THE NEGATIVE IMPACT OF RECYCLING ON THE U.S.

The Negative Impact of Recycling on the U.S. Economy

The Negative Impact of Recycling on the U.S. Economy

Recycling is energetically expensive. Recycling incurs financial debits through the costs of collecting and processing recyclable materials. The vast majority of community-based curbside recycling programs is less than ten years old. As a result of their recent implementation, many of these programs are more expensive than they need to be. The main cost of these programs comes from collecting materials, which often initially requires new trucks and equipment that duplicate the function of already-purchased garbage trucks. The economic case for recycling certainly got off to a difficult start. The sudden rise of curbside recycling in the late 1980s created a new source of “raw” materials that industry wasn't yet equipped to exploit. Prices reflected that. Rumors spread that cities were paying exorbitant costs to get rid of recyclables—or were simply dumping them in landfills. When demand finally did pick up, it reached an unsustainable high: In the Pacific Northwest, for example, the price of a ton of mixed recyclables spiked from $33 in 1994 to $170 in 1995 and then plummeted back to $40 in 1996. This volatility in the recycling market discouraged further investment and provided more ammunition for skeptics. (Perchard, 2004),

In an influential 1996 New York Times Magazine article entitled “Recycling is Garbage,” John Tierney summed up the skepticism by asserting there was no landfill shortage and that the depletion of natural resources wasn't a concern: “The [1970s] oil scare was temporary, just like all previous scares about resource shortages,” he wrote. In fact, the whole concept of recycling was fraught with trade-offs, he argued: “Saving a tree is a mixed blessing. When there's less demand for virgin wood pulp, timber companies are likely to sell some of their tree farms—maybe to condominium developers.” Over the following decade, the price of recyclables inched upward, but the fear that recycling might be an expensive boondoggle remained unchanged. In 2004, magicians-turned-debunkers Penn and Teller filmed an episode of their television show that echoed Tierney's criticisms from eight years earlier. “The recycling industry creates pollution, has to be subsidized by the government because it's cost-ineffective, and is completely unnecessary,” they declared. Meanwhile, recycling advocates were claiming exactly the opposite. There is more to the whole picture of recycling than it appears when you also weigh in environmental impacts as well. One huge issue that many don't think about is the energy cost it takes to transport the items that you are recycling. There is the cost of picking the items up and transporting them to the recycling centers that are available in your area. If there is one center for plastics, glass, paper, metals, and other items that is there locally, this is not an issue. For some, the recycling center is miles away. After it's separated at the plant, there are more trucks used to get to various plants for different ...