Elon Musk says 'recycling is pointless' in controversial new post
He might be the richest man in the world, but it's fair to say that Elon Musk is almost as controversial as he is rich.
The weird and wonderful life of the Tesla and SpaceX CEO includes an Iron Man 2 cameo, buying a $35 million compound for his children, joking about sending 'space dragons with lasers' to Ukraine, and jumping for (literal) joy at Donald Trump rallies. No matter what you think of Musk, he's proved his business credentials time and again.
After all, you don't tend to end up with $435 billion in the bank for doing nothing.
Elon Musk has painted the future of the human race in the stars, although there are worries that his plans to colonize Mars will lead to mass death.
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With the world's richest man suggesting that other planets will be our savior, he might not have much intention of saving our current one.
Continuing his controversial nature, Musk has posted on X and said: "Recycling is pointless."
Recycling is pointless https://t.co/vQZrnsHrVr
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 13, 2024
Resharing a January 2023 video from John Stossel about plastic recycling being a 'lie', Musk made the divisive statement.
Even though Stossel acknowledged that recycling paper and cardboard can save trees while recycling aluminum saves energy, he added: "But that’s about it." The video points to a 2022 Greenpeace report where the planet-conscious organization says "most plastic simply cannot be recycled," but the quote has been taken wildly out of context.
Greenpeace still emphasized the importance of recycling and wasn't exactly telling you to go out and burn through more single-use plastics. Instead, it highlights the problems surrounding single-use plastics.
With Musk being the owner of X and boasting some 207.3 million followers, his message to not recycle is being seen by a lot of eyes.
Comments ranged from those agreeing with Musk to those who slammed his post. One person wrote: "Recycling is a waste of time and resources. Most of it ends up in landfills anyway, and the process itself often consumes more energy than it saves. Instead of clinging to a broken system, we should focus on reducing consumption and finding sustainable alternatives."
Another added: "Plastics recycling is a myth. Aluminum/metals and some glass and paper ok. What do you intend for people to do with their Tesla batteries at the end of their useful consumer lifetime?"
A third concluded: "Thank you! A few years ago I apologized to our garbage man for not recycling. He said, 'don't worry about it, it all goes onto the same conveyor belt' 😆😂"
This isn't Musk's first tussle with the climate change community, and in June 2023 he famously posted: "What happens on Earth's surface (eg farming) has no meaningful impact on climate change."
Claiming that climate change overwhelmingly came from moving carbon from deep underground into the atmosphere, he added: "Over time, if we keep doing this, the chemical makeup of our atmosphere will change enough to induce meaningful climate change."
This was debunked by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis replying: "Human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unquestionably caused global warming, with global surface temperature reaching 1.1°C above 1850-1900 levels in 2011-2020."
Musk also replied to Dogecoin co-creator Billy Markus calling recycling 'virtue signaling' in March 2024, saying: "Yeah, recycling household trash, with rare exception, is actually counterproductive. It costs more energy and causes more environmental harm to recycle than not to recycle!”
Even as we're encouraged to keep recycling, Elon Musk has made his thoughts on the matter pretty clear.
Okay, enough of the trash talk.