Weren’t We Already Recycling Before It Became Popular?

I grew up in the ’60s and ’70s, back when we didn’t call it recycling—we just did it. No one made a song and dance. Reuse was part of life.

Glass milk bottles went back to the dairy. Bread and meat came wrapped in paper, and that paper found a second life lighting the BBQ. Vegetables came loose, not shrink-wrapped in plastic like they’re afraid of fresh air. Scraps went to the chooks or into the garden. Even spirit bottles found their way back behind the bar for a refill.

Shopping bags weren’t disposable—they were mesh, with handles built to last. Every household had them, and they were used until they fell apart, which wasn’t often. Our single rubbish bin was made of tin, about a third the size of today’s wheelie bins, and it rarely overflowed.

Fast forward to now, and we’ve got two or three enormous bins, each supposedly part of a grand recycling crusade. And yet, somehow, we’re producing more waste than ever. How? When did “recycling” become an industry rather than a habit? We’ve replaced practical reuse with colour-coded rituals designed to make us feel virtuous while corporations churn out more packaging than ever.

I can’t shake the feeling that the whole thing’s a placebo for environmental guilt. Back then, waste was minimal because life wasn’t packaged like a takeaway meal. Now it takes a political movement, a fleet of trucks, and a maze of processing plants to achieve what our parents did without a second thought—produce less rubbish.

Progress, they call it. I call it landfill with extra steps and more landfill.

–Michael (Dark Fiction. Author of SEETHINGS (the first book), free for a limited time)