Stop recycling now!

I mentioned in a previous posting that we started to exceed the planet’s carrying capacity more than a quarter of a century ago. So why do we persist in imaging that recycling can make any significant contribution to our current predicament? What recycling really means is that we can go on consuming at our current accelerating rate, just so long as we remember to put back a small fraction of what we consume. After all, very few recycled items can be recycled more than a few times, most produce a degraded product, and none of it makes more than a marginal difference. meanwhile, we continue to consume and consume - sucking in endless new resources.

If we are already over the limit, what can such a strategy possibly achieve? The only intelligible approach is to treat recycling as a very second-rate palliative, and recognise what the real problem is.

Stop recycling now – and start to radically reduce what you consume. More of less!