Penn and Teller have a fantastic episode of their show that explains why and how recycling is a waste of time, energy, and resources. This has always been intuitive to me, and I don't know anyone else who has openly and explicitly rejected recycling like I have. I usually get diry looks when I tell people, but now I've got evidence that I've been right all along.
(Warning: vulgar language ahead.)
Except for aluminum cans, recycling is basically a scam.
(HT: The Agitator and Geeks Are Sexy.)
Their "Bullshit!" show on Showtime usually hits the nail on the head.
In our manufacturing process, we create two kinds of scrap. We have some that can be immediately reprocessed and used to make sports bottles. However, when we have mixed colors or there is any contamination, we can only use this scrap to make black bottles. When we use this material to make black bottles you have just about the most efficient example of recycling possible. For instance, if we are unable to sell enough black bottles, we have to sell this material to scrap wholesalers who then transport it to their facilty, only to then retransport it other folks who might use it to make plastic pipe or some such.
We get folks calling all the time who are quite interested in getting recycled bottles. However, they want the bottles to be post consumer, which can only happen in the very low efficiency approaches discussed by Penn and Teller. Moreover, there are no available materials that would be safe for food contact.
Once told that our potential recycled material is post industrial (also known as preconsumer), they are no longer interested. Go figure.
I loved this show! Thanks for posting it!
Besides Penn and Teller are just great fun.
This has been something that REAL environmentalists that I know have been saying for years. I'm glad it's comming out, but you know what, no one cares.
It is successful propoganda that the public has already bought and paid for. It is in our culture.
One thing that the Waste Management company that collects trash from my house does, is they let us have two recycle bins in addition to our trash can for no additional cost. A lot of bulk gets put into those recycle bins that would not fit into the size of trash can I rent from them. So even though the cost of recycling that cardboard might be more, I recycle it to save my own money. And to save any more I would have to change the WHOLE SYSTEM. Even though I am likely paying for the remainder of the cost to recycle the cardboard through my city taxes, the personal cost to me and my family of changing the whole system to save that money does not meet the cost-benifit analysis requirements.
And that is how bad policy perpetuates. Good people allow stupid public policy because it's too much effort to turn it around.
It is easy to explain to people, based on the idea that corporations are greedy.
Everything costs money. Materials, energy, landfill space: everything. That means that it is a simple equasion -- if recycling saves overall, someone will pay you to get your stuff to recycle. This is because corporations are greedy, and will do anything to make a buck, including pay you. If it doesn't save, or in fact costs more overall, then they will make you pay them to take it.
Energy is the biggest part. If people scoff at this, remind them of how expensive it is to pay the electric bill and fill up thier car. Recycling aluminum cans and scrap metal saves energy. That is why scrap yards will pay you to bring them aluminum and scrap metal to recycle. Paper and glass cost more to recycle than to make new, which is why no corporation will do it, and the government charges you (taxes) to do it anyway.
When I lived in Austin they had some requirements for sorting trash, and they were always toying with more severe requirements. It made me think of medieval England, where property taxes were usually paid in labor rather than money. As I recall the history, originally it was military service, then labor of whatever kind, and only later could you pay your way out of the tax with livestock or crops. It was much later that England had enough circulating currency for tax payments by money to become a viable option.
So even if the City of Austin had been able to sell its recycled garbage for more than it paid to process it, it wouldn't really have been a profit without subtracting the value of all the involuntary trash-sorting labor that the law required, which was really just another tax.