The Adnostic

I've been reading a lot lately on recycling and thinking a lot about who is responsible for products once they have reached the end of their intended lifespan. The seller or the consumer? Do we truly own what we buy or should we view everything as a conditional lease to be taken back to the manufacturer once we're done with it?

If you ask Treehugger, recycling is a crap way of transferring the manufacturer's responsibility for the end life of the product onto the consumer, via taxes and whatnot, and the only way to truly be a ecologically sound citizen is to stop consuming. Not realistic. I see his point, but I still have to brush my teeth and eat and build a proper wedding registry.

If you were to ask Popular Mechanics, recycling just makes sense. It keeps trash out of the landfills, saves energy, and reduces the need to harvest raw materials. It doesn't matter whose responsibility it is, the producer or the consumer, it just needs to be done.

I believe the responsibility it equally shared. The producer made a disposable product available and attractive for purchase and the buyer chose to consume said product. The burden of keeping the product's waste out of the landfill is carried by both parties - Producers need to make an effort to use recycled materials in the manufacturing of their products and take careful consideration into how their products can be disposed of with simply being tossed in the trash, and consumers need to make the effort to buy more products made of recycled materials and making sure those products are properly disposed of.

This is why I'm a big fan of companies like Simple Shoes and Preserve. I think they have the right idea of how companies should source their raw materials and consider the disposal of their product after it has outlived it's usefulness.

Simple Shoes may come up short when it comes to recycling their own product, but they do wonderful job of finding ways to reuse other forms of waste. Plastic bottles, bike tires, car tires, and inner tubes are commonly used to make their shoes along with organic or environmentally responsible raw materials. They even make their shoeboxes from recycled paper.

I hope to see some partnership efforts with Newton Running in the near future.

Preserve is a company that covers both ends of the life cycle. They use recycled plastic containers to make their products, which range from toothbrushes, to cutting boards, to disposable plates and utensils, and they ensure a closed loop by making it easy for their consumers to send back the Preserve disposable products they've bought directly to the factory to be recycled and used again.

I don't see everyone in the world separating their trash and mailing it back to the company that made it (which is also trading space in the landfill for a carbon footprint), but its nice to see that level of responsibility from any company. My view is that if your product isn't easy to recycle in any given area which it is sold, then you should take extra measures, like mailing it back, to ensure that the loop can be closed.

Britta recently strengthened its green credibility by partnering with Preserve to have its disposable filters sent to Preserves recycling plant to be made into something new. A nice touch considering how hard they promoting themselves as the environmentally sound alternative to bottled water. Real green efforts can be as easy to spot as greenwashing is transparent.