Have you ever made a wish at a wishing well? You take a coin, close your eyes, make a wish, and toss the coin into the well. Sometimes your wish comes true, sometimes it doesn’t. Either way, you likely forget about it a day later. When it’s just a penny, it’s not a big deal. But unfortunately, we do this on a daily basis with things much larger than a penny. It’s called wishcycling and we are all guilty.
You know when you’ve got an empty plastic bag that you are debating whether to throw into the garbage can or the recycling bin? What do you do? If you are like me, you might close your eyes, wish that it’s recyclable, and toss it into the recycling. Maybe it’ll be recycled, maybe not. By tomorrow, you won’t even remember what happened to the bag because you’ll be trying to decide what to do with your empty milk carton.
On and on and on, the cycle repeats. We wish and we throw, wish and throw. Most often, our recycling is larger than our garbage. Which is a good thing, right?! Maybe. But before you say yes, ask yourself: Did you throw those old batteries in the bin last week? Or that broken lightbulb? Or that muddy water bottle you found? Or that “superfood” bar wrapper? If these questions are making you second guess what you did with those old gym shoes or that bike tire or that juice box, then you’ve probably wishcycled a time or two like me.
But unless you take the time to find out what the proper course of action is, you are likely doing more harm than good. Simply wishing that a piece of trash is recycled doesn’t mean that it will be. In fact, you could be contaminating an entire bin of perfectly good recycling material. One cheesy pizza box in the recycling bin means that all those cans and jars you’ve saved up will simply make their way to the landfill instead.
And the fact that you’ve created more waste than if you’d simply thrown those items away is not the only issue. The nonrecyclable items that you threw into the recycling bin can cause the recycling factory’s machines to malfunction or can injure a worker. The best that can happen when you wishcycle is that your item gets recycled. But the consequences are far worse.
On the other end of the spectrum, throwing recyclables into the trash is no good either. It’s good to have a realistic mindset and to not throw everything you use into the recycling bin, but you don’t want to be a wasteful cynic either. If you find yourself thinking, “Oh, they probably can’t recycle this anyway,” then you, too, have some research to do. The only way to avoid the guessing game is to find out for yourself.
And this really is something to take seriously. Currently, only 9% of recyclable plastic is actually recycled. That means that the other 91% ends up where it shouldn’t be (the landfill, our oceans, our streets). And there are two main reasons for it. One, is apathy (not recycling at all) and the other is wishcycling.
Our first step needs to be making sure that we put the right materials in the right location. So, before you throw that tuna can in the garbage or your grocery bag in the recycling bin, make sure you know what the correct choice is. Recycling only works if you do it right!
There are many things in life that are simple, but not easy. Like remembering where you left your keys… Recycling, on the other hand, is easy, but not simple. There’s a lot to know before you can start doing it correctly. Once you get the hang of it though, it’s a piece of cake. Just don’t let that cake end up in the recycling bin…
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