First one from the Boston Globe.
Excerpt:
Unlike commercial and industrial recycling — a thriving voluntary market that annually salvages tens of millions of tons of metal, paper, glass, and plastic — mandatory household recycling is a money loser. Cost studies show that curbside recycling can cost, on average, 60 percent more per ton than conventional garbage disposal. In 2004, an analysis by New York’s Independent Budget Office concluded, according to The New York Times, that “it cost anywhere from $34 to $48 a ton more to recycle material, than to send it off to landfills or incinerators.”
“There is not a community curbside recycling program in the United States that covers its cost,” says Jay Lehr, science director at the Heartland Institute and author of a handbook on environmental science and technology. They exist primarily to make people “feel warm and fuzzy about what they are doing for the environment.”
But if recycling household trash makes everyone feel warm and fuzzy, why does it have to be compulsory? Why the fines and computer chips? Mandatory recycling programs “force people to squander valuable resources in a quixotic quest to save what they would sensibly discard,” writes Clemson University economist Daniel K. Benjamin. “On balance, recycling programs lower our wealth.”
Second one from the Boston Globe.
Excerpt:
Most of the stuff we throw out — aluminum cans are an exception — is cheaper to replace from scratch than to recycle. “Cheaper” is another way of saying “requires fewer resources.” Green evangelists believe that recycling our trash is “good for the planet” — that it conserves resources and is more environmentally friendly. But recycling household waste consumes resources, too.
Extra trucks are required to pick up recyclables, and extra gas to fuel those trucks, and extra drivers to operate them. Collected recyclables have to be sorted, cleaned, and stored in facilities that consume still more fuel and manpower; then they have to be transported somewhere for post-consumer processing and manufacturing. Add up all the energy, time, emissions, supplies, water, space, and mental and physical labor involved, and mandatory recycling turns out to be largely unsustainable — an environmental burden, not a boon.
“Far from saving resources,” Benjamin writes, “curbside recycling typically wastes resources — resources that could be used productively elsewhere in society.”
Popular impressions to the contrary notwithstanding, we are not running out of places to dispose of garbage. Not only is US landfill capacity at an all-time high, but all of the country’s rubbish for the next 100 years could comfortably fit into a landfill measuring 10 miles square. Benjamin puts that in perspective: “Ted Turner’s Flying D ranch outside Bozeman, Mont., could handle all of America’s trash for the next century — with 50,000 acres left over for his bison.”
I think people recycling because they want to feel good about themselves, and maybe show off to their neighbors. It’s not done because it makes any sense. For the record, I don’t recycle.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
I recycle because it gives me 3 extra bins to throw trash into that the trash company will take without charging me extra.
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LOL! See, that makes sense. And the city should charge for trash pick-up – in fact, the whole thing should be privatized with a choice of companies to provide trash removal services.
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Do you only support initiatives if they’re money makers?
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Did you even read the quoted portions, McS? Recycling, except in the case of aluminum, is *bad* for the environment because it takes more energy to recycle than create from scratch and it’s not like any of this is news to anyone that’s
been half-paying attention for the past, oh, two decades.
Like so many other things on the left, recycling is a religious convection, and its alleged benefits an article of faith amongst the converted who will brook no questioning of their [censored] belief system.
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Are you referring to yourself?
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McS, the answer is no. Wintery supports initiatives which cost him money instead of earning him money – like apologetics. That’s because there are things he values more than money. Money is a means to an end, not an end in itself. As to the recycling, it not only doesn’t make money, but the article points out that curbside recycling consumes more resources than not recycling. That means, it’s not helping the environment as it purports to, but harming it. The only value it has is to make people feel good in their ignorance.
What I want to know is: why is there a difference between curbside recycling and industrial recycling? What are the factors that make it sensible in the industrial context?
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Thanks Mary. My answer is what Mary said.
If the problem is throwing out too much trash, then charge people for trash pick-up on a per-usage basis, and provide tax incentives for composting. I’m sure there are other alternatives that don’t work better than consumer recycling. I am in favor of industrial and commercial recycling.
I think that answer to the problem of over-consumption is to raise interest rates and provide government incentives to saving, like the tax-free savings accounts that Canada has.
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I think that having a targeted “goods and services” tax is a better solution. The more you consume, the more tax you pay.
The other simple thing would be to regular the amount of packaging you can have for a product. Everything I buy has too much packaging, especially plastic and cardboard. Consumers should also be more active in petitioning/boycotting companies that are not responsible with their (the worlds) resources.
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Just creates a black market.
I, too, would like less packaging– if I never saw another clamshell….
I notice a lot of the extra packaging that I find is lawsuit or thief prevention.
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It is just like organic foods. They take up more space, use more water, are more often than not packaged heavier, and are more of a strain on the environment than mass produced normal grocery items.
Recycling, organic foods, and the prius are the opiate of the elite. They are nothing more than status symbols that replaced European sports cars in the 80’s.
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Wintery, you only told part of the story and the part you told is from 2004, when NYC scaled back its recycling program because of budget problems and inefficiencies in cost vs. benefits (though the city never discontinued paper recycling).
Now for the update that turns your argument on its ear.
Since cutting back, New York City closed its last landfill, and private out-of-state landfills raised prices due to the increased workload of hauling away and disposing of New York’s trash.
As a result, the benefits of recycling glass and plastic increased and glass and plastic recycling became economically viable for the city again. New York reinstated the recycling program accordingly, with a more efficient system and with more reputable service providers than it had used previously. Problem solved.
So…I’m bringing this up for a couple of reasons. One, if your main objection is price (and it must be because that was the thrust of your post), then you should now be in favor of recycling. Two, you should always use the most recent information and three, if you are going to criticize a practice for being cost inefficient, then there are other very egregious money wasters out there including funding wars we cannot win and giving money to charity around the world that you should also, presumably, be against on the grounds of cost/benefit analysis.
Indisputably, there are many worthwhile endeavors that we fund because it makes us better in the long run. I won’t claim that wars fall into this category, but spending money on research and development into alternative energy, for example, all fall into the category of being frightfully expensive in the beginning, until new systems are mainstreamed, more companies provide services, thereby providing competition and driving down the price–just like with curbside recycling.
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What is it specifically about local organic produce that makes you so angry, John? It’s not the cultivation and transport. I live in a community with farmers markets 4 days a week. And you know how the produce is shipped and packed? In crates, in trucks, before being unloaded and sold out of crates under tents, outdoors, in the daylight. No refrigeration, no parking lots, no electricity, no airconditioning.
The one thing it does have way more of than mass produced grocery items is flavor. And it has fewer chemicals, not to mention outbreaks of salmonella and inhumane treatment of farm animals.
But all that aside, John, why attack the people who buy it? How, exactly, does that make you a better person? And why not cheer free market capitalism, which makes it possible for small family farms to remain viable in a world of factory farms and Walmart?
Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
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Want to REALLY help the environment?
Don’t recycle, reuse– make it so there’s a place people can take usable stuff they don’t want anymore. Ask for volunteers and have a “bring your reusables” day once a month, at some central location, to get donated stuff. See what it would cost to have a truck picking stuff up.
Work with Goodwill and other resalers– I know that every time I’ve taken donations to Goodwill, they’ve had to go through it and turn down half of the stuff for space or quality reasons.
Figure out the average cost to sterilize a mattress, padded furniture, rugs, pillows, etc and charge that much for the items.
Shoot, it could even be a job training thing– a LOT of the electronics I see out by the dumpster at my apartment complex just need a little bit of very basic electronics work. (If I had the tools I’d do it just for the pleasure of fixing stuff….)
Back in the 80s in Cali, our local dump had a place off to one side where people would put things they didn’t want, but thought someone else might– say, a little wooden kid’s chair with the seat gone. (It’s in my folks’ living room, with a woven rawhide seat.) Then there was a big legal thing, I think related to recycling, and that wasn’t allowed anymore.
To heck with recycling– re-use!
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I really like the idea of using products for their full lifetime, rather than a short time. I have had the same car for over 13 years. It is still fuel efficient and saves the environment ad another replacement car is not required to be built. It is not a matter of money, rather a matter of what is the best thing to do.
Secondly, my local dump (in New Zealand) has a “dump shop” where you can pickup amazing cheap computers, skis, books, all sorts. Pitty California got rid of theirs as it is a great idea.
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I do my bit for the environment and the global warming catastrophe that we are causing by recycling words I’ve already used. I can do entire posts by simply reusing old words and phrases. Al probably get Gore duh for saying this.
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LOL! Now my cheeks are hurting.
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The prize for the most sensible response goes to Foxfier. And the prize for the wackiest goes to Richard. My cheeks are hurting too! That’s an inconvenient truth… ;-)
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I myself used to reuse and recycle old boyfriends. But they sure don’t hold up the way they used to!
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