Recycling Myth

Mibba March 17th, 2009
Simply ask anyone on the street and they will tell you that recycling is essential for the environment, that we are running out of landfill space, recycling saves money, and that recycling creates a feeling of accomplishment. Sometimes, it isn’t a good idea to completely trust people with everything that they tell you.
One of the most used arguments is that recycling is essential for the planet’s survival, and that since it saves resources, it is vital to the prosperity of the people of the Earth. However, recycling, for the most part and on the contrary, doesn’t save resources, it uses them. We must realize that recycling itself is a manufacturing process. It uses resources. For example, consider paper: this is the cornerstone of the recycling movement. Paper is one of the many products that people always agree is a good thing to recycle. But do they know how paper is recycled? First, there is a truck. This truck takes the paper and transports it. But by doing so it creates gasses that pollute the environment. This transported paper is then put into another truck, and taken to the recycling center. This place again uses resources and creates real polluting smoke. More paper still is put into another truck and shipped to a paper mill.
This paper is then de-inked and bleached. This process leaves by-products that leave behind a scum-like chemical sludge that again is difficult to remove and dispose of correctly. Then this new paper pulp that is created is put into machines that give out even more polluting substances. So the only way to really save paper and protect the environment is to read the same print material over and over again, day after day after day. People think that we need to recycle paper. This isn’t true. One of the main arguments of this branch of recycling is that we are running out of trees. In America, there is three times the amount of trees as there was in 1920. Also, most of the trees that we use for paper come from tree farms using what is called virgin pulp. Want more trees? Then we must waste more paper. The idea is same with potato chips. People eat potato chips so we grow potatoes to make potato chips; virgin potato chips.
Recycling plastics creates fleece. Industry uses this to create bags, clothes, new bottles and so on. But the truth is that better quality and less expensive variations of these things can be made if we start straight from the beginning.
But there is a good side to all of this. There are many benefits to recycling aluminum cans. This recycling is good because there is real money in aluminum. People are already going through other people’s trash looking for cans. By recycling cans you can save enough energy to run the television for 3 hours. 95% less energy is used to turn old cans into new ones and cans are recyclable indefinitely.
Another thing that recycling advocates always claim is that we are running out of landfill space. The former EPA Administrator, Jay Winston Porter wrote something called An Agenda for Action. In it he said, “We’re running out of places to dispose our trash”, “one third of the nation’s landfills will be full within the next few years,” “if we wait the problem will get worse”, and “recycling is absolutely vital”. A landfill that is just 35 miles on each side and 200 feet high will contain about 1000 years worth of trash at the present rate of disposal. The risks of disaster a modern day landfill right now, according to EPA data, extremely low. These landfills have to comply with strict government regulations.
They have to be away from groundwater, they have to be protected from earthquakes, and they have to have a layer of impermeable clay at least 3 feet deep underneath them. The Puente Hills Landfill has about 7-8 layers of clay, gravel, and pipe systems all with protecting groundwater in mind. Once everything is buried, it will be covered over and something else will be built on it, for example a golf course or a community center or a park. The methane that is created when organic products decompose is collected and used to create energy for homes. The Puente Hills Landfill produces enough methane gas to power 60,000 homes with electricity for at least the next 30 years.
“It saves money” is something that recycling advocates say. It costs some local governments about $50 a ton to just dump it into a landfill. It takes the same government about $150 a ton to recycle. It takes triple the amount of money to recycle than to dump it into a landfill. Besides, according to the New York Department of Sanitation, 40% of what people recycle ultimately ends up in the same landfill.
The only argument left is that recycling feels good and there have been studies about this. It is a psychological thing: people feel good when they recycle. Feeling good is a good enough reason to do most anything. But if you want to feel good while doing something stupid, then maybe crystal meth or heroin could be good for you.
“Recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern America, a waste of time and money, a waste of human and natural resources” (New York Times). We are told since elementary school that recycling is great and because of this misinformation, people love to recycle. If we take our facts from myth, it is very likely that we will make wrong decisions. Recycling things (other than cans) can be good. People wear hand-me-downs, salvage parts from one thing and use it in another, burn used paper for heat, and turn old shirts into rags. These practices are good, but the moment recycling becomes obsessive and we think that we must recycle everything, that’s when recycling becomes harmful.