Selling rubbish It should not be taken for granted that recycling is more efficient than chucking something away. A study by the Technical University of Denmark looked at 55 products and compared the effects of burying, burning or recycling them. More than 80% of the time, the researchers found, recycling was the most efficient thing to do with household rubbish. Recycling is indispensable. It has big benefits for humanity. It conserves natural resources. It also reduces the amount of waste that is buried or burnt. (Landfills take up valuable space and emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas; and although incinerators are not as polluting as they once were, they still produce noxious emissions, so people dislike having them around.) But perhaps the most valuable benefit of recycling is the saving in energy and the reduction in greenhouse gases and pollution that result when scrap materials are substituted for virgin feedstock. We can’t do without recycling.

So what is the best way to get more people to recycle more? The first step is to use new technologies that allow for a “single stream” of recyclable waste. People are more inclined to recycle things if they do not have to sort them into different bins. For instance, San Francisco switched to single-stream recycling a few years ago and now boasts one of the highest recycling rates in America. The second step is to sell recycling waste, often to emerging markets. That is controversial, because of the suspicion that the waste will be dumped, or that workers and the environment will be poorly protected. The last step is to make people pay for their unrecyclable waste and reward them for what they recycle. Electronic tags fixed to bins can weigh each household’s waste and bill for it accordingly.