I have just read a very poor article in SMH titled Recycling offsets car emissions – study.

It starts by comparing the recycling of a bin of paper and cardboard to driving 7200km. This is a significant error. 7200km at 8L/100km gives 1382kg of CO₂ (from Australian Greenhouse Office). This is compared to 90kg from recycling 26 bins of paper. Try 450km.

The article is based on a draft report (pdf 766k) from the Waste Management Association of Australia. The report quantifies the source of the 2.7% of Australia’s CO₂ emissions that come from solid waste landfill.

According to the report almost 50% of paper and cardboard in waste is recycled, most of it from homes. If this was increased to 100% we could reduce the annual CO₂e emissions by 5 million tonnes. A worthwhile goal. The report also explores other avenues of reducing emissions and even generation of biogasses to replace fossil fuels. Laudable goals.

However, I can find no mention of the figures Hannah Edwards used in her article. Maybe they came from Mike Ritchie, the NSW president of the Waste Management Association of Australia who is quoted saying “Recycling effectively offsets those car emissions”.

That is the problem with this article. Recycling does not absorb greenhouse gasses as trees do (over many many years). It just stops some of those gasses being produced. It definitely does not give us permission to drive our car further.

Another disturbing implication is that if increase the amount we recycle by consuming more then we are benefiting the environment. In fact we are just consuming more and requiring more to be recycled.

Don’t misunderstand me – recycling is good. But calling it an offset is at best misleading and at worst a license for people to continue polluting our poor old planet.