Recycling isn't a distraction, but it won't stop climate change either
In research published today, UNSW Sydney behavioural scientists, in collaboration with researchers from Griffith University, say they found no evidence for claims that climate action at the individual level distracted from wanting meaningful action on climate change.
After following almost 2800 Australians over four years through the National Climate Action Survey, the researchers found people who made environmentally friendly choices – recycling, using reusable cups and containers, taking public transport, adopting greener diets and cycling to work – were not less likely to support broader climate action.
That finding contradicts a long-running criticism that governments and companies encourage small lifestyle changes to deflect attention from the harder work of transforming energy systems and regulating industry.
“Individual climate actions neither facilitate nor undermine broader climate engagement,” says lead author Dr Omid Ghasemi from the UNSW Institute for Climate Risk & Response.
“We found no evidence for the idea that personal action might reduce collective action or policy support because people feel they've done enough, overestimate the impact of individual actions, or feel less worried about climate change,” he says.
Instead, the research suggests everyday environmental behaviours are expressions of existing values rather than catalysts – or obstacles – for broader political engagement.
Not a gateway
Australians who took more personal environmental actions in general tended to be more politically engaged overall – and more likely to sign petitions, attend demonstrations and support climate policies. But tracking those same people between 2021 and 2024 showed that increasing someone's personal climate actions did not, by itself, make them more – or less – politically engaged the following year.
“Our research contradicts the strongest version of the 'recycling is a distraction' argument,” says Professor Ben Newell, Director of the UNSW Institute for Climate Risk & Response.
“But it also offers little support for the idea that small lifestyle changes automatically lead people towards activism or systemic reform.”
Dr Ghasemi says the study doesn't dismiss the concern of governments and companies targeting consumer behaviour to shift their own responsibility away from systemic reform.
“Personal and systemic action are not necessarily rivals,” he says.
Beyond public policy
The researchers also detected a small decline in collective climate action and support for climate policy between 2021 and 2024, although personal environmental behaviours remained relatively stable.
Dr Ghasemi says a possible explanation is cost-of-living pressures.
“When people are under more financial pressure, they may have less time, energy, or willingness to engage in collective action or support policies that are perceived to have economic costs,” he says.
“But whatever the reason, our results suggest that it is not driven by greater engagement in individual climate action.”
The findings also carry implications for businesses investing in sustainability programs.
Encouraging employees or customers to adopt greener behaviours may not undermine support for broader climate action, but neither should those initiatives be treated as substitutes for deeper organisational change.
“Doing more personal climate action doesn’t seem to come at the expense of broader climate engagement,” Dr Ghasemi says.
Journal
npj Climate Action
DOI
Recycling food waste would bring huge benefits, but microplastics a challenge
A first nationwide look shows diversion of U.S. food waste from landfills could reduce related climate impacts by 89% and nutrient pollution by 50%, UVM researchers say
University of Vermont
Keeping food waste out of landfills provides climate and other environmental benefits, and Vermont requires residents to divert these materials to better management pathways. With other states considering similar policies, UVM researchers studied the potential outcomes of bringing these efforts to a national scale.
The new findings, out today in the journal Nature Food, indicate a need to plan not just for channeling food waste into landfill alternatives—but also for managing the microplastics that can remain in the resulting compost and other organic materials, says study coauthor Eric Roy, professor in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources.
Solutions to keep food waste out of landfills include turning it into compost for agricultural use and using anaerobic digestion to produce biogas for renewable energy. While researchers have looked at these disposal options before, none had taken microplastic contamination into consideration at scale, says Roy.
Key findings include that diversion of food waste from landfills to composting and anaerobic digestion at a national scale in the U.S. would reduce the current climate impacts of these wastes by 89 to 99%. Environmental nutrient pollution from food waste management, which can contribute to infamous summer blue-green algae blooms in lakes, could drop by 49 to 54% for nitrogen, and 78 to 98% for phosphorus. But if the organics resulting from composting and anaerobic digestion were spread on agricultural fields, they could also carry around 20,000 tons of microplastics into the soil annually, the researchers found.
“If you don't intentionally intervene and have a plan for how you're going to minimize plastic in your recovered soil amendments, there will probably be plastic there based on just how pervasive it is in our food system right now,” says lead author Kate Porterfield, a Gund Institute for Environment postdoctoral researcher. “It's literally everywhere.”
The work points to the need for better planning at every step of the food recycling process—including the design of packaging before the food’s ever in it, Porterfield says.
Using a combination of data from across the U.S., the team created “life cycle assessment models” to inspect potential effects of nationwide composting, anaerobic digestion, or landfill disposal of food waste. The approach takes into account every step of food waste’s journey, from the moment it arrives at a waste transfer station, to its fate as compost in a field, methane gas converted to electricity, or a slimy pile with plastic, slowly releasing greenhouse gases in a landfill.
The researchers also considered a potential drop in the need for synthetic fertilizers in agriculture resulting from replacement by recovered nutrients in organic wastes—but found that nutrients recovered from food waste would offset only about 2% of annual U.S. demand.
Dealing with food waste is becoming increasingly top-of-mind among some policymakers, with up to 40% of U.S. food wasted, and a quarter of landfills’ already dwindling space taken up by discarded food. Composting food waste has gone from being the domain of avid home gardeners to a legal requirement in some U.S. jurisdictions. Vermont, being an early adopter of required food waste diversion away from landfills, is seeing some of the challenges that can pop up alongside the benefits, says Roy. Additional efforts to increase composting and anaerobic digestion of food waste currently exist as a national patchwork, with tremendous variability from place to place.
Roy, who also directs UVM’s Casella Center for Circular Economy and Sustainability, says he’s not aware of any upcoming national food waste diversion plan. Casella Center research focuses on finding greener pathways for waste management. With more states and municipalities considering food waste recycling, studies like this one can both clarify benefits and reveal potential issues in advance, Roy says, helping to ease the transition. Upfront planning to reduce microplastic contamination in food waste at the outset is needed to maximize the net environmental benefits of food waste diversion programs and policies.
“We thought, we need to think about this at a big scale because Vermont's leading on this issue,” Roy says. “What if more states jump on board?”
Journal
Nature Food
Method of Research
Computational simulation/modeling
Article Title
Food waste recycling in the USA can reduce climate and nutrient pollution impacts yet risks plastic accumulation in soils
Article Publication Date
23-Jul-2026
