An overview of recycling as an activity and a process following different materials through
the waste stream. Is there a point to recycling? Is recycling even good for the environment? In
this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series Finn Arne Jørgensen answers (drumroll
please): it depends. From a technical point of view recycling is a series of
processes—collecting sorting processing manufacturing. Recycling also has a cultural
component at its core recycling is about transformation and value turning material waste
into something useful—plastic bags into patio furniture plastic bottles into T-shirts.
Jørgensen offers an accessible and engaging overview of recycling as an activity and as a
process at the intersection of the material and the ideological. Jørgensen follows a series of
materials as they move back and forth between producer and consumer continually transforming
in form and value in a never-ceasing journey toward becoming waste. He considers organic waste
and cultural contamination the history of recyclable writing surfaces from papyrus to
newsprint discarded clothing as it moves from the the Global North to the Global South the
shifting fate of glass bottles the efficiency of aluminum recycling the many types of plastic
and the difficulties of informed consumer choice e-waste and technological obsolescence and
industrial waste. Finally re-asking the question posed by John Tierney in an infamous 1996 New
York Times article is recycling garbage?” Jørgensen argues that recycling is necessary—as both
symbolic action and physical activity that has a tangible effect on the real world.
