Essay by Eric Worrall
Does recycling make the climate concerned feel they’ve done their bit? Or does it make them angrier?
Does using a reusable cup make you less likely to protest climate change? We tracked 2,800 Australians to find out
Published: July 24, 2026 1.39pm AEST
Ben Newell Professor of Cognitive Psychology and Director of the Institute for Climate Risk and Response, UNSW
Omid Ghasemi Research Associate in Behavioural Science at the Institute for Climate Risk & Response, UNSW…
Does this promotion of individual behaviours crowd out or distract from supportfor large-scale action on climate change? Is it a convenient distraction perpetrated by corporations and governments who should be doing more?
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In new research, our team looked at these questions using data from the National Climate Action Survey. Running since 2021, this survey gives detailed insights into what Australians think, feel and do about climate change.
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We found that people who reported more personal actions also took part in collective activities and supported climate policies.
There was no evidence for the idea that personal action might reduce collective action or support for strong climate policy. This goes against arguments that people may feel they have done enough, overestimate the impact of individual actions, or feel less worried about climate change.
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But not a gateway either
We found no evidence that increasing (or decreasing) personal climate actions in one year had any effect on collective or political engagement the following year. In other words, personal action doesn’t seem to be a substitute for bigger action or a gateway to it.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/does-using-a-reusable-cup-make-you-less-likely-to-protest-climate-change-we-tracked-2-800-australians-to-find-out-288197
The abstract of the study;
- Article
- Open access
- Published: 23 July 2026
Personal climate actions do not crowd out collective action and policy support: longitudinal evidence
- Omid Ghasemi,
- Karlien H. W. Paas,
- Graham L. Bradley,
- Charlie A. Ransom,
- Sameer Deshpande &
- Ben R. Newell
npj Climate Action volume 5, Article number: 62 (2026) Cite this article
Abstract
Individual pro-environmental behaviours are often promoted as a pathway to broader climate engagement, yet critics argue they may divert attention from more impactful systemic solutions. Using four annual waves of longitudinal survey data from Australia (2021–2024; N = 2778), we examined whether everyday climate actions predict collective action and policy support, and whether climate change risk perception, efficacy beliefs, and personal norms moderate these associations. Multilevel models showed that individual actions were consistently associated with greater collective engagement and, to a lesser extent, stronger policy support within the same year. Moderation analyses indicated that individual actions more strongly predicted collective engagement among individuals higher in risk perception, efficacy, and personal norm. In contrast, the association with policy support weakened slightly at higher levels of these moderators, although these moderation effects were very small. Random-intercept cross-lagged panel models provided little evidence of systematic spillover across years, indicating that within-person changes in individual actions did not reliably predict subsequent changes in collective action or policy support. Overall, the findings challenged the crowding-out effect and suggested that increases in individual action do not undermine broader forms of climate engagement.
Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44168-026-00405-y
In other words there’s not a lot of point to recycling. If it formed a safety valve for people concerned about the environment to blow off steam, I’d be OK with keeping it. Better to have an extra trash can than a bunch of rioters trying to burn your automobile or lay waste to your neighbourhood.
But the study authors are saying it doesn’t really make a difference.
Of course recycling does serve one purpose – it allows hypocrite politicians to claim they’re helping the environment. So given we’re never going to run short of political hypocrisy, I’m guessing recycling will stick around for a long time, at least until it stops swinging votes towards politicians who support it.
Recycling newsprint, cardboard, and aluminum cans is the only practical domestic items worth the effort.
Recycling glass used to make sense, as cullet requires less heat energy than making new glass from raw materials. Every 10% increase in cullet cuts furnace energy 3%.
Two things happened to change that. First, glassworks have gotten larger (economies of scale) so cullet transportation costs rose (cullet is heavy, unlike cardboard or aluminum cans). Second, the cost of heat energy (natgas) has dropped by about 2/3 over the past two decades thanks to fracking.
The recycling community has not caught up to the new glass reality.
My father and others I knew worked at an O-I glass bottle facility. I haven’t heard the word cullet since 1969.
I had the largest glass maker in Germany as a client for almost two years. Cullet has been a part of my vocabulary since 1979—literally ‘Bruchglas’ auf Deutsch.
As a ‘hobby’, the company kept a hand blown glass facility. I was able to watch the artisans at their craft and purchase a full set of stemware hand blown glass dinner table vessels of all sorts for cost. Absolutely beautiful. My ex got them along with the rest of the formal dining room dishes, silverware, and mahogany furniture. She still has and uses them.
I am for crushing glass to sand and using in road paving asphalt.
Even then though, the glass needed to be separated by color -green, brown, and clear, I believe. I imagine impurities could be a problem. Labels for example would leave behind carbon after burning during the glass making process. Other impurities could be an issue as well. Nowadays of course, it all just gets crushed and used for roads, and perhaps other things, losing the energy used to make the glass originally. Hardly worth the effort.
In the UK having World leading energy prices has killed off a lot of recycling because it is no longer economically viable here.
Clear PETE beverage bottles are readily recyclable. Walmart blue tote bags are made from plastic bottles.
I was curious, so did some quick AI research. Three types of plastic are commonly recycled in the US: PET (aka PETE)—beverage bottles (#1 resin code), HDPE—detergent and shampoo containers (#2 rc), and PP—yogurt containers (#5 rc). The other 4 recycling resin codes almost never actually recycled—which makes you wonder why even have them?
Here on Whidbey Island, WA, the local recyclers only take types 1 and 2 plastics, which is about 1% of the plastics I generate. Not worth my time.
Does using a reusable cup make you less likely to protest climate change?This deserves the oh so common reminder that correlation does not equal causation
So, taking any action to “save the climate” is meaningless. Got it.
It doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant either
Performative outrage. That is all any of this has ever been.
Here’s the performative outrage ladies back at the begging bowl for taxpayer support after blowing off sponsorship money from one of Australia’s most successful businesswomen as beneath them-
As Diamonds begin bid for gold, a pay dispute is brewing in netball – again
(You’ll recognise the correlation with the WNBA socialist hands out here)
Meanwhile back at the sheltered workshop for Marxist undergrads matters take a turn for the worse as Mr Kirk and Ms Widdacombe discovered-
Andrew Bolt tears into the ABC’s obscene fantasy of violence against Gina Rinehart | Sky News Australia
Another day another glimpse at their wonderful prospective Utopia in store for us all from the caring sharing brigade.
PS: Nope she makes her money from mining not DEI-
‘Absolutely baffling’: Aust swimmers banned from thanking Gina Rinehart at Commonwealth Games
It would be interesting to trail the garbage cans alongside an eco zealot demonstration to see how much and what kind of crap they leave behing. God forbid there should be any plastic waterbottle or one way coffe cup in them…
Eric Worrall wrote:
In other words there’s not a lot of point to recycling. If it formed a safety valve for people concerned about the environment to blow off steam, I’d be OK with keeping it. Better to have an extra trash can than a bunch of rioters trying to burn your automobile or lay waste to your neighborhood. I especially agree with this part.
But the study authors are saying it doesn’t really make a difference. That entirely depends on what the protest funders are paying their protest organizers to go after this week.
Of course recycling does serve one purpose – it allows hypocrite politicians to claim they’re helping the environment. So given we’re never going to run short of political hypocrisy, I’m guessing recycling will stick around for a long time, at least until it stops swinging votes towards politicians who support it. I also agree with this part.
l regularly see the Green Recycle Cans filled with what clearly looks like trash, with stuff in or not in Plastic Bags that are not supposed to go in the Recycling Cans, if the recycling program was really serious, really rigorous, they would come down hard on these people with trash in the recycling and that would stop.
This is likely one of the lowest cost strategies that could be used and I suspect a significant amount of stuff really does get recycled and really expensive protests and riots are prevented.
For me the bezel was revealed on September 1st 1987 when California’s deposit on aluminum cans was enacted. Prior we would recycle and receive 87 cents per pound while paying nothing. After? 65 cents while paying $1.25.
Whenever I give lectures on the environment, whether to children, college students, or adults, I always ask the group early on what they can dofor the environment. Invariably., the response I get is a choir in four part harmony — RECYCLE! This process of reverse distribution is drilled into everyone’s head from early childhood, but practically none of them know what it really means. For those who participate, recycling is putting materials in the right recycle container and rolling it to the curb. They have no idea of the lifecycle costs, nor if any of the supposed recyclables are actually recycled. They do not understand that if the recycling process through to product manufacture costs more than the benefit obtained from the materials, then the recycling is a net damage to the environment.
They’ve also grown up on the concept that landfills are evil and that we should do everything possible to divert materials out of landfills. Few if any of them know that in a modern properly designed municipal solid waste landfill, anything organic that is disposed there will eventually decompose into landfill gas that will be captured, dried and cleaned to yield usable natural gas to be burned onsite to generate electricity or fed into the gas transmission system for use elsewhere.
None of this, by the way, has anything to do with “climate change.” Most people view recycling, among other things like gardening, lawn care, water and energy conservation, etc. as environmental stewardship. They are not counting out their GHG emissions, except for a vanishingly small number of zealots. It doesn’t surprise me that the authors here saw little correlation between stewardship and climate change.
As for the climate zealots, I might believe they are truly serious when they strip naked, walk everywhere they go, jettison all modern conveniences, and protest outside the Chinese embassy (the world’s largest GHG emitter and rapidly growing). If not, I would tell them to shut up and take a hike.
The whole recycling model of breaking trash down to multiple different containers comes from West Berlin during the Cold War, when it was isolated in East Germany and could be cut off at any time.
West Berliners broke their trash into 4 different categories and put it out on the curb where it was collected daily and assiduously recycled to reduce the amount of stuff that had to be brought into the city.
Most of the “recyclables” are better off going into properly designed furnaces and being used to generate heat to turn water into steam and drive turbines to generate electricity.
With proper scrubbers and scavengers those furnaces can separate out valuable elements and compounds for reuse as well as harmful ones to be treated and properly broken down.
Our political class could address every problem we face but they are too busy plotting against the people. They are too busy making personal fortunes from the very shysters that gov’t legislation is supposed to protect us from.
If it can be recycled then recycle it. A lot of the climate claptrap and ‘peer reviewed’ papers are pulp fiction and also needs to be recycled.
At a lot of outdoor events in the UK the bar uses a reusable ‘glass’. This is usually a better product than the squishy plastic things as these are more robust. The key is that at some places you pay a deposit for it that can be reclaimed if you want. However, this year there has been a trend to charge you extra for your first pint that is not a deposit as you cannot get it back. But then you start to get a collection of plastic glasses at home. If you know in advance, you can take one of them to an event.
I thought the reference to reusable cups was in regards to the alternative to feminine hygiene pads. And there is a high correlation between those users and environmental activists.