For decades, citizens around the world have made a great effort to sort their waste, believing their efforts will one day save the planet by halting climate change and pollution. Countless campaigns, public service announcements and global initiatives have been made to encourage society to recycle more, promising that all of the items people throw into blue bins will be repurposed.

However, what actually happens to recyclables is far from what is promised. The hard truth behind recycling is that only a small percentage of what is sent into recycling facilities is actually reprocessed. The plastic and paper citizens rinse and sort are more likely to end up in a landfill or burned than turned into something new.

A study conducted by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection shows that in 2023, Florida had a recycling rate of just below 50%. This falls about 40% short of the Department of Environmental Protection’s established interim goals, which promised a steady growth of around 10% every two years.

The recycling rate looks even more dire when observing the statistics nationwide. In 2018, the United States Environmental Protection Agency reported as low as a 32.1% recycling rate, meaning that roughly 68% of recyclable items ended up in landfills.

There are several factors that contribute to low recycling rates, but the primary contributor is a lack of market demand for recycled materials. Often, batches of recyclables will go unused because there are no buyers for the materials. This, combined with the expensive costs to process recyclables, sways many cities and counties not to implement the practice.

Contamination is another factor stopping materials from being repurposed. A large amount
of recyclable waste is improperly cleaned before it is sorted into garbage bins. Sometimes, dirty items can contaminate entire batches, resulting in unusable recyclables that must be thrown away.

The landfills and garbage piles where waste is dumped make the situation even more severe.

In Broward County, a large portion of waste is shipped to the Monarch Hill Landfill, locally nicknamed “Mount Trashmore.” The site is 210 feet tall, about 500 acres long and can be seen from miles away. Landfills like Monarch Hill, among others in the area, often release gases like methane and carbon dioxide and contaminate groundwater, destroying the environment further.

Other methods of disposal in Florida are not better alternatives. In 2022, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law Senate Bill 1764, which established Municipal Solid Waste-to Energy plants, or MSWE plants, with the goal of reducing landfills. These plants, however, may not take up as much space, but they release just as many emissions, such as nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide.

While the lack of recycling is despairing, there are many steps people can take to mitigate the problem and save the environment.

One way to help recyclable waste be utilized is to encourage corporate responsibility. Pressuring businesses to use recycled materials when packaging and promoting sustainable product designs can not only conserve resources, but also create more of a demand for recyclables, diverting them from being sent to landfills.

Another way society can improve the statistic is to push for cities to make it more clear to citizens that contaminated recyclables cannot be used and let citizens know how to properly sanitize their waste. Making information more accessible to the public raises awareness about the problem, ultimately leading more eyes on the problem and how society can solve it.

Improving our carbon footprint is dependent on government and corporate responsibility, but it can also be changed through action in local communities. By taking these local steps, and even smaller changes such as simply advocating for accessible recycling, recycling rates can be improved exponentially. With collective effort, the environment can be saved.

This story was originally published in the May 2025 Eagle Eye print edition.