'Is this recyclable?'

Comic panels by Ali Holmes address the question, focusing on local systems.

This piece was inspired by daily conversations around how confusing our recycling system is, how it is ever changing and how little the general public knows about how this system functions, including myself.

Given that my partner and I are from different states, we both had different ideas of what can and cannot be recycled because every state — and cities within them — have different standards of what can and cannot be recycled depending on the recycling facilities near them.

When thinking more critically about recycling, I realized I knew little of the industry or really how it operated, leading me to research some of the intricacies of the system. Specifically, I was interested in a few questions:

what can and cannot be recycled, and
how are materials actually recycled?

Drawing and writing this piece has helped me recycle more intentionally based on the likelihood of the item actually being recycled in the end. I hope to inspire readers to do the same and for all of us to think consciously about consumerism around what we buy for the sake of the Earth.

In what feels like a lifetime ago, I studied both studio art and sociology, graduating with a double major. Comics felt like a natural medium of being able to blend these two distinct academic areas! This piece was hand-drawn using Procreate in May 2024 and originally self-published. When I started this piece, I thought it would be fairly short, 4-5 pages. I didn’t fully realize that the systems surrounding this industry were so complicated and nuanced. I thought I could read a few Time magazine sorts of reads and then create a script from there.

However, when I started digging in, I ended up reading through heavy scientific articles to actually create my script to write and draw from. There is so much to this topic that it could be a book — but that would be likely a PhD level dissertation that I personally don’t have the background to do.

As a nonfiction comics artist, I believe that nonfiction comics come alive when we bring real characters into the story. So, while this piece could read as an infographic, I interspersed scientific research with the personal anecdotes because science affects people’s daily lives!

Lastly, there isn’t really a standard format in nonfiction comics — yet — for incorporating sources which I heavily relied on to write my script. However, my last page includes the list formatted in APA style of different sources I used to gather many factoids of information I previously knew nothing about. Follow along for more stories @alidrawscomics on Instagram.