Is there a point to recycling? Is certainly recycling even best for the environment? Within this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Finn Arne Jørgensen answers: it depends. From a specialized point of view, recycling is a series of processes-collecting, sorting, processing, manufacturing. Recycling also has a cultural element; at its primary, recycling is about transformation and value, turning material waste into something useful-plastic bags into garden furniture, plastic containers into T-shirts..LEARNING MUCH MORE on the subject of Recycling Jørgensen offers an accessible and participating summary of recycling as an activity and as a process on the intersection from the material as well as the ideological.

Jørgensen follows a series of materials because they move backwards and forwards between maker and customer. He considers organic waste and cultural contamination; the annals of recyclable writing areas from papyrus to newsprint; discarded clothes as it techniques in the the Global North towards the Global South; the moving fate of cup bottles; the effectiveness of lightweight aluminum recycling; e-waste and technical obsolescence; and industrial waste materials. Finally, re-asking the question posed by John Tierney within an infamous 1996 NY Times content, ‘can be recycling garbage?’ Jørgensen argues that recycling is definitely necessary-as both symbolic action and exercise which has a tangible effect on the real world.