Long before there were color-coded bins (green, brown, yellow, and blue) for recycling glass, organic waste, plastic, and paper on our streets and in our neighborhoods, our ancestors were already reusing items. Archaeological studies show that during times of scarcity, such as those experienced in ancient Rome or during the Byzantine era, broken bronze tools and glass utensils were constantly melted down to create new items.
The Industrial Revolution (19th century) ushered in assembly-line production. This method of mass production lowered manufacturing costs, but it also created challenges due to the accumulation of waste in large European cities and densely populated neighborhoods. It was in Victorian England, under the reign of Queen Victoria, that the first networks of informal urban waste collectors were established. They were known as rag-and-bone men and collected rags and scrap metal in central London and other major British cities.
It was the first modern example of how reusing materials helped clear the streets and paved the way for giving discarded items a second life.
In 1942, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked citizens to hand in old garden hoses, raincoats, used rain boots, car floor mats, and spare tires, and some 450,000 tons of old rubber were collected and given a second life. Across the Atlantic, the British government did the same to conserve paper through the Paper Salvage campaign.
The road to circularity
The social and institutional commitment that began to take root in the late 1970s and 1980s focused on recycling, reuse, and secondhand goods.
On April 22, 1970, Earth Day was celebrated for the first time — a milestone promoted by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson that mobilized millions of people to demand environmental protection policies. It was in this same historical context that the international recycling symbol, a Möbius strip with three arrows, was created. It was designed by Gary Anderson, an architecture student from California who conceived it for a contest held by the Container Corporation of America, beating 500 other proposals.
As early as the 1980s, leading institutions such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the European Economic Community (EEC) began standardizing the first public source-separated recycling programs. Citizens learned to sort glass, paper, and household cardboard at home, laying the operational groundwork for modern waste treatment facilities.
The seven “Rs” of recycling
In the European Union, growing awareness was accompanied by a regulatory framework. The adoption of Directive 94/62/EC on packaging and packaging waste prompted European Union member states to implement integrated management systems based on the “three Rs” philosophy (reduce, reuse, recycle), leading to the widespread use of the colored recycling bins that are now a common sight in our urban landscape.
The rise of the circular economy has expanded them from the original three to the so-called seven Rs of recycling: redesign, reduce, reuse, repair, repurpose, recover, and recycle.
With the turn of the millennium, public attention turned to the ubiquity of microplastics. With the support of the United Nations (UN), specific treaties were negotiated to limit single-use plastics, which the EU also incorporated into its regulations. This has led to a paradigm shift in the model through grassroots educational efforts aimed at raising awareness among younger generations about the culture of recycling and reuse.
Today, recycling goes far beyond simply separating cardboard and glass. It encompasses all areas, including chemical and industrial processes, construction, and water reuse and treatment, from waste recovery to the processing of materials such as solar panels and wind turbine blades all the way to upcycling or industrial symbiosis to optimize operations and costs while reducing the environmental footprint.
Ultimately, the history of recycling revolves around the circular economy. The focus has shifted from looking at the end of a product’s life to considering recycling and reuse from the very beginning through eco-design. In other words, products are designed from the outset to avoid becoming waste and are modular to facilitate reduction, recovery, repair, recycling, disassembly, and reuse.
