Recycling: You still don't get it

Recycling or trash? It's a question you may have asked yourself when faced with a gross can, a heavily-stickered art project, or some weird plastic thing. Benton hijacks the podcast to teach Abi the behind-the-scenes of the recycling process: How it works, how effective it is, the consequences of "wish-cycling," and why plastic sucks so much. He addresses what steps you can take to make recycling work better, besides just putting things in the right bin.

Sources and further reading

TC Talk episodes mentioned:

• “Cult rhetoric.” https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/techcommtalk/episodes/Cult-rhetoric-e1b1gpi/a-a70h9n0
• “Tech comm from outer space: More lessons from alien movies.” https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/techcommtalk/episodes/Tech-comm-from-outer-space-More-lessons-from-alien-movies-e1md55n/a-a8cdbc1

Wikipedia articles mentioned:

• “Recycling” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling
• “Sustainability” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability
• “Microplastics” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microplastics
• “Greenwashing.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing
• “Wishcycling.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wishcycling

Music credits:

• Opening theme:  S: Disco Funk Loop by SergeQuadrado | License: Attribution NonCommercial 3.0
• Ensemble. (2008). “So they say” [Song]. On Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog Soundtrack [Album]. Mutant Enemy.
• Wheatus. (2000). “Teenage dirtbag” [Song]. On Wheatus [Album]. Columbia.

Image credit:

• Siera Wild, “Recycling sign green.png.” CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Transcript at https://faculty.mnsu.edu/tctalk/podcast/recycling-you-still-dont-get-it/