The article in the url below reveals some of the difficulties with using a simplified, generic (albeit well-designed) logo or label to represent a complex construct. Specifically, the article is talking about the universally-recognized recycling logo:
"The 'chasing arrows' logo, designed by a college student for the first Earth Day in 1970, has become ubiquitous on everything from cartons of milk to shampoo bottles as a way to nudge users to recycle packaging rather than discard it."
The trouble is that the logo is now so widely used that companies are putting it on materials that, while theoretically recyclable, are almost never being recycled, at least not in the U.S. The result is a form of false advertising that the U.S. government wants to prevent:
"At issue is the use of the logo along with the 'resin number' of different types of plastics. Resin one and two plastics, such as bottles and jugs, are the most easily recycled products, but those marked with numbers three to seven, categories that include plastic bags, styrofoam and plastic trays, are typically not recycled and are instead sent to landfills or burned."
Again, the issue is not that these plastics cannot be recycled, it is that they cannot yet be recycled efficiently and, as a result, there is no functioning market for the original materials, once they have been used (see Strategic CSR – Labels):
"A new rule was needed, the agency said, to help clear up this confusion. In 2021, California passed a law to restrict the use of the logo to avoid misleading claims about recycling. Environmental groups are pushing for an end to the blanket use of the logo, too, claiming that its use amounts to 'greenwashing' by companies."
We either need to find a way to recycle these plastics in ways that are efficient and practical (without the plastic degrading so much that the recycled material does not have many practical applications), or we need to reduce the amount of single-use plastic in our lives (a challenge that has its own complications; see Strategic CSR – COVID-19):
"Only around 5% of plastics are recycled in the US, a proportion that has been declining since China announced it would no longer be accepting unwanted plastic waste from western countries in 2018. American households produce around 51m tons of plastic waste a year, more than any other country, with much of that either dumped in landfills, incinerated or littered, often ending up in the ocean."
Take care
David
David Chandler
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Universal 'chasing arrows' recycling symbol could be dumped in US
By Oliver Milman
May 18, 2023
The Guardian
