High-Rise Jeans and Recycled Plastics; Lots of New Trends Bloomed in the 1990s
While it is now common practice to put your recycling bin out on trash day, it wasn’t always that way. Paper, plastics, and glass products have existed in centuries before this one, yet the knowledge of recycling is a fairly new concept.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has kept tabs on all recycling ( and composting) activity of common household items since the 1960s in the United States. Items such as glass, plastic, paper, lawn trimmings, and lead batteries were introduced into the recycling mix back in the 60s, yet nearly none of them were properly disposed of until a few decades later.
The above chart indicates how the recycling/composting of these household items have boomed over the decades, specifically in the 1990s. The overall percentage of generational recycling never reached over fifteen percent until the 90s, reason being an increased knowledge behind the idea during the decade.
Recycling/composting is now an entire way of life, with many households composting much of their food and making it a point to eliminate the use of single-use plastics. That being said, single use plastics still consume most of the drink/food industry in the United States.
Something to take away from this data is the thought of what might have today’s recycling/ plastic use industry been like, had recycling practices been so common back in the 1960s. With a social ecosystem so reliant on plastic in the 2020s, what might have been if recycling was a way of life back when technology wasn’t so prevalent?
