The truth about recycling
We do not recycle. I do save aluminum cans in the shop -- there is a crusher on the wall and most of my soda consumption is there but we do not recycle cardboard or glass.
With the exception of a few areas, most of the glass just get put into a landfill -- same with most cardboard.
Michael C. Munger writing at the Cato Institute
explains why:
Recycling: Can It Be Wrong, When It Feels So Right?
Almost everything that�s said about recycling is wrong. At the very least, none of the conventional wisdom is completely true. Let me start with two of the most common claims, each quite false:1. Everything that can be recycled should be recycled. So that should be the goal of regulation: zero waste.
2. If recycling made economic sense, the market system would take care of it. So no regulation is necessary, and in fact state action is harmful.
If either of those two claims were true, then the debate would be over. The truth is more complicated than almost anyone admits.
There are two general kinds of arguments in favor of recycling. The first is that �this stuff is too valuable to throw away!� In almost all cases, this argument is false, and when it is correct recycling will be voluntary; very little state action is necessary. The second is that recycling is cheaper than landfilling the waste. This argument may well be correct, but it is difficult to judge because officials need keep landfill prices artificially low to discourage illegal dumping and burning. Empirically, recycling is almost always substantially more expensive than disposing in the landfill.
Since we can�t use the price system, authorities resort to moralistic claims, trying to persuade people that recycling is just something that good citizens do. But if recycling is a moral imperative, and the goal is zero waste, not optimal waste, the result can be a net waste of the very resources that recycling was implemented to conserve. In what follows, I will illustrate the problems with each of the two central fallacies of mandatory and pure-market recycling, and then will turn to the problem of moral imperatives.
Heh - nails it! Do not forget that these subsidies for the recycling pickup and landfill use comes out of our taxes. We pay for it anyway, just from a different pocket.
A few months ago, I dropped our garbage collection entirely. We have little food waste so I just keep our trash in a couple cans in the garage. I go into Bellingham regularly so when there are a couple bags (about once/month), I do a dump run. My fee at the waste transfer station? Less than ten bucks. My cost for garbage collection? Sixty bucks/month. I don't count my diesel cost as I was heading into town anyway.
Penn and Teller did an excellent expose on the recycling scam with Season 2, Episode 5 of their Bullshit! television series.
Posted by DaveH at June 6, 2013 12:15 PM