Michelle Malkin mentioned an article by John
Tierney entitled “Recycling Is Garbage,” but did not
(accurately) link to it. A quick search on google found it here.
I am not able to tell how accurate it is, but it is wonderfully
politically incorrect, and very much in accordance with common sense.
I am thus finding myself influenced by it to more strongly support
a position I previously held on other reports. I have heard at some
point that in Fairfax County at least, our recycling efforts produce
more material to be recycled than the recycling centers can handle,
and so the excess is diverted to landfills anyway. Given that,
what is the point of the extra effort and hassle of recycling?
But this piece goes beyond that, talking about the web of government
and media action that has led to our current recycling mania.
It isn’t cost efficient, it isn’t necessary, and it isn’t helping.
Any number of interesting quotes here.
Plastic packaging and fast-food containers may seem
wasteful, but they actually save resources and reduce trash. The
typical household in Mexico City buys fewer packaged goods than
an American household, but it produces one third more garbage,
chiefly because Mexicans buy fresh foods in bulk and throw away
large portions that are unused, spoiled or stale. Those apples
in Dittersdorf’s slide, protected by plastic wrap and foam, are
less likely to spoil. The lightweight plastic packaging requires
much less energy to manufacture and transport than traditional
alternatives like cardboard or paper. Food companies have switched
to plastic packaging because they make money by using resources
efficiently. A typical McDonald’s discards less than two ounces of
garbage for each customer served-less than what’s generated by a
typical meal at home.
Plastic packaging is routinely criticized because it
doesn’t decay in landfills, but neither does most other packaging,
as William Rathje, an archaeologist at the University of Arizona,
has discovered from his excavations of landfills. Rathje found that
paper, cardboard and other organic materials-while technically
biodegradable-tend to remain intact in the airless confines of a
landfill. These mummified materials actually use much more landfill
space than plastic packaging, which has steadily been getting smaller
as manufacturers develop stronger, thinner materials. Juice cartons
take up half the landfill space occupied by the glass bottles they
replaced; 12 plastic grocery bags fit in the space occupied by one
paper bag.
“I don’t understand why anyone thinks New York City
has a garbage crisis because it can’t handle all its own waste,”
says James DeLong, an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise
Institute in Washington. “With that kind of logic, you’d have to
conclude that New York City has a food crisis because it can’t
grow all the vegetables its people need within the city limits,
so it should turn Central Park into a farm and ration New Yorkers’
consumption of vegetables to what they can grow there.”
And much much more, providing numbers and numerous examples
of the flaws of the recycling mentality, the only thing lacking
is the thing that defines the difference between an opinion piece
for a news paper and a research article, he doesn’t really provide
the references or citations for his numbers and examples, you are
left to trust to his unknown level of integrity. This article is
a very interesting read that I highly recommend.
Update 20050301-1412: Michelle
Malkin now links to the same page I do :-)
