Book Reviewed by:Let's say you have an empty shampoo bottle or yogurt container. Should it go in your recycling bin or the trash? Chances are you'll check for the familiar three-arrow recycling symbol before deciding. But as Oliver Franklin-Wallis explains in Wasteland, the symbol we've all come to equate with recyclability simply means that an item theoretically can be recycled, not that it will be recycled in practice.
Adding to the confusion in the United States is that there is no federal recycling system in place to set uniform standards nationwide. Instead, recycling facilities and the items they accept vary widely across the country. "Recycling decision-making is currently in the hands of 20,000 communities in the U.S., all of which make their own choices about whether and what to recycle," says sustainability expert Stephanie Kersten-Johnston. No wonder a 2019 survey found that a large majority of Americans think recycling is more confusing than notoriously confounding ...
