I'm William Brangham, and this is "Horizons."

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.

It's the mantra we have heard for decades.

But does it work?

What exactly can be recycled?

From single use plastics to pizza boxes, separating fact from fiction when it comes to recycling our garbage.

Coming up next.

♪ Narrator: Support for "Horizons" has been provided by Steve and Marilyn Kerman and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Additional support is provided by Friends of the News Hour.

♪ This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

From the David M. Rubenstein Studio at WETA in Washington, here is William Brangham.

Welcome to "Horizons."

The world is drowning in trash.

Each day, we toss out three and a half million tons of it.

Over the course of a year, that adds up to somewhere over two billion tons.

This colossal mountain we're constructing isn't just a benign eyesore that we can stash away somewhere or bury or burn.

Its presence pollutes our lands and waters with harmful impacts to many living things on Earth.

The U.N.

estimates that, if we don't change course, just the amount of plastic trash we produce is projected to triple by 2060.

One proposed solution to this crisis is recycling.

And while polls show that a strong majority of us, almost 90 percent, support recycling, those of us who actually do it and do it correctly is much, much smaller.

And to be honest, there's also a lingering cynicism that recycling is a scam, that it doesn't really help, and that it's more about making us feel good than doing something meaningful.

So we want to take a good, hard look at recycling.

Does it work?

Whose responsibility is it?

And is it really a workable solution for the scale of the problem facing us?

For that, we turn to two experts in this field.

Meredith Danberg-Ficarelli is the co-founder and COO of WATS, which is a tech company that helps businesses reduce their waste.

And Judith Enck is the founder of Beyond Plastics, an organization that campaigns to end plastic waste.

She's co-author of the book "The Problem with Plastic."

Thank you both so much for being here.

Judith, I would love to start with you first.

And let's take up this point that I just mentioned, this this cynicism that exists out there, that people think recycling isn't real, it doesn't do anything, it doesn't really help.

Take on that idea.

And what's your argument against that?

Well, most recycling does work and people should keep recycling their paper, metal, glass, cardboard and, of course, compost your yard waste and food waste.

But I think people are cynical because of plastics.

Plastic recycling has been an abysmal failure.

Only about five to six percent of plastics in the United States actually gets recycled.

So we need to be honest about the shortcomings of plastics recycling, but also recognize that other materials can be made from recycled material and are indeed recyclable.

Far more important than recycling, though, is waste reduction.

You mentioned reduce, reuse, recycling, and we often skip reduce, reuse, refill and go right to recycling.

And it's even worse than that, because ,if you look at your local government budget or your private hauler waste fees, most money actually goes to landfilling and incineration.

So in short, I think recycling of paper, cardboard, metal, glass, should really continue.

The public supports recycling.

And let's just take plastics almost out of the equation.

Most plastics never get recycled.

And I think the confusion is because of the millions of dollars spent by the plastics industry trying to deceive the public that plastic recycling actually works when it doesn't.

Okay, let's get into some of that in a bit.

Meredith, I'm going to put that same question to you.

You obviously... you created a company that helps businesses reduce their waste.

You obviously believe that it's a potent thing.

Make that case.

Yeah, I mean, when I think about this, this question, I really think about information, access to information, transparency.

And I find that the apathy and the cynicism that people feel can really be linked back to the fact that those people might not have enough information, might not have enough context to be able to trust the systems that they depend on.

So let's say you're in an office building and you see the janitorial team collecting the trash, the recycling.

Hey, maybe there is compost in your office.

And those materials are in different colored bags, a black bag for trash, clear bag for recycling, a green bag for compost.

And you see them collecting those materials and they put them all in one wheelie cart and they leave the space.

And you're immediately like, "This system doesn't work.

"It's broken.

That janitor failed."

But what the individual isn't able to see is that the standard procedures in that building might be that in order to save time on janitorial costs, the bags get combined in one rolling hamper.

And when they get to the loading dock, they get separated again.

And it's that lack of visibility into the system that is the problem, not the only problem.

A lot of the things that Judith mentioned are also obviously issues.

And even when it comes to plastic recycling in some places, plastics can be recycled.

But if people don't have the right information about what to put where and why, they're bound to distrust that system.

It's one of the reasons that we're building software.

So, Judith, I mentioned and you echoed this as well, that people are broadly supportive of the idea of recycling.

But when you look at the actual rates of implementation, quite, quite low in comparison, what are the big challenges to effective, efficient recycling in our society?

Well, we need to make it easy for people, so if you have curbside pickup of your municipal solid waste, you should also have curbside pickup of recyclables.

I think about 20 years ago, there was some pretty good education about recycling, but we need to hit the reset button.

A lot of local governments don't do a good job educating new residents or tenants or public housing facilities.

I think the public generally wants to recycle.

There are so many big environmental challenges from climate change to lack of biodiversity, plastics showing up not just in our rivers and oceans, but also in our own bodies.

People want to do something, but we need to make it convenient.

And we also, I would argue, need more government oversight and, dare I say, regulation, because for many people in the US, they have private waste haulers and it's the Wild West.

Some of them do a good job, some of them do not do a good job, and there needs to be oversight.

This is typically done by local governments, but state governments can certainly do more.

I've kind of given up on the Trump administration doing anything helpful on the environment, so we'll just put them aside for now.

But state environmental agencies, local governments can do so much more to educate people.

And I think evidence of that desire to recycle is we have so many people doing what I call wish-cycling, putting material in the recycling bin that actually doesn't get recycled because it's fundamentally not recyclable, which is most plastics, other than those that are labeled number one and number two on the bottom.

And then finally, a really good, convenient way to boost recycling and have high quality materials is 10 states have bottle bills, refundable beverage container laws.

So if you buy a bottle of soda, you pay a minimum deposit, you get that deposit refund back when you return it to the store.

That is the gold standard of recycling because it keeps all the material separate and clean.

And virtually all of that bottle bill material does get recycled.

And the question is, why are there only 10 states with bottle bills?

The screen is showing this innovation.

You don't even have to count it one by one.

Machines will count it for you.

Why don't we have a national bottle bill?

Why don't more states have bottle bills?

The only reason is because of massive political opposition from Coke and Pepsi and supermarkets.

And that's a clear example of producers of waste not wanting to take any responsibility for what they put on the market.

So bottle bills are just a very basic first step that I think every state should adopt.

And it has the added benefit of less litter in our communities.

Meredith, this point that Judith is making is so often in this conversation, the onus is put on us as the consumer, that we need to do better in using less, that we need to recycle, that we need to get our shopping bags out.

And as Judith is pointing out, there are other perhaps far more powerful and bigger actors in this ecosystem that often escape accountability for that.

What would you add to that?

Oh, gosh, where to start?

One important thing is to talk about the fossil fuel subsidies that exist and the fact that fossil fuel companies have really made a big bet that plastics is their future.

Amy Westervelt's Drilled podcast is an excellent resource to dig into if someone wants to learn more about this entire industry.

And that can be demotivating.

Imagining going up against the fossil fuel industry, it's a big feat.

But I think it speaks, and Judith mentioned this, it speaks to the scale of the challenge that we're facing, of the scale of the messaging that exists, that is leading people to think the way that they do, and that is leading people to assume that once it goes away, something good happens to it.

And that isn't really the case.

I would also like to add that, again, to Judith's point, there are more than 9000 municipalities across the country, and each of them has a different recycling system because recycling infrastructure is local.

It is very unique to the place.

And that includes the trucks, the facilities where the recycling materials go to get sorted.

Those are called MRFs or materials recovery facilities.

And the materials that leave these facilities are veiled commodities that end up going all over the globe.

And different MRFs have different capacity.

They have the technology within them is newer or older.

And therefore, the materials that can be recycled in a particular place are different depending on the infrastructure in that region.

This is very confusing for people.

And one of the things that I always start with when I'm educating people about waste is it's confusing and it's not your fault.

One of the things that the individual is responsible for right now is learning, calling their municipality, going on a website, going to their commercial waste vendors' website where often there isn't information to try to learn what do I do with an aerosol can or a mattress or a laundry jug, number two HDPE plastic, which is theoretically recyclable.

And that onus, that burden being put on the consumer is a big problem because most people aren't going to do that.

Most people are not trash nerds like me and Judith and all of our trashy friends.

And we can't assume that an individual has the capacity, the wherewithal, the willingness, the time to learn those things, especially if they're going to a new place.

When I travel to a new place, I'm not usually going on the municipality's website to understand how the recycling system works.

Sometimes I do put compost in a Ziploc bag and bring it home with me or save my aluminum cans until I know that I'm in a place where I can dispose of them properly.

Meredith, I hope I can now count myself one of your trashy friends.

That would make me very happy.

Judith, help me understand something.

We've always been told that the end result of recycled products is they are lucrative and valuable and that they ought to be treated like a commodity.

If that is the case, why has our efficient capitalist system not stepped up more aggressively and created a system whereby we can turn our waste into a profitable product, if that's a real formula?

I think it is a real formula, and also recycling creates lots of jobs, entry level jobs.

I mean, when you think about it, we're burying and burning natural resources that could be put back into the economy.

So, you know, I think certain commodities have a decent record, but it all comes back to two things.

One is people putting material into their recycling bin think that that's the end.

That's just the beginning.

So you've got to put the right things into your bin and then for it really to be recycled, it has to go to a factory and be utilized again and replace virgin materials.

The second point I want to make is that we live in a throwaway society and that is fundamentally the problem.

We have too much stuff in our lives and recycling alone cannot keep up with all of this.

The United States is four percent of the world's population.

We use 16 percent of the world's energy, not surprisingly, create 12% of the world's waste.

So when you say something is being thrown away, there really is no away.

So I view recycling is the Band-Aid.

And again, I want to be really clear.

People should keep recycling cardboard, paper, metal, glass.

I'm very skeptical about plastics recycling because unlike an old aluminum can can be made into a new aluminum can, a lot of the plastic packaging in particular does not really get recycled into a similar product.

It gets recycled into plastic lumber, which has a whole host of problems, especially when it's cut, and sometimes into clothing and microfibers will shed when you put your clothing in the washing machine or the dryer.

So my fear is that some of the cynicism around recycling is really more around plastics recycling.

And we've got to keep the other materials being recycled, create jobs, prevent litter and not burdening environmental justice communities, which are often the communities that are stuck hosting garbage incinerators and landfills.

Meredith, in that ecosystem of recycling and turning those back into products that can enter the consumer system again, how much of that is real?

Like oftentimes people will see products that say something, something percentage post-recycled content.

As a consumer, if I care about this and I want to then put money towards recycled products, is that an opaque system or is that easy to figure out?

How do you how do you help a consumer out in that regard?

The entire waste industry is opaque.

Let's start there.

It's one of the reasons, again, that we're building software, is because there's so little transparency into what's happening.

What is this material?

Where does it belong?

Where is it going to go?

Who can pick it up?

Where should it go if I go somewhere else?

It's very hard.

When it comes to recycled content and post-consumer recycled content, those are two different things.

So that's an important distinction that is also confusing.

Post-consumer recycled means that the material that made the product that you're holding at one point was in the hand of another consumer.

So I like to think of like toilet paper tubes as an example.

You recycle the tube, put it in your paper recycling bin.

Eventually it can get turned into another paper product.

It will down cycle a little bit.

The fibers and paper get shorter and shorter every time you recycle them.

But it's still recyclable.

And that's important.

A different type of recycled content, just recycled content, might be the off cuttings from the factory floor getting recycled back into a product.

There's more complexity to it than that, but even that distinction is complicated.

It's real.

Those are real things.

There are products that we can buy that are made of recycled content, post-consumer recycled content, different percentages of recycled content.

And I think it's very important that our policies incentivize and ideally require companies to use those standards, recycled content standards in the production of their product, because that will increase demand for those recovered commodities.

And right now, especially because of a lot of the subsidies and the maybe unequalness in our economy, in our global materials economy, it can be cheaper to use a virgin material, especially when we're talking about plastic, than it might be to use a recovered material.

And pushing for policies that encourage using post-consumer recycled content or recycled content in products will help to drive more use of recovered materials across the economy.

Judith, I want to turn back to something you mentioned before.

You mentioned this idea of wish-cycling, which is the desire that people have to recycle everything that they've got.

And I know that that often ends up with people putting things into their recycling bins that should not go into the recycling bins because they gum up the works in one way or another.

So I wonder if... I'm going to just tick off a bunch of things that me and my colleagues put together a list of things that people wonder about.

Should this go into my recycling bin?

First one to you, Judith, pizza boxes.

Can pizza boxes be recycled?

If there's grease on the top or the bottom, you should pull it apart.

So this varies by community, by community, as Meredith mentioned.

But what I'm just going to answer these questions in terms of how I do it in this lightning round.

If there's a little bit of grease, I don't put that part.

But I am known to pull the pizza boxes apart.

And if it's just plain cardboard with not a lot of grease on it, yes, you can put it in your recycling bin.

Okay, Meredith, even with the caveats we've heard about plastic recycling, everyone is familiar with these plastic clamshell takeout salad boxes, those sort of soft plastic clamshells.

Can those go in the recycling bin?

I feel like I have to talk about pizza boxes first and then get to the clamshells.

Judith said that it depends on where you are.

I have spoken to the pulp facilities and not all of them, obviously, but some of them don't care about grease.

But don't keep your pizza in the box.

Eat the food or compost the pizza if you're not going to eat it.

But in a lot of places, it is okay for there to be a little grease on the pizza box.

And so it does depend.

But to Judith's point, when in doubt, you can tear off the grease and compost that or put it in the trash.

But where I live and elsewhere, New York City, for example, it is okay to recycle a pizza box that has some grease on it.

Again, just no food.

Speaking to the clamshells, those are hard to recycle.

It can be considered a hard to recycle material depending on where you are in the country.

If I use New York City again as an example, the messaging for residents in New York City is to put any rigid plastic in the recycling bin as long as it's not contaminated with food or sauce or something like that.

That's when you would rinse the item or put it in the trash if you can't get it clean.

But in other parts of the country, things like clamshells should not be put in the recycling bin.

The plastics that they might accept in recycling might be more standard things like PET bottles.

So that's like your water bottles or your beverage containers or maybe laundry jugs, which are an HDPE number two plastic.

And in some places, a number five polypropylene, like a yogurt container, might be acceptable.

But it really does depend on where you are.

Judith, I mean, oftentimes people will look for that number at the bottom of a container.

Do those numbers tell us anything?

We have about a minute and a half left.

Are those numbers a useful guide to people if they exist?

Yeah, and those numbers are shrinking.

I mean, I find them helpful.

I only put number one and number two plastic in my recycling bin, and it's often waste haulers that say, "Put it all in" and then they'll sort it out later.

But I think that's a mistake.

And I get into this in tremendous detail in my book, "The Problem with Plastic," because the plastics industry has been essentially deceiving the public about what is and isn't recyclable with plastics for decades.

It's so serious that the California Attorney General, Rob Bonta, actually sued ExxonMobil for misleading the public about plastics recycling.

And then even when you're just putting things like milk jugs and soda bottles and detergent bottles into the recycling bin, you have to worry that plastics can contaminate the paper and the cardboard.

So the most important thing to do is take every step possible to reduce your use of plastics.

And your best route to get less plastics is by working for new laws that require that.

Brangham: I got to tell you, there's a million more questions I have for you two, and we're going to have to just do a whole separate episode about this, because I know this is a huge issue for a lot of people.

Judith Enck, Meredith Danberg-Ficarelli, thank you both so much for being here.

Really appreciate your time.

And I'm thrilled to be your trash buddies.

- [Laughs] - Welcome to the club.

Brangham: Thank you so much for being here.

And that is it for this episode of "Horizons."

You can watch us on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe or give us a rating.

It will help more people see this program.

Thank you so much for watching.

We'll see you next week.

Narrator: Support for "Horizons" has been provided by Steve and Marilyn Kerman and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Additional support is provided by Friends of the News Hour.

♪ This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

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