore was fined $15,000 for throwing cigarette butts out a window.

• MANUFACTURERS & RETAILERS: Throughout most of history, products were made to be reused or repaired. Now, companies can invent almost anything and sell it without any sort of end-of-life plan. They only have to focus on production and sales. And they will always choose to maximize profits, which includes fueling consumption. Brands like to invest resources to expand their offerings in a non-cannibalistic way. For example, a shampoo company adds conditioner to its product line, a laundry detergent company adds fabric softener, a toothpaste company adds mouthwash. Until recently, there’s been no incentive to use recycled material in production or to make sure products or packaging get reused or recycled.

• RECYCLERS: Recycling is a for-profit business. Recyclers have no legal responsibility to recycle anything—they only accept materials they can profit from. These typically include items such as aluminum cans or #1 and #2 plastics. Almost everything can technically be recycled; it’s just not traditionally profitable to do so.

Because manufacturers want to increase margins, and their consumers want low prices, they choose the cheapest packaging options—typically highly-disposable and hard-to-recycle materials. The biggest megatrend in packaging is actually cost reduction, which actively removes value from packaging, making it less desirable for recyclers to bother collecting.  

The Packaging Waste Issue Is Getting Worse

While progress is being made, it’s objectively not enough. The growth in waste generation is actually outpacing the evolution of waste management infrastructure. The world is creating twice as much plastic waste as 20 years ago, and the vast majority is sent to landfills or mismanaged (leaked into the environment).

Businesses have been increasingly taking the initiative to reduce, reuse, or recycle their packaging, but most are not on track to meet their commitments. Virgin plastic use in packaging has actually increased (by 2.5% between 2020 and 2021).

Consumers want to do the right thing, but convenience is king, and the cost of living crisis is not helping.

We also have to mention recent events. In 2019, waste import bans by China and other countries caused end markets for plastic trash to disappear. In 2020, covid led to a huge surge in the use of disposables (like PPE). And now, the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine has posed massive roadblocks to the recycling industry.

Packaging Innovation Helps…

Great strides are being made in packaging innovation to phase out undesirable materials and transition to curbside-acceptable materials or other alternatives. While this is progress, changing material type only solves one piece of the puzzle. Practical recycling is still a challenge, given the insufficient collection and processing infrastructure.

Use of post-consumer recycled content (PCR) has been a focus, but the fact is that there’s simply not enough PCR available to meet demand. And the transition to reusables is slow, with organizations concerned about consumer adoption and not willing to meaningfully support reuse pilots.

Governments have begun stepping in (like with recycling claim standards, packaging bans and extended producer responsibility [EPR] laws). But progress here is also slow, and mandates don’t always translate to actual change when the underlying infrastructure isn’t considered. For instance, with not enough PCR to go around as is, mandating PCR use will cause an even great supply-demand gap.

Sustainability Must Become A Priority

Think of the current system as a river. How do rivers flow? With the path of least resistance (or, for our purposes, the path of convenience and profit). We’re not going to be able to force the river to flow up the mountain, so we have to honor its natural trajectory. What we can do is regulate the flow (legislation) or seduce the water to go another way (through other convenient and profitable options).

Ultimately, it’s all about the money. Sustainability needs to become a commercial priority. This will be achieved through legislation that incentivizes sustainable choices and leads to investment in infrastructure—and by consumers showing their preference with their purchasing decisions.

Policy takes time. In the meantime, we need action over commitments from organizations. Those that make sustainability a priority now will be ready for the inevitable mandates and stand to gain a competitive advantage.

Addressing the waste crisis will truly be a collective effort, with each segment of society having a role to play. We’ll only be successful if we commit to our roles and hold each other accountable. But the good news is that, since garbage is so new, we can look at it as solvable. We need to make our outputs something nature wants again.

With all that said, the true solution is to stop waste at the source. We all need to vote for a better future by buying less.



About the Author
Tom Szaky is founder, president and CEO of TerraCycle, a Trenton, NJ-based recycling company with the mission to “eliminate the idea of waste.” Szaky is also the founder of Loop, a global reuse platform enabled by a multistakeholder coalition of manufacturers, consumers and retailers united in the idea of eliminating the idea of waste. Loop partners include Beiersdorf, Henkel, Procter & Gamble and Unilever.