Where Your Recycling Really Goes

Gross but true: new floss is made from old floss.

Cara Michelle Smith
Slackjaw
Published in
3 min readJan 17, 2020

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Your recycling doesn’t go where you think. (Unsplash)

The greatest trick corporations ever played was making us think we could recycle their products. -The New York Times

Every single plastic water bottle is just used to make another plastic water bottle. They don’t even clean them.

Millions of composted egg shells go into making just one of those striking, $8,000 mid-century modern sofas in trendy boutique windows.

Once a plastic bag has been recycled three times, they’re exclusively used to make Entourage DVD cases. In even more disappointing news, Entourage DVDs are still selling incredibly well.

The grease from pizza boxes is extracted, bottled by Big Skincare, and sold as a cleansing serum that always seems to make your breakouts worse.

Think you’re being mature by recycling your latest unfinished screenplay? Not so fast. Every recycled page of an unfinished screenplay miraculously becomes another page in Ann Coulter’s upcoming book.

It’s no coincidence that composted banana peels bear a startling resemblance to the scoby in the bottom of kombucha bottles.

Every recycled can of La Croix is chopped, flattened and fashioned into one of hundreds of gaudy faux crystals on the pockets of Miss Me jeans.

In an effort to not waste any paper, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss forced themselves to fill every inch of their old takeout menus, going so far as to scribble their most outlandish, half-baked ideas …and just like that, Confederate was born.

The good news: they found a use for old soda cans! The bad news: the underwire on a bra.

Gross but true: new floss is made from old floss.

All those promo flyers that clog up your mail? You’re better off throwing them away. George W. Bush exclusively paints on canvases made from recycled mailers. Nobody knows why — but then again, nobody knows why George W. Bush paints in the first place.

Be sure to recycle your old Android. That’s how they make new iPhones.

Those branded T-shirts that say stuff like, “I’m a WIFE who loves TRUMP, her HUSBAND and her GUNS” aren’t made with…

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Cara Michelle Smith
Slackjaw

Cara Michelle Smith is a comedy writer in Chicago. You can harass her on Twitter at @Cara_Smith5, so long as you do so creatively.