If your elementary school education was anything like mine, recycling was praised as the hero of sustainability. We learned about the three R’s of sustainability—reduce, reuse, and recycle—but focused heavily on recycling. We read books explaining how the process worked, and in 4th grade we even oversaw collecting recycling around the school.
But what we weren’t told was that these three R’s are actually listed in order of importance, with recycling being last. Although recycling, when done perfectly, is quite revolutionary, in practice it is often not very effective. For most plastic recycling does not make sense, because it is costly and the plastic degrades every time it goes through the recycling process. But even when it is recycled, it often ends up in the landfill due to contamination or because the sheer volume of plastic overwhelms recycling centers. In fact, in 2021, only about 5-6% of plastic waste actually was recycled (Osborne, 2022).
Before the 1980s, plastic recycling wasn’t widely popular because it was more expensive to recycle plastic than to produce it from virgin materials. As a result, recycling was primarily reserved for glass, paper, and metal (Gonzales & Sullivan, 2020). But then the triangle with a number—known as the Resin Identification Code (RIC)—started appearing on plastics (Fig. 1). Many plastics that were not actually recyclable ended up in recycling bins because the symbol closely resembled the universal recycling logo (Gonzales & Sullivan, 2020; Osborne, 2022).
Figure 1. A comparison of the Resin Identification Code and the recycling symbol. Shown on the left is the RIC on the bottom container holding water bottle cleaning tablets—a number 5—which is not recyclable at Furman. On the right is the recycling logo on the cottage’s recycling bin.
This symbol was added by the plastic industry under the claim that it would help sort plastics, but the industry also funded many campaigns and commercials promoting recycling. The goal was to make consumers comfortable buying plastics. If people believed recycling worked well and that all plastic could be recycled, they were more likely to keep purchasing plastic products (Gonzales & Sullivan, 2020). Some argue that the addition of this symbol was a purposeful intent to deceive people by the plastic industry, but it cannot be proven.
But either way, these campaigns and confusion with the RIC symbol widely benefitted the plastic industry (Gonzales & Sullivan, 2020). Today, single-use plastics are so common that it is hard to imagine life without them. But if recycling was so heavily promoted by the plastic industry potentially in order to increase plastic sales, should we even recycle?
The answer is yes! Recycling is still an effective way to reduce waste going to the landfill and also limit the amount of virgin materials being used, but it should be used as a last resort (US EPA, 2025). Instead of using recycling as an excuse to buy single-use plastics because “they can be recycled,” we should focus on the lesser known five R’s, which expand on the traditional three. These five R’s are Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle (Fisher, 2024; Robertson, 2021).
The most important thing we can do when it comes to single-use plastics is to refuse them altogether. Instead of buying disposable plastic water bottles, opt for a reusable one. If you cannot completely cut out plastic water bottle use, then reducing your use is the next best option. But if you do end up using a plastic water bottle, try to reuse it multiple times by refilling it. After that, you can repurpose it—giving the plastic a new life by turning it into something else.
For example, in the cottage this year, we used plastic water bottles to create fruit fly traps (Fig. 2). Once the plastic has served its life in these ways, it should finally be recycled, but only if it has been properly cleaned and is a type of plastic accepted by your local recycling system. (Fisher, 2024). At Furman, only numbers 1 and 2 can be recycled.
Figure 2. Example of the type of fruit fly trap the cottage created to repurpose a plastic water bottle (Trap-anything.com).
This is just one example of how to implement the five R’s into your life, but they can—and should—be applied whenever you use single-use plastics or anything you might eventually dispose of. In the Greenbelt, we have applied this by aiming to reduce our plastic use and avoid plastics whenever possible. For example, we refuse plastic grocery bags, use laundry detergent sheets instead of detergent that comes in plastic jugs, and make homemade decorations instead of buying plastic ones.
Understanding the hierarchy of waste management is important for our community because it allows us to make sustainable decisions about what we are consuming and what to do with items afterward.
We are also very intentional about how we recycle, because recycling is only effective if done properly. To give our recycling the best chance of actually being recycled and not ending up in the landfill, we make sure to follow Furman’s regulations—only recycling numbers 1 and 2 and ensuring that all recycled materials are clean (US EPA, 2025). By doing this, we hope to live more sustainably and use recycling as a tool rather than an excuse.
References
Fisher, C. (2024, March 10). The 5 R’s: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle | RTS. Recycle Track Systems. https://www.rts.com/blog/the-5-rs-refuse-reduce-reuse-repurpose-recycle/
Gonzales, S., & Sullivan, L. (2020, September 11). Waste Land: Planet Money [Transcript]. NPR.org. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/912150085
Osborne, M. (2022, May 9). At Least 85 Percent of U.S. Plastic Waste Went to Landfills in 2021. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-us-recycled-just-5-percent-of-its-plastic-in-2021-180980052/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Robertson, M. (2021). Sustainability principles and practice. Taylor & Francis Group.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2025, May 14). Recycling basics and benefits. https://www.epa.gov/recycle/recycling-basics-and-benefits
