But if you are in a position to do so, politely ask corporate spokespeople how the tonnage they take credit for recycling fed back into their operations last year, in a specific country, and how it in turn measurably reduced virgin extraction. Be specific. Ask them where and when it led to a reduced material throughput in their company or industry. Query them on the documented, not speculative, environmental protection afforded by, say, making cheap picture frames made out of spent polystyrene packaging. Reject the notion that cheap picture frames are a social good that would have needed to be manufactured with fracked natural gas, had polystyrene recycling not yielded up secondary inputs. In the meantime, sit for a while to contemplate the fact that recycling, as it exists today, does not in fact save ecosystems in a way that matters on the whole ecologically or socially. How would recycling need to be practiced to achieve this desired end? In a different context of extraction, production, and growth – with different politics, knowledge structures, and ideologies. I realize this is an unsatisfying conclusion, but I believe in the importance of critique as a precondition to developing collaborative solutions. I have presented this information as part of a process of thinking through short-, medium- and long-term characteristics of this different context. This is an ongoing project to which I invite responses, as well as empirical contributions that would refine or refute what I have presented here.