The Myths Of Recycling

See Click here to read this WSJ article by Mark J. Perry. Here is that post:

"In case you missed it, last Friday (November 15) was “America Recycles Day.” Even if you didn’t celebrate or attend a recycling event, or just do some extra recycling on Friday, it’s not too late to make an online recycling pledge “to give your garbage another life” (and be eligible to win a park bench made out of recycled plastic). Here’s the pledge below for individuals (and here’s a link to the pledge for businesses).

As an individual, I pledge to:

Learn. I will find out what materials are collected for recycling in my community at americarecyclesday.org

Act. Reduce my personal waste by recycling. Within the next month, I will recycle more.

Share. In the next month, I will encourage one family member or one friend to take the pledge.

Wow, that last one sounds a little cultish, or at least something like becoming an Environmental Jehovah’s Witness and going door-to-door to “witness” to your neighbors and friends about your religious devotion to recyling and recruit new members to your “green church.”

To be fair and balanced, let me declare that tomorrow, November 18, forever more be known as “Mandatory Recycling Squanders Valuable Resources and Makes Us Worse Off Day.” To make my case, I present the article “Recycling Myths Revisted” by Daniel Benjamin, published by the Property and Environment Resource Center (PERC). Here’s a summary:

In his essay, Daniel Benjamin takes us through the common claims asserted on behalf of the multi-billion dollar recycling programs that are generally presumed to be wise public policy. Benjamin applies careful analysis to the claims made over the years about the “need” for mandatory recycling—and finds them to be bogus. He reminds us that before we rush into costly policies presumed to be saving the environment, sound science and analysis of the facts, which are rarely as interesting as fantastic scare stories, are much to be desired in a society that values freedom in markets and personal choice.

Specifically, Benjamin addresses and debunks each of these 8 commonly-held myths about recycling and the environment:

Myth 1: We are running out of space for our trash.

Myth 2. Trash threatens our health and ecosystem.

Myth 3. Packaging is our problem.

Myth 4. Trade in trash is wasteful.

Myth 5. We are running out of resources.

Myth 6. Recycling always protects the environment.

Myth 7. Recycling saves resources.

Myth 8. Without recycling mandates, there wouldn’t be recycling.

Each of those myths is false, and Benjamin explains why in detail in his article.
Here’s the conclusion of Benjamin’s article, which provides the justification for creating “Mandatory Recycling Squanders Valuable Resources and Makes Us Worse Off Day”:

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 compelled to do what they will not do voluntarily, routinely make society worse off. Such programs force people to squander valuable resources in a quixotic quest to save what they would sensibly discard. On balance, mandatory recycling programs lower our wealth.

Misinformation about the costs and benefits of recycling is as destructive as mandatory recycling programs, for it induces people to engage in wasteful activity. Public service campaigns and “educational” programs that exaggerate the benefits of recycling fall into this category, but there are other offenders as well. For example, bottle and can deposit laws, which effectively misinform people about the true value of used beverage containers, induce people to waste resources collecting and processing items that appear to be worth five (or even ten) cents, given their redemption prices, but in fact are worth a penny or less to society (EPA 2001). Similarly, costly government-run recycling programs that pick up recyclables at no charge give people the incentive to recycling myths revisited engage in too much recycling. They give the appearance that the programs are without cost, when in fact they consume valuable resources that could be used in far more highly valued pursuits.

The free market system is eminently capable of providing both disposal and recycling in an amount and mix that creates the greatest wealth for society. This makes possible the widest and most satisfying range of human endeavors. Simply put, market prices are sufficient to induce the trashman to come, and to make his burden bearable, and neither he nor we can hope for any better than that.

MP: Required reading tomorrow for “Mandatory Recycling Squanders Valuable Resources and Makes Us Worse Off Day” is the classic 1996 New York Times Magazine article “Recycling is Garbage” by New York Times science columnist John Tierney. Tierney’s main point in the article was that “Rinsing out tuna cans and tying up newspapers may make you feel virtuous, but recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern America: a waste of time and money, a waste of human and natural resources.” That one sentence gives you an idea of why Tierney’s article broke the record for the greatest volume of hate mail in New York Times history."