To sort or not to sort your recyclables—which is the better climate bet?

Anthropocene Magazine reports on the climate stakes of how we sort our recycling. The article traces the rise of single-stream recycling in the U.S. since the 1980s, and how China's 2018 National Sword policy exposed the costs of contamination. It weighs the trade-offs: single-stream boosts participation and cuts truck emissions, but multi-stream yields cleaner materials and less downcycling. The piece notes that recycling a ton of mixed waste avoids nearly 2.8 metric tons of CO2 equivalent versus landfilling, and that future innovations like AI sorting robots and chemical recycling could change the equation. Ultimately, the question is which combination of technology, economics, and human behavior will best bend the emissions curve.

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