Posted: 07/07/2004 | Author: H. Sterling Burnett
Recycling is a Waste
Americans love recycling. Garage sales have long been popular. Second-hand clothing stores are all the rage. And, I don’t know where I’d be without used book stores—undoubtedly wealthier but also less well informed and poorer in spirit.
Sadly, America’s love affair with reusing, refurbishing and, indeed, destroying and reconstituting old goods and materials extends to mandatory, municipal recycling programs. Unfortunately, these programs are often costly and produce their own set of environmental harms. Don’t take my word for it; a 1996 New York Times Magazine article was entitled “Recycling is Garbage!”
Nothing has changed since that article appeared.
Much of the impetus for mandatory recycling programs came from a 1980s Environmental Protection Agency study showing that the number of landfills was decreasing. While this was true, the landfills themselves were getting bigger, and the total capacity was increasing! Indeed, the U.S. currently has 18 years worth of landfill even if no new landfills are built. And at current rates of disposal, a single landfill just 100 yards deep and 35 miles square could contain all the garbage generated in the U.S. for the next 1,000 years.
Recycling often results in unforeseen environmental harms. For instance, newspaper recycling—which requires the use of toxic chemicals in the de-inking process—creates worse disposal problems than the use of virgin paper. One expert noted that curbside recycling programs are “like moving from once-a-week garbage collection to twice a week”—meaning more trucks, more fuel burned and extra air pollution. Also the uses of recycled materials are often ill-considered. For example, in the Northwest, highways built using recycled tires have had to be closed periodically when the heat generated from the rusting steel belts caused the roads to start smoldering, buckle and catch fire.
Recycling is costly, as well. New York spends $35 to $54 million dollars more each year to dispose of waste than it would without recycling—and 40 percent of the New York’s glass, metal and plastic waste is not suitable for recycling, so it ends up in landfills anyway. A Florida television news report found that Orange County Florida spends roughly $3 million per year to collect recyclables, but sells them for only $56,000. In this time of tight budgets and cuts to city services, this money is no longer available for other worthwhile social goods like new schools, more police, better roads, housing and medical care for the poor and open space for parks.
Recycling is, undoubtedly, sometimes worthwhile, but as with old clothes and used books, it is probably best to let people rather than governments decide which items are reused and when.