Does recycling help fight climate change?

Reduce, reuse, recycle is a familiar mantra the world over. Recycling has been described as ‘one of the easier climate-friendly acts” that individuals can do. A recent poll found that, globally, most of us believe that recycling is the single best thing we can do to tackle the climate crisis. But there isn’t much mention of “reduce” and “reuse”.

This week, presenters Kate Lamble and Neal Razzell explore how successful the world’s recycling system really is, visiting Port Klang in Malaysia where huge swaths of the globe’s recycling gets sent only to end up... well, listen and you’ll find out! Kate and Neal will also learn how climate friendly recycling really is and whether there are other more important actions we can take to improve how we manage our waste. Thank you to contributors: Ke Wang, Lead of the PACE Program at the World Resources Institute (Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy) Costas Velis, Lecturer in Resource Efficiency Systems at the University of Leeds, UK Jenny van Doorn, Professor of Marketing Services at the University of Groningen, Netherlands Farhan Nasa, Project Coordinator at Break Free from Plastic, Malaysia Our team: Reporter: Chen Yih Wen, Environmental Reporter in Tanjung Harapan, Klang, Malaysia Researchers: Immie Rhodes, Natasha Fernandes, Marcia Veiga, Sarah Wild. Producer: Dearbhail Starr Series Producer: Alex Lewis Production Coordinators: Sophie Hill, Siobhan Reed Sound Mix: Tom Brignell Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith