Is it better to recycle goods or donate them to be reused? A reader offers an example: a cottage-cheese carton. After he finishes eating the contents, he drops the carton into a recycling bin. "So," he asks, "is the container used once and then made into something else?"
Is it better to recycle goods or donate them to be reused?
A reader offers an example: a cottage-cheese carton. After he finishes eating the contents, he drops the carton into a recycling bin. “So,” he asks, “is the container used once and then made into something else?”
He also said he volunteers at a soup kitchen. Leftovers are often given out in containers — such as cottage-cheese cartons — donated by volunteers. He assumes that the containers are probably discarded after one use.
“Which is better?” asks the reader, noting that he also wonders about plastic bags from grocery stores. “Recycle them or take them to the soup kitchen, where they’ll be used to hold leftover food, then trashed?”
His question raises a larger issue that many of us face when making ethical decisions. The decisions we make don’t always have to do with choices between stark right and wrong alternatives.
Trying to recycle used containers and plastic bags rather than throwing them away is a good choice. But so, too, is donating the items for use at a soup kitchen.
Yet other choices can also be made. Some people stockpile plastic containers from deli counters and reuse them multiple times to store leftovers. The same is true for plastic bags.
The reader’s assumption that containers or bags given to soup kitchens might be trashed after one use might be accurate. But if the kitchen has never made an effort to encourage customers to recycle, it could do so by placing receptacles by the door.
Among the many options, there is no one right choice for dealing with used containers and bags.
The right thing is to try to find a way to put such things to the best use. Whether the reader recycles or donates these items, he should rest easy about either choice.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, a lecturer in public policy, directs the communication program at the Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, Mass.