The article by Kimmelman (2021), “Recycling in America is a mess. A new bill could clean it up,” is published in The New York Times. It discusses the current situation with waste disposal in the United States, recycling of plastic, and emphasizes the problems in modern American society concerning these issues. The use of plastic increased significantly during the recent pandemic, while the overall economic recession led to the end of many recycling programs. The author writes that solid waste production in the United States per capita is the highest in the world. It increased during the last decades, and this tendency aggravated in 2019 when the pandemic started. Single-use plastic has become the way to minimize contamination risks with COVID-19, which has led to a change in the recycling business (Kimmelman, 2021). As a result, tons of plastic were not recycled and remained in the neighborhoods whose inhabitants produced it.
I agree with Kimmelman (2021), who states that issues with recycling plastic waste are a serious problem that endangers the environment and the life in the community. The peculiar detail is that the end of the recycling programs that happened in 2020 led to the severe pollution of the environment that affected the communities where the poorest populations lived (Kimmelman, 2021). Recycling plastic waste is connected with lobbying the interests of particular companies in American politics. The inability of these companies to solve their business interests leads to a severe problem in American cities. The districts where people of color lived and marginalized neighborhoods suffered the most in this situation. Therefore, the problem with recycling waste shows the existing social inequality when people do not have the same opportunities to live in the sanitary district. It is possible to hypothesize that recycling waste is not only an environmental problem but also a social justice issue that reflects the current situation in the United States.
Reference
Kimmelman, M. (2021). Recycling in America is a mess. A new bill could clean it up.The New York Times.