Links - 5th March 2020 (1) (Recycling)

In the ‘Star Wars’ Economy, One Thing Doesn’t Pay - Bloomberg - "Junk is surprisingly pervasive in “Star Wars,” playing an understated role in nearly every film in the series. In “The Phantom Menace,” we meet young Anakin Skywalker, the future Darth Vader, working at a small electronics scrap yard and repair shop. In “A New Hope,” Luke Skywalker's uncle buys R2-D2 and C-3PO from a group of Jawas, a species that drive massive, sand-crawling junk trucks. The recently released “Rise of Skywalker” is largely a coming-of-age story for Rey, the last of the Jedi, who spent her youth scavenging electronic scrap on Jakku, a remote outer planet... the “Star Wars” universe doesn't suffer from a scarcity of resources. There are dozens of mining outposts mentioned in the series, and there always seems to be another planet waiting to be exploited. In a galaxy that enjoys such surpluses, recycling won’t save much money. And the Empire, with its massive spending on planet-destroying weapons like the Death Star, doesn’t seem overly concerned about the environment.  So what, then, is the business model that supports so many junkyards and scavengers? Rey, the Jawas, and everyone else who scavenges in the series recognize that there's more value in a working gadget or spare part than in the raw materials that constitute them. The value is in the energy, engineering and manufacturing required to make the stuff. So, for example, that crashed star destroyer on Jakku isn't stripped for metal; instead, we see Rey risk her life to scavenge it for reusable components that she can sell... That business model wouldn’t work for plastic recyclers here on Earth. But the so-called e-waste industry — a category that includes everything from used smartphones to server racks — is rapidly diversifying into business models that look very similar to those practiced by Rey and the Jawas."

Landfills: Are we running out of room for our garbage? - "When will the United States run out of landfill space?Not for centuries... In landfill-strapped states, the problem is more political than geological or geographical. Landfill operators can build a new site from nearly any piece of land (apart from sensitive ecological areas) in six to eight years. But many voters and bureaucrats in the Northeast, for example, would rather ship their trash across state lines than have a landfill near their homes."

What you think about landfill and recycling is probably totally wrong - "This list sounds contrarian, but I think it’s actually the boring consensus view among people who are highly informed about waste disposal...
2. Properly run landfill doesn’t hurt the environment in itself
3. Even really well run landfills are a very cheap way to dispose of our waste
4. The main downside of sending something to landfill is we miss the chance to benefit from recycling it — but recycling is only sometimes cheaper or better for the environment.
It depends on the item. Metals are hard to mine and easy to recycle, so they should never go to landfill. Plastics are cheap to make and often a pain to recycle — you have to separate into many different categories, and clean them — so it’s sometimes best to just send them to landfill.I don’t just mean just from a cost point of view. Recycling can be worse for the environment too. By the time someone has picked up that plastic container of peanut butter, driven it to a recycling facility, separated it into its plastic type, taken off the lid, fully washed it out in hot water, and melted it down in a specialised facility, we might have used less energy and produced less pollution just to make a new one from scratch.Because of these realities and widespread contamination — lids on containers, food still inside them, or paper not being dry— lots of materials that are collected for recycling are never actually recycled and have to be sent to landfill. This is increasingly the case as developing countries start refusing to use their low cost of labour to do the dirty work of figuring out what to do with our recycling.But for some kinds of plastic in some places recycling is indeed the better option, even if the net gain isn’t that huge. Analysing the total life-cycle cost of recycling vs making new items is very complicated and depends on the specific context.
5. recycling of materials at the factory or industrial level is very often justified, because you can collect large quantities at a consistent quality, at very low cost
6. The problem of rubbish polluting the sea, rivers and land can be most cheaply addressed by improving rubbish collection and making sure everything gets to landfill.
Almost all of the litter that escapes into nature, especially the sea, comes from fishing ships or poorer riverine countries with bad rubbish collection practices, such as China, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Rich countries like the UK or US have rubbish collection rates approaching 100% and are responsible for little new waste reaching the oceans.Focussing on recycling is a distraction from making sure everything gets collected and safely buried underground — something which many countries already do successfully.
7. Incinerating waste and generating electricity from it is an alternative form of rubbish disposal that is good for the environment and resolves the problem permanently, but is expensive to operate up front
8. Sending things to landfill isn’t as ‘unsustainable’ as you might think...
a. By the time we start running out of oil for plastic we’ll probably have invented other, maybe better, materials to replace them, just as we’ve switched the materials we use in the past;
b. When oil actually becomes scarce, we can increase our plastic recycling, because by that point it will actually be worth it;
c. We can already make plastic from plants and by then we’ll be much better at doing that. Most oil is used for fuel — just 4–8% goes towards making plastics anyway;
d. Worse come to worst, we can mine plastics and metals from our old landfill sites.
9. Reusable straws and bags are often more resource intensive than single-use ones. Ever noticed that plastic bags and straws are both incredibly thin and incredibly cheap? Almost no resources go into making each one. It’s really kind of amazing."
His claims are all meticulously sourced. But when recycling is a performative moral act, logic doesn't matter

Could making recycling pay save the planet? - "China's fast-growing economy exported lots of manufactured goods, and instead of ships returning empty, they were loaded with waste for China to recycle.Entrepreneurs such as Mrs Yin made a fortune. But as China got richer, the government decided it no longer wanted to be a dumping ground for the world's trash.It 2017, it announced its National Sword policy, under which China would only accept well-sorted rubbish containing no more than half of 1% of stuff that should not be there. That was a big change - contamination rates used to reach 40 times that.The amount of waste being shipped to China plunged. Governments and recycling companies scrambled to adjust.Should they find other countries poor enough to accept their badly sorted waste, or raise taxes to pay higher-wage workers to sort it better, or do something else?...
For centuries people have scraped a living by scavenging for scrap, such as rags to sell to paper mills. But that was all driven by market incentives: the raw materials were too valuable to be thrown away.The idea that we should recycle because it is the right thing to do is much more recent... A TV ad campaign known as "The Crying Indian" helped shift the mood, in America at least.First shown in 1971, it shows a Native American man paddling his canoe down a trash-polluted river, and standing by a road as a passing motorist tosses a bag of fast-food detritus at his feet."People start pollution," runs the voiceover. "People can stop it." The Native American man turns to the camera, a single tear rolling down his cheek.But the advert was not all it seemed, and not just because the actor turned out to be a second-generation Italian immigrant.It was funded by an organisation backed by leading beverage and packaging companies.At the time, deposit schemes were common: buy a fizzy drink, and get some cash back when you return the bottle. This model assumes it is the manufacturer's job to provide the incentives and logistics for returning waste.The Crying Indian had a different message. People were responsible for their own waste.Deposit schemes fell out of fashion. Recycling logistics became seen as a matter for local government. Historian Finis Dunaway argues that turning "big systemic problems into questions of individual responsibility" in this way was a bad idea. It made recycling less about effective action, more about making ourselves feel good. That seems to chime with research by behavioural economists at Boston University, who found that people who know they can recycle tend to act more wastefully. That would not matter if recycling was cost-free, but of course, it is not. The economist Michael Munger also argues that it is a bad idea to leave waste disposal to the free market.If you charge people what it costs to safely dispose of their rubbish, you tempt them to dump it illegally instead, and that is much worse... Well-designed landfills are nowadays pretty safe, and we can harness the methane they produce for electricity.Modern waste incinerators can be a clean-ish source of power.If instead we treat recycling as a moral question, when do we stop?"
If people realised how much recycling cost just to give them warm fuzzy feelings...
Then again there're many cases where a small minority can impose its preferences on the majority. And recycling enjoys broad support. So people probably rather cut prison funding than give up their useless performative acts

Clogging the System: The Feud Over Flushable Wipes - "“Everyone claims their products are flushable. What we are doing is testing these claims.”Barry Orr, sewer outreach and control inspector for the city of London in Ontario, says many personal wipes don’t fall apart in sewers and can twist and become stronger, clogging pipes and sewer pumps, while attracting other materials to them, creating so-called fatbergs — congealed masses of flushed items that float, destructively, through sewers.“Wipes are kryptonite — they should not be flushed”"
I suspect that consumers like to flush their wipes because of the recycling fetish - since their trash gets collected less often to force people to recycle (and wipes aren't counted as organics OR recycleables and go into general trash). Yet another cost of this pointless fetish

Baltimore County Admits It Hasn’t Been Recycling Glass for 7 Years. It Still Encourages Residents to Recycle Glass. - "For the past seven years, the jars and bottles that residents dutifully placed in their blue bins have been being junked instead... Baltimore County had adopted single-streaming for all homes by October 2010, part of a growing trend among municipalities trying to boost recycling rates. The thinking was that if you make recycling easier, more people will do it... The trouble with single-streaming is that placing everything in the same bin increases the chances of contamination... the cost of transporting heavy glass from recycling centers to glass manufacturers is often prohibitively high, meaning it's often more economical to just make glass out of new materials. Regardless of the material in question, the American recycling industry has been going through a crisis over the last several years. Rising rates of contamination and the effective closure of a major export market in China, which stopped accepting most American plastic, have left material processing facilities with no willing buyers. Many of the recyclables that are collected therefore end up in landfills or incinerators.And that's what's been happening to Baltimore County's glass. Yet county officials are wary about telling people to stop recycling the stuff, according to the Sun. People, they fear, will fall out of the recycling habit. Ritual is apparently more important than actual reuse."

Recycling is becoming so expensive that some towns don’t know what to do - The Boston Globe - "With the recycling market across the country mired in crisis, a growing number of cities and towns are facing a painful reckoning: whether they can still afford to collect bottles, cans, plastics, and paper, which have so plummeted in value that in some cases they have become effectively worthless. “We’re looking at going from paying nothing to paying $500,000 a year”... Boston, for example, is now paying nearly $5 million to have recycling collections carted away, up from just $200,000 in 2017. City officials said they do not plan to end the program... Waste Management, the nation’s largest recycling company, used to earn as much as $80 a ton for paper it collected; today, it gets nothing, officials said. The value of cardboard has plunged 70 percent, and it now costs more to recycle glass than the company can make selling it... “In a city that’s fighting to find every penny it can for education, public health, and potholes,” he said, “we’re now having a reckoning.”"
Secular religions are worth more to people than education, public health and good roads

Everything You Know About Recycling is Wrong. Well, most everything. - "Recycling programs are, with a few exceptions, largely a waste of time, money, and resources. In its current configuration, many programs are unsustainable sans large government subsidies and in many cases, a bit of a fraud... with few exceptions, mandatory recycling programs do little to help preserve the environment and in fact, many recycling processes may do more harm than good. And surprise! A growing portion of the trash deposited for recycling ends up in landfills... Voluntary recycling has been part of society for as long as humans have been discarding unwanted items... Even without being told or forced, people will recycle materials — when there is intrinsic value in the proposition. And this point is key to understanding the economics of mandatory recycling programs. In most American communities today, mandatory recycling programs involve curbside pickup of discarded items that may, or may not, be recyclable... Mandatory recycling programs require specialized trucks to collect and transport materials to sorting facilities where everything gets separated. Most importantly, these programs require workers, as much of the process is still labor-intensive... Labor costs are just one factor that makes today’s recycling more expensive than sending trash to a landfill. And it’s one resource that keeps growing in value, while the value of the recovered materials is trending down... Processing materials like glass and plastics tend to consume much more energy and other resources than processing metals or paper. In fact, relatively little plastic waste can be recycled because there are so many types of plastic — all with different chemical compositions which in many cases, cannot be comingled. Only two — polyethylene terephthalate (PET, used for synthetic fibers and water bottles) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE, used for jugs, bottle caps, water pipes) — are routinely recycled. Additionally, most plastic waste is contaminated with paper and ink, and separating plastics from other recyclables and different types of plastics is a difficult, labor-intensive operation. The other factor impacting the business model of recycling plastics is the low price of crude oil... mixed plastics are likely to present manufacturing issues such as rapid degradation... fossil fuels are used in the production of recycled paper while the energy source for creating virgin paper is often waste products from timber.And consider that paper recycling requires different processes to remove the ink that employs detergents and chemicals, which creates waste that eventually makes its way into the water stream. Processing printed paper from laser printers and copy machines is particularly challenging as these machines employ polymers rather than ink — which is burned onto the paper — and often involves harmful chemicals and strong solvents. Furthermore, processing recycled paper produces a solid waste sludge which ends up in a landfill or incinerator, where its burning can emit harmful byproducts... common green glass bottles and jars are typically not compatible with window and other clear glass, which further limits recycling opportunities... Transportation costs alone often discount any value that may be recovered from recycling to nothing. Moreover, glass often gets broken during collecting and transportation, which can contaminate other recyclables, like sticking to cardboard, if it’s collected through a single-stream collection. In the case of recycling metals, especially aluminum, there is empirical evidence to justify not only the cost benefit but the environmental benefit. It takes about ninety-five percent less energy to make a new can out of recycled aluminum than to make can sheeting by mining bauxite and smelting the ore... In municipalities across the country, recycling has become a money-losing proposition. In places like Philadelphia and New York City, where recyclables were selling for $67 a ton, they are now paying their waste contractors as much as $170 per ton to keep recycling programs going. In fact, New York City has stopped collecting glass altogether because it’s too costly... approximately half of the recyclables collected in Philadelphia are now incinerated and converted to energy. All of the recyclable materials collected at the Memphis International Airport are sent to a landfill and even in the greenest of states, Oregon, thousands of tons of material left curbside for recycling now go to landfills... For many advocates, costs are not a factor when it comes to recycling. We’re told the environmental benefits are worth spending a little extra on trash pickup. But is recycling more environmentally friendly than simply burying trash in a landfill?... It’s critical to understand that recycling is a manufacturing process, and therefore it too has an environmental impact. While there is empirical evidence to support the environmental, cost, and energy savings of recycling ferrous metals; glass, paper, and plastic are more dubious... One of the long-enduring myths surrounding the supposed environmental benefits of recycling paper is that we save our forests. What is often neglected is that paper is milled from trees grown specifically for paper. Indeed, we grow many more trees than we harvest and contrary to popular belief, the total volume of net growth outpaces tree volume being cut... Today’s landfills are well-engineered and managed facilities located, designed, operated, and monitored to ensure compliance with federal regulations. At one time, many landfills in America were nasty places you wouldn’t want to build anything near. But that was a long time ago.And we’re not running out of land to bury our trash... Landfills are welcomed in places like rural Alabama because they provide economic benefits in terms of taxes paid, fees, and jobs. Each landfill (depending on size) typically contributes millions of dollars in annual economic benefit to the community it serves and creates dozens, if not hundreds of jobs.Moreover, methane captured from landfills is a renewable energy that can fuel vehicles or help power the electricity grid."

Energy implications of glass-container recycling - "Recycling of glass does not save much energy or valuable raw material and does not reduce air or water pollution significantly."

Don Norman: Why is recycling so difficult? - "I’m an expert on complex design systems. Even I can’t figure out recycling... For one, it’s difficult to find out what can and cannot be recycled. There are so many different kinds of paper goods, plastics, and metals, and worst of all, so many things that are combinations of materials or exotic new inventions of material science, that no list could possibly include every possible case. Secondly, the rules vary from location to location, and even at one location they can change from year to year. (“Check frequently with your recycler to see what their current requirements are,” reads one of the websites that tries to be helpful.)... I’m mystified by what should be the most basic forms of recycling, like whether or not I can recycle a milk carton... I did some research on the topic, and the more I read, the more confused I got. Most authoritative articles say yes, you can recycle milk cartons (in theory). The Carton Council, an extremely reliable source, states that “Milk, soup, juice, wine, and broth are just some of the products packaged in cartons that you’ll find in your nearby grocery store—and they’re all recyclable!” Regular milk cartons are made from paperboard, polyethylene, or plastic, and shelf-stable cartons (aseptic) add a layer of aluminum. According to the Carton Council, we should recycle all of them with plastic, metal, and glass containers. But don’t crush the carton—that makes it harder for those sorting the trash to identify it.I can remember that. Except that it isn’t always true. Because when I enter my zip code on the Carton Council’s website to see if my community recycles cartons, I see that my city is not listed, even though the two small cities just north of my home are listed. (I don’t live in a small community: I am in San Diego, the eighth largest city in the United States.)So I try the website for the company that collects my trash. The company serves many locations across the United States, and each location has different rules. So once again, I enter my street address and zip code. Here, I’m given a list of acceptable items: Yes, I can recycle milk cartons. But, wait, elsewhere on the very same page of that website (just a small scroll away), there is a list of acceptable items, and milk cartons do not appear.Milk cartons are just the tip of the iceberg. Paper is recyclable, so unused tissues, which are paper, should be recyclable, right? Well, some websites say “yes,” others say “no.” Plastics are another mystery. You’re supposed to look for the recycling symbol—that triangle with a number inside—but it can be difficult to find. Sometimes it is just a very tiny triangle made of slightly raised plastic on the bottom of the item and requires a flashlight or a magnifying glass (or both) to read. And even if you can find it, then what? The number featured inside the triangle is supposed to indicate what can be recycled—but again, this depends on where you live and what your recycling company is capable of doing. It also depends on the worldwide market for recycled goods. The National Geographic Society’s newsroom has an article “7 things you didn’t know about plastic (and recycling).” If you thought you were confused about recycling plastics, read the article: When you finish, I guarantee that you will be even more confused. An important rule in the design of controls for technological devices is consistency. In the auto industry, international standards govern the placement of basic controls. Imagine how dangerous it would be if every car had basic controls, like the steering wheel or the brake, in a different location... The confusion caused by inconsistent standards means that people do not understand what is possible and, as a result, violate the rules. So either they don’t recycle at all or they recycle incorrectly, causing entire truckloads of material to be discarded because they’re contaminated. If we recycled a smaller set of materials, we might end up with a higher compliance rate, so overall, the effect would be an increase in recycling."
Too bad he doesn't even ask the question of whether recycling makes sense in the first place

Don Norman: Recycling is the wrong solution to the problem of waste - "We need to rethink the wide variety of materials used for our products. How about requiring batteries to be replaceable and recyclable in standardized sizes so that they could be easily replaced? Today even though electrical requirements are somewhat standard, batteries sizes and their enclosures are sometimes designed for a specific device model, making it difficult to find the proper replacement. How about requiring that all products have easily replaceable components and that they be easily dismantled so they can be reused?... Germany is one of the leading nations in the world in terms of the amount of material that is put into recycling bins. Note the phrasing: “put into the bins.” Putting something into the bin does not lead to recycling. An article by the German media company dw.com points out that of the 3 million tons of plastic packaging waste, a little less than half (48.8%) was put into bins, but only 38% of that was actually recycled. Why? Here we go again: because recycling is far too complex for ordinary people to understand. In Germany half of the non-plastic rubbish is put into the bins for plastic... Companies do not have to bear the extra costs to the environment—that is left up to countries and municipalities as well as to individuals. We are blamed for the problems caused by companies."
I saw free market enthusiasts bash the EU for forcing Apple to use USB to reduce waste. Apparently they never learnt about externalities, so they haven't even mastered Economics 101, let alone higher levels

In S’pore, 40% of recyclables in blue bins end up not recycled after contamination by food & liquid waste

Americans' plastic recycling is dumped in landfills, investigation shows - "cities around the country are no longer recycling many types of plastic dropped into recycling bins. Instead, they are being landfilled, burned or stockpiled. From Los Angeles to Florida to the Arizona desert, officials say, vast quantities of plastic are now no better than garbage. The “market conditions” on the sign Pai saw referred to the situation caused by China. Once the largest buyer of US plastic waste, the country shut its doors to all but highest-quality plastics in 2017. The move sent shockwaves through the American industry as recyclers scrambled, and often failed, to find new buyers. Now the turmoil besetting a global trade network, which is normally hidden from view, is hitting home.“All these years I have been feeling like I’m doing something responsible,” said Pai, clearly dumbstruck as she walked away with a full bag. “The truth hurts.”... As municipalities are forced to deal with their own trash instead of exporting it, they are discovering a dismaying fact: much of this plastic is completely unrecyclable.The issue is with a popular class of plastics that people have traditionally been told to put into their recycling bins – a hodgepodge of items such as clamshell-style food packaging, black plastic trays, take-out containers and cold drink cups, which the industry dubs “mixed plastic”. It has become clear that there are virtually no domestic manufacturers that want to buy this waste in order to turn it into something else... The China ban revealed an uncomfortable truth about plastic recycling, Skye said: much of this plastic was never possible to recycle at all.“[China] would just pull out the items that were actually recyclable and burn or throw away the rest,” he said. “China has subsidized the recycling industry for many years in a way that distorted our views.”... In some rural communities, where city budgets are tight and transportation costs high, the shift in market forces has been too much to bear. Once, they could make money selling recycling. Now they have to pay people to take it off their hands... “It’s a lot less expensive for us to put our plastics in our landfill,” said Judd. “We can’t afford to sort them, truck them, and pay for someone to take them.”... Residents of Bullhead City, Arizona, will soon have to “opt-in” to curbside recycling and pay for the service
The town of Sierra Vista, Arizona, is ending curbside recycling altogether. “I’m hearing a lot of disappointment … People loved the blue bin program,” said Sharon Flissar, the city’s director of public works. “Some people had heard about the China situation. For them it was very distant, until it hit home.”
County officials in Honolulu are pushing to burn recyclables in a local incinerator, arguing it is too expensive to pay to ship them somewhere. So far, local environmentalists have resisted the idea. “The idea we bring all this stuff in and then burn up more fossil fuels to send it halfway across the world is problematic by itself,” said Rafael Bergstrom, the executive director of Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii, but he said the idea of incineration was even worse...
Just days before the closure, a group of demonstrators wielding colorful signs gathered outside City Hall to voice their anger. Chants of “Keep it open! Keep it open!” rang through the late afternoon air...
His organization believes manufacturers should pay towards the costs of recycling such materials, and that it would cost just a penny per item.The idea of manufacturers contributing is hardly unprecedented. In Canada, a program already requires manufacturers to pay for the recycling of their products and packaging, and also incentivizes them not to use hard to recycle packaging in the first place."
Of course, secular religion demands that the charade be kept up rather than save time and money for everyone by dumping it in the trash outright
It's curious how one protester said poor people will suffer from the closing of the recycling facility. Apparently multiple issues got conflated and confused in her mind

For Most Things, Recycling Harms the Environment - "Recycling requires substantial infrastructure for pickup, transportation, sorting, cleaning, and processing. I have sometimes suggested a test for whether something is garbage or a valuable commodity. Hold it in your hand, or hold a cup of it, or tank, or however you can handle it. Consider: Will someone pay me for this? If the answer is yes, it’s a commodity, a valuable resource. If the answer is no, meaning you have to pay them to take it, then it’s garbage... The problem with recycling is that people can’t decide which of two things is really going on. One possibility is that recycling transforms garbage into a commodity... The other possibility, and it’s a completely different possibility, is that recycling isn’t a commodity at all. But it is a cheaper or more environmentally friendly way to dispose of garbage... Should we recycle toilet paper? We could, at some price. But it’s likely not worth it, because it can be composted, it would be awfully hard to clean and sort, and in any case paper products are actually a renewable resource, rather like wheat. You rarely hear someone saying, “Save the wheat! Give up bread!” But that kind of argument is often made for paper, even though the trees grown to produce pulp are simply a fast-growing crop grown on farms expressly for that purpose...
The real question arises with mandatory recycling programs — people recycle because they will be fined if they don’t, not because they expect to make money—or “voluntary” recycling programs such as those at universities or other communities where failure to recycle earns you public shaming.
For coercive or social-pressure recycling to make sense, three things have to be true.
1. Scale... I once watched a young woman in Vitacura, Chile, wait in line in her idling auto for more than 10 minutes so she could park and put two two-liter plastic bottles into a recycle bin. That’s not economics, that’s a religious ceremony...
2. Convenience... we are asked to donate our time to recycling, to “save” resources. We are asked to wash out and clean the stuff (I actually know people who run their garbage through the dishwasher, so it will be clean. Think of the time, coal-produced electricity, and hot water that uses.) Then we are supposed to sort the garbage and deliver it to the recycling facility.Why isn’t this done at the recycling facility? Because the government realizes (correctly) it is too expensive, and the costs would swamp the tiny savings, if there are any, in doing recycling in the first place. But if the costs of cleaning and sorting are too great at scale, with commercial resources, why isn’t the sum of the individual costs of cleaning and sorting, in each household, even greater?If you add up the time being wasted on recycling rituals, it’s even more expensive to ask each household to do it. The difference is that this is an implicit tax, a donation required of citizens, and doesn’t cost money from the public budget. But time is the least renewable of all resources; demanding that it be donated to a pointless or even harmful ritual such as recycling glass is government malpractice.
3. Environmental savings. For recycling to make any sense, it must cost less to dispose of recycled material than to put the stuff in a landfill. But we have plenty of landfill space, in most of the country. And much of the heaviest material we want to recycle, particularly glass, is chemically inert and will not decompose in a landfill...
“Oh, we all know it makes no sense to recycle glass. The economic case is easy. But people should still recycle, because it’s simply the right thing to do. It’s not about the actual environment. It’s about enlisting people to care about the symbol of the environment. Overall, recycling is still worth doing, regardless of its effects.”... "it’s better not to talk about the economics of things to the general public. We need to help train them to care about the environment, and recycling is one of the best ways to do that.”... An earnest young woman, the public spokesperson for the waste and recycling agency of a medium-sized town in the northeastern U.S. had told me breezily, “Oh, you have to understand: recycling is always cheaper, no matter how much it costs.” Oh, my... recycling was for them a moral imperative. Once you begin to think of recycling as a symbol of religious devotion rather than a pragmatic solution to environmental problems, the whole thing makes more sense. As in any religious ceremony, the whole point is sacrifice...  a young woman in Chile with two two-liter bottles sits in her car in line, knowing she is publicly visible and that her green moral virtue is apparent to everyone.But lately the cost of the symbolic act of recycling, particularly for glass, has simply gotten too large. Cities and other local units were willing for a long time to sell their “customers” the chance to feel good about themselves, as long as the costs were reasonable. Recently however there has been a general decline in recycled commodity prices, and glass recycling in particular has crashed.The recycling-industrial complex has been reduced to arguing that recycling “creates jobs,” though of course that’s only useful if the jobs produce something useful for consumers or improve the environment.The real problem, as I see it, is that the recycling industry is selling indulgences, giving people the moral license to pollute because “Hey, I recycle!” To the extent that a lot of recycling is harmful to the environment, this is a double whammy: recycling is largely fake, but it enables people to feel okay about doing other things that pollute.That young woman, in Chile? She was waiting in that line at the wheel of a large SUV."