Is recycling a new religion?

Occasionally religion comes up when discussing recycling, with it typically being used as a gentle (or not so gentle) slight. Depending on the person, it infers dogma, evangelism or perhaps even some clever analysis of parallels between religion and recycling.

Creation of Adam, Michelangelo. Source: Wikipedia

Given today is Easter Sunday, it is a good time to reflect on the religion of recycling.

What does recycling have in common with religion?

I know that the secular, atheist response is to snort and say that recycling has nothing to do with religion. "Recycling is rational, religion is not", they might say. Or some other dismissal. That's a pretty unsatisfactory response.

You can go a little below the surface and think of recycling as a moral code similar to religion. "Recycle or be damned". "Recycle to save the planet". And you can take this quite a long way, with evidence to suit your own particular flavour of religion.

The plastics each with their mark of salvation (ie plastics 1-7). The "trinity" of "reduce, reuse, recycle". The bathing rituals where the holy is washed before passing into godliness. The "churches" with their disciples, their moral codes, their condemnation. The resurrection. And so on.

But the recycling and religion are pretty different

This analysis can certainly be carried quite a way, and while it is certainly clever, I don't think it is right.

Recycling is a very weak moral code. It has no authority of a sacred text, of transcendence, of divinity. Its dogma offers no way of dealing with mystery, those impossible questions of birth, life, death. Its morality is shallow and profane, and to suggest that it is comparable to religion is to gravely misunderstand religion.

Nevertheless, the two do have parallels. The parallels are not because recycling is a religion, but because religion and recycling access the same core of humanity, the same archtypal reserves.

For all that, they are not the same. It would be stupid to suggest that recyclers worship the holy glass bottle, or recycling plant. Recycling is no cargo cult.

The secular snort is right in this regard. It is nonsensical to consider recycling as a religion in the tradition of the great religions.

But is recycling a religion?

To return to the question, I think that a comparison of recycling with the great moralising religions is misguided. But I do think recycling is a religion.

This (clearly) requires some explanation.

My world is heavily modified by humans. It is largely insulated from the seasons, from extreme weather, from the vagaries that are Life elsewhere. For the non-human world, death is routine. For most humans, it is an event, a tragedy. Recycling connects me to the world created by humanity, a world that is heavily mediated.

In a world where most of what I deal with has come through an industrial process, recycling provides an avenue for materials to be returned back to that industrial process. It is the out-breath for the in-breath of buying stuff in the first place. It lets me connect in a mindful way with the materials that pass through my life.

Recycling is a means of connecting to a broader, mystical world with the physical goods as artifacts. It is similar to the pagan thanksgiving, where you acknowledge the gifts given by the world, and recognise your connection in a great circle of life. It is a form of ritualistic connection to the world in which I live.

To be sure, this is no longer a world that requires me to acknowledge the animals that feed me lest future hunts fail, but everything is connected to the world. For all of the transcendence offered by technology, I remain connected to the world. For all of the cleverness that makes me believe this world is a machine, I have a role in this world. This machine world requires humans, not as raw matter, but to enliven it.

To take this further, this is a worldview that calls for caution in what you take from the world. Because even though all of the stuff is lifeless, it has come from something alive. Everything material comes from the world and returns to the world. Our taking leaves a mark. That mark may be great or minor, but a mark it remains.

So if recycling is religious, it is more in an animist sense than a biblical sense. It is not a moral code, but a code of humility and connection. The religion is around the sense of return and connection rather than the act of consumption. It is more the saying of grace than the bowed knee before an altar.

So is recycling a new religion?

I think it is clear that recycling is not a new religion.

Rather, recycling is a new expression of a very old religion. An earthy religion that paid tribute to the abundance that graced people. A religion that painted caves, danced animals, revered the world flowing through the people. In many western cultures, such a religion might be called paganism.

And so we come to the denouement. Recycling as the new paganism. That is an absurd proposition when understood with the baggage of witchcraft and pagan gods and all that stuff. Recycling is not that.

Instead, recycling is a very simple acknowledgement, a bid to place the human within this world that we have created. And the better we recycle, the better we root ourselves within our world.