From Nature Conservation to Resource Conservation: How Recycling Developed into an Environmental Issue in the US During the 20th Century

This article examines how the idea that recycling conserves natural resources developed and stabilized into a matter of fact in modern U.S. history. Influential figures like Herbert Hoover reframed the focus of conservation from nature protection to production, efficiency and waste management. The conservation idea was used by the industry to emphasize its societal value, externalize waste management costs, divert attention away from resource extraction, and engage the public in sorting that would yield materials back to the industry. The 1970s energy crisis opened up possibilities to symmetrically compare different processes and materials by a unified metric: energy consumption. As a result, recycling came to conserve resources not only in the waste itself, but also in nature. The significant energy savings from recycling, compared to extraction, were emphasized and communicated, and the idea of displacement vanished in the underlying calculations and was thereby institutionalized into everyday language.