by Collie Tigges
ctigges@eatfirst.org
Recycling is back in the news, as Senator Jim Jef-fords (I-VT) is once again pushing a bill requiring a 10-cent deposit per aluminum can for all cans purchased. And if companies like Coke and Pepsi cannot prove that 80% of their cans sold are recycled, the govern-ment will assess them fines. This means that not only will consumers pay a deposit, we will also pay higher prices to cover fines that are almost certain to be levied since even at the height of the recycling boom only 65% of cans were recycled.
Let’s have a quick reality check on why we are al-ready paying too much for mandatory recycling pro-grams; one of the biggest disasters of the past 10 years.
Recycling makes no sense economically! Most pro-grams are losing money and tax dollars are making up the difference. City or state recycling programs are sub-sidizing private recyclers to accept materials; otherwise, the private recyclers would be out of business because there is no demand for the recycled materials. The plain, simple fact is that if there were an economic rea-son to recycle, the government would have no need to mandate or subsidize it because plucky entrepreneurs would be running the programs for them!
Recycling makes no sense environmentally! First, the fact that there is no economic incentive to recycle proves there is no dearth of these resources. It’s simple supply and demand. A quick fact for your kids when they tell you not to throw away the newspaper because you’re killing trees: America’s tree supply has been in-creasing for decades and forests today have three times more trees than 75 years ago. And, paper DOES NOT come from Bambi’s home in our National Forests. Virtually all of our paper supply comes from privately owned farms where fast-growing pulp trees are grown for a profit.
Also, the environmental costs of recycling are greater than most realize. The act of extracting usable resources from garbage is an industrial process, requir-ing chemicals and energy in amounts virtually identical to the process of manufacturing new products. It also includes other perceived no-no’s: recycling newspaper generates an extra 5,000 gallons of waste water as compared to making new paper.
Finally, and most importantly, we are not running out of landfill space! It has been estimated that all the garbage generated by Americans over the next 1,000 years could fit into a space 100 yards deep and 35 miles square. That is less than one-tenth of one percent of the American rangeland currently used for grazing. And, of course, once it’s buried, the cows could go on eating over the top. We have LOTS of space!
Reprint permission given by AgAir Update, P.O. Box 850, Perry, GA 31069 - an international agricultural aviation publication.
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