NationStates Jolt Archive

I don't know if ya'll have ever heard about this but I just thought I would throw it our there. Its one of my favorite socio-economic essays of all time. "The Eight Great Myths about Recycling." This paper takes on some of the greatest recycling dogmas of the past couple decades and shatters them with razor sharp logic and solid evidence. In a nutshell it says:
(http://www.perc.org/pdf/ps28.pdf)

Recycling is a long-practiced, productive, indeed essential,
element of the market system. Informed, voluntary recycling
conserves resources and raises our wealth, enabling us to
achieve valued ends that would otherwise be impossible. In sharp
contrast, however, mandatory recycling programs, in which people
are directly or indirectly compelled to do what they know is not
sensible, routinely make society worse off. Such programs force
people to squander valuable resources in a quixotic quest to save
what they would sensibly discard.

Can I get some other opinions here? Come on NSG!

"Voluntary recycling" of the sort cited by you, if indeed it exists in the slightest, may well have been in evidence as the welath of the west has increased. Whether "voluntary recycling" is contingent to economic progress is a different matter.

Moreover, the simple pursuit of a free market and acknowledgement of avarice uncircumscribed is what we owe our current environment predicament to; perhaps this "quixotic" quest might be deferred, or altered a little, in the interests of the survival of the planet?

Careful examination of commonly held beliefs does tend to pull loose threads, and before you know it, the tapestry is coming apart.

It's still ok to recycle metals like aluminum from though because that's easier than mining and processing new bauxite ore. Maybe when the same can be said of plastics there will be money for the homeless in picking it up. Still, try to dispose of your trash properly, just because paper will biodegrade doesn't mean I like seeing your empty envelopes on my lawn.

I don't know if ya'll have ever heard about this but I just thought I would throw it our there. Its one of my favorite socio-economic essays of all time. "The Eight Great Myths about Recycling." This paper takes on some of the greatest recycling dogmas of the past couple decades and shatters them with razor sharp logic and solid evidence. In a nutshell it says:
(http://www.perc.org/pdf/ps28.pdf)



Can I get some other opinions here? Come on NSG!Certainly interesting and not the regular "MArk3t pwns ALL!!!1!!!" crap that some think tanks produce. Their assessment of landfills and the dangers thereof is a bit rosier than what I've been hearing from people that design them, though. Secondly, while recycling is wasteful in some balances, those balances often fail to include external costs such as the leakage that will eventually happen in a landfill or the costs to businesses when higher rates of recycling are an economic necessity and local American companies get the shit kicked out of them by Japanese or European companies which haven't been sleeping on the recycling market. Thirdly, a lot of what gets recycled in the US seriously shouldn't be, since it would actually be more feasible to reuse it. Many things that are considered trash in the US are actually recycleable, and many things that are considered recycleable are actually reuseable.

"Voluntary recycling" of the sort cited by you, if indeed it exists in the slightest, may well have been in evidence as the welath of the west has increased. Whether "voluntary recycling" is contingent to economic progress is a different matter.

Moreover, the simple pursuit of a free market and acknowledgement of avarice uncircumscribed is what we owe our current environment predicament to; perhaps this "quixotic" quest might be deferred, or altered a little, in the interests of the survival of the planet?

Ok, I can give you hundreds of examples of voluntary recycling. Chicken meat manufacturers sell their chicken guts to dog food manufacturers, my roommate recycles cans for $$, my dads printing company sells its paper waste to a company that recycles it into lesser quality paper. There are hundreds, thousands of examples of people recycling to save money and resources because its profitable to do so.

Recycling = Good, with gold prices nowadays, also cheap way to make benches, get paper at lower prices. We all are happy :)
Mandatory recycling = Overdoing it

Certainly interesting and not the regular "MArk3t pwns ALL!!!1!!!" crap that some think tanks produce. Their assessment of landfills and the dangers thereof is a bit rosier than what I've been hearing from people that design them, though.

The landfill issue is a point that I have heard a lot of very different things about. From what I understand, old landfills leak toxic water and produce methane that usually just gets burned off as an open flame. Newer landfills have double thick plastic barriers that keep water in and the methane produced is usually piped off to a power plant.

Secondly, while recycling is wasteful in some balances, those balances often fail to include external costs such as the leakage that will eventually happen in a landfill or the costs to businesses when higher rates of recycling are an economic necessity and local American companies get the shit kicked out of them by Japanese or European companies which haven't been sleeping on the recycling market.

Do you mean to say that if we don't start recycling, pollution will become so bad that recycling becomes a necessity? I don't see how that is possible.

Thirdly, a lot of what gets recycled in the US seriously shouldn't be, since it would actually be more feasible to reuse it. Many things that are considered trash in the US are actually recycleable, and many things that are considered recycleable are actually reuseable.

Totally. Although recycling plastic bottles is a huge waste of time and money, reusing them may not be.

Totally. Although recycling plastic bottles is a huge waste of time and money, reusing them may not be.
That's not a good idea as reusing plastic bottles is detrimental to your health.

That's not a good idea as reusing plastic bottles is detrimental to your health.

didn't know that. What about glass?

didn't know that. What about glass?

Glass is fine as long as you sterilize it or somesuch.

You can still re-use your plastic bottles to hold plants or other things like that but drinking over and over from the same bottle has been shown to be hazardous.

There's something I don't understand: the author says that voluntary recycling is not only okay, but good, that it is mandatory recycling that is the problem. But then he describes how recycling harms the environment. Now, wouldn't that mean that voluntary recycling is just as bad as mandatory? They all go to the same plant, after all.