Three
Myths about Trash (The Real Costs of Recycling)
Mises
Institute ^ |
December 02, 2009 | Floy Lilley
Posted on Wednesday,
December 02, 2009 7:26:31 PM by sickoflibs
We have seen a very similar published by another source, we have no doubt that what is written here is the truth.
There are three things everybody knows when we
talk trash:
1.We know we're running out of landfill space; 2.we know we're
saving resources and protecting the environment by recycling; and 3.we know no
one would recycle if they weren't forced to. Let's look at these three things
we think we know. Are they real or are they rubbish?
1. Are We Running Out of Landfill Space? Two
events created the perfect garbage storm in the late 1980s. One barge and one
bureaucrat created this overhyped myth. The garbage barge was the Mobro 4000.
The bureaucrat was J. Winston Porter.
The Mobro 4000 gained celebrity status by spending
two months and 6,000 miles seeming to scour the Atlantic coastline and the
J. Winston Porter became a star that season at the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by writing a report entitled The Solid
Waste Dilemma: Agenda for Action, in which Porter proclaimed that recycling is
absolutely vital because
What Porter thought he knew was simply not so. The
EPA had noticed that the number of landfills was dropping. They failed to
notice that the size of landfills was getting much bigger much faster. Total
landfill capacity was actually rising. The EPA also underestimated the
prospects for creating additional capacity.
Obviously, and as usual, the real landfill problem
is not a landfill problem at all but a political problem. "Fears about the
effects of landfills on the local environment have led to the rise of the
not-in-my-back-yard (NIMBY) syndrome, which has made permitting facilities
difficult. Actual landfill capacity is not running out."
Today, 1,654 landfills in 48 states take care of
54 percent of all the solid waste in the country. One-third of them are
privately owned. The largest landfill, in
"We are not running out of landfill
space."More and more landfills are producing pipeline-quality natural gas.
Waste Management plans to turn 60 of their waste sites into energy facilities
by 2012. The new plants will capture methane gas from decomposing landfill
waste, generating more than 700 megawatts of electricity, enough to power
700,000 homes.
Holding all of
2. Are We Saving Resources and Protecting the
Environment by Recycling? What are the costs in energy and material resources
to recycling as opposed to landfill disposal, which we've just looked at? Which
method of handling solid waste uses the least amount of resources as valued by
the market?
As government budgets tighten and the cost of
being "green" rubs against the reality of rising taxes, recycling
coordinators like
I don't think she will be able to do it. But it
should be easier for Leigh at the university than it will be for her
counterpart in the City of
Overall, curbside recycling's costs run between 35
percent and 55 percent more than other recycling methods, because it uses huge
amounts of capital and labor per pound of material recycled. Recycling itself
uses three times more resources than does depositing waste in landfills.
The largest
Even though they are a half-million dollars in
debt, NRC may legally continue to exist if they can raise funds, negotiate with
their creditors and develop a business plan. What seems to be their business
plan? They are counting on the Kerry-Boxer Bill on clean energy to include
recycling language. In other words, they are counting on being bailed out and
subsidized. The market knows this is a losing proposition, so these players are
trying to get taxpayers to fund their enterprises.
"Wherever private-property rights to forests
are well-defined and enforced, forests are either stable or growing."The
Solid Waste Association of North America found that, of the six communities
involved in a particular study, all but one of the curbside recycling programs,
and all the composting operations and waste-to-energy incinerators, increased
the cost of waste disposal. Indeed, the price for recycling tends to soar far
higher than the combined costs of manufacturing raw materials from virgin
sources and dumping rubbish into landfills.
Recycled newspapers must be deinked, often with
chemicals, creating sludge. Even if the sludge is harmless, it too must be
disposed of. Second, recycling more newspapers will not necessarily preserve
trees, because many trees are grown specifically to be made into paper. The
amount of new growth that occurs each year in forests exceeds by a factor of 20
the amount of wood and paper that is consumed by the world each year. Wherever
private-property rights to forests are well-defined and enforced, forests are
either stable or growing.
Glass is made from silica dioxide — that's common
beach sand — the most abundant mineral in the crust of the earth. Plastic is
derived from petroleum byproducts after fuel is harvested from the raw
material. Recycling paper, glass, or plastic is usually not justified compared
to the virgin prices of these materials.
The best way to measure the scarcity of natural
resources, such as trees, sand, or oil, is to use the market prices of those
resources. If the price of a resource is going up over time (and it's not just
inflation pushing those prices higher) the resource is getting scarcer. If the
price is going down, it is becoming more plentiful. Indeed, since 1845, the
average price of raw materials has fallen roughly 80 percent after adjusting
for inflation.
This paradox of our having more by using more is
explained by the use of the most important resource — man's mind. Human
ingenuity makes natural resources increasingly available through prices,
innovation, and substitution.
Bureaucrats, however, appear to occupy a place at
the opposite end from human ingenuity. Their interferences in markets do
damage. Just two examples will illustrate what I mean by that. One is about a
light that has a dark side. The other example requires that you either clean
your plate or become a composter.
In 2007, Congress banned incandescent bulbs — not
exactly a market action. The phasing out of incandescent light is to begin with
the 100-watt bulb in 2012 and end with the 40-watt bulb in 2014. By 2020, bulbs
must be 70 percent more efficient than they are today. While a standard,
100-watt bulb costs $1.24, the spiral compact fluorescent light (CFL) 100-watt
sells for $4.97. Advocates argue, however, that the CFL lasts longer and uses
less energy. The packaging claims that after six years I will have saved $74 in
energy.
Thereby, in the year 2007 alone, under this edict,
some 397 million compact fluorescent light bulbs were placed on the market.
Their debut is counted as a success.
"Recycling would seem to be the philosophy
that everything is worth saving except your own time and money."However,
the recycling of spent household CFLs has been an abject failure. Despite CFL-disposal
bans in states like
What's the problem with that? Landfills, as we've
learned, have the space and the appetite for our waste. Well, the problem is
the potential public and environmental health effects of the collective release
of the small amount of mercury in each discarded CFL. For example, using the
mean amount of 5 milligrams per CFL, the total amount of mercury contained in
the 2007 shipments of CFLs alone is a large amount.
There is no mention on GE's packaging of the
bulb's mercury component or any special precautions you must take when this
bulb breaks.
Notice that "mercury free" is already a
selling point for the producers of new LED technology Accent bulbs.
"Accent" means you can't actually get enough light from them to read
by. But, you can tell the packager has obviously experienced how ugly the
CFL-produced light is, because the buyer is assured a warm, white light, which
is something you do not get with a CFL.
In June of this year,
Then, bringing new depth and meaning to the word
"boondoggle,"
Collecting your food scraps, plant trimmings,
soiled paper, and other compostables is considered necessary by San Franciscans
to fight global warming. Residents get both a green cart and a green report
titled "Stop Trashing the Planet." Residents face $100 fines if they
fail to separate their food scraps from their papers or cans. Businesses face
fines of $500. Really bad actors could be fined $1,000. The stated goal is to
get to zero waste, meaning no garbage at all going into landfills, by the year
2020.
Obviously,
In light of these facts, how can San Franciscans
and others think recycling conserves resources? First, many states and local
communities subsidize recycling programs, either out of tax receipts or out of
fees collected for trash disposal. That's the case with
"Mandated recycling exists mainly because
there is plenty of money to be made by labeling products as "green"
or "recycled" to get municipal and federal grants."Why do these
same people think that recycling is protecting the environment by not
polluting? Recycling is a manufacturing process, and therefore it too has
environmental impact. The US Office of Technology Assessment says that it is
"usually not clear whether secondary manufacturing such as recycling
produces less pollution per ton of material processed than primary
manufacturing processes."
Increased pollution by recycling is particularly
apparent in the case of curbside recycling.
Manufacturing paper, glass, and plastic from
recycled materials uses appreciably more energy and water, and produces as much
or more air pollution, as manufacturing from raw materials does. Resources are
not saved and the environment is not protected.
3. Do People Recycle Only When They Are Forced To?
If all we knew about recycling was what we heard from environmentalist groups,
recycling would seem to be the philosophy that everything is worth saving
except your own time and money. Costs of recycling are mostly hidden. If we add
in the weekly costs of sorting out items, it makes more sense to place
everything in landfills.
But private recycling is the world's second
oldest, if not the oldest, profession. Recyclers were just called scavengers.
Everything of value has always been recycled. You will automatically know that
something is of value when someone offers to buy it from you, or you see people
picking through your waste or diving into dumpsters.
Aluminum packaging has never been more than a
small fraction of solid waste, because metals have value. Ragpickers separating
out cloth from waste may not be in season now, but cardboard, wood, and metals
have always been in some demand.
Scrapyards recycle iron and steel because making
steel from virgin iron and coal is more expensive. Members of the
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. So yes, people do
recycle even when they are not forced to do so.
However, forcing people to recycle makes society
worse off. Mandated recycling exists mainly because there is plenty of money to
be made by labeling products as "green" or "recycled" to
get municipal and federal grants.
Henry Hazlitt and Ludwig von Mises speak to our
recycling topic.
In Economics in One Lesson, Hazlitt teaches us
that mandatory recycling considers only-short term benefits to a few groups —
politicians, public-relations consultants, environmental organizations, and
waste-handling corporations — instead of looking at the longer-term effects of
the policy for all groups. The negative consequence will be the squandering of
human resources.
In conclusion, Mises also teaches us what to
expect. Mises, in his great work Human Action, does not say that recycling is a
bad belief. He shows by example that mandatory recycling is an inappropriate
means of caring about the environment. Waste is inescapable. Austrian economics
leaves it to every person to decide whether his or her belief in recycling is more
important than the avoidance of the inevitable consequences of forced recycling
policies: wasted natural resources and wasted human resources.