Recycling Plus Interest
Originally uploaded by kmichaels97Recycling Plus Interest
My son comes to me with his MP3 player in hand and says “Dad, its dead.” I promptly take the battery out, turn to the junk drawer and grab yet another one from the package of fresh, new batteries. “There you go buddy” I say, “Now don’t leave it on okay? Turn it off when you are done listening to it.” I grab the so-called “dead battery” and toss it in the garbage and return to other fatherly duties. What’s wrong? Sounds like a normal scenario. It was to me anyway. My wife notices the toss. “What are you doing?” she asks. I guess I’m supposed to recycle those.
Who knew? I’ve always thrown them in the garbage. Recycling to me was making sure I crush my soda can and toss it into a plastic bag in the garage. When that becomes full, I gather my four bags and make a trip down to the recycling semi truck to get a few dollars. I usually spend it by the time I get back home. Recycling has been turned into a complicated process. It’s pushing the limits of the consumer’s willingness to “save the planet.” In order to “save the planet” and “go green” a consumer and proper citizen must learn extensive recycling rules that eventually costs them valuable time and money. I do not understand why there must be a recycling effort in place for just about every type of manufactured item.
Recycling is not a single simple process. For example, my city only collects plastics that have a number one or a two on them. What do I do with plastics three, four, five and six? I think I have to toss them in the trash. Glass must be from only food and beverage containers and well cleaned. Cardboard cannot be from soda or cereal boxes. Break those boxes down and put them next to the paper bundled in that brown paper bag. I keep a gallon zip lock bag in my kitchen for old batteries now. Battery recycling drop off is offered in my city only twice a year. Do I feel good about recycling now? I better.
Wisconsin law requires me to recycle cell phones, DVD players, computers and many other electronic devices. While I understand these devices contain hazardous materials, collection of these items seldom occurs and it costs me a significant amount of money to drop them off. A television set will cost me thirty dollars to dispose of. Even though most states require these items to be recycled only about 12% actually are (Grossman, 2006). United States recyclers like Basel Action Network (BAN) estimate that 50% or more of the United States’ used computers, cell phones, and televisions sent to recyclers are shipped overseas for recycling. But much of this obsolete equipment ends up as toxic waste, burned or allowed to degrade in landfills in third world countries (Grossman, 2006). Why recycle these materials when we just ship them overseas to sit in other countries’ landfills? In a world of “stuff” there’s got to be a better solution. My garage is now jammed with items that are outdated or broken, and I will have to spend more money to throw them away “correctly.”
Is all this effort needed? Do we or do we not have the room to simply just throw this stuff away? “A. Clark Wiseman of Spokane’s Gonzaga University figures that, at the current rate, Americans could put all of the trash generated over the next 1,000 years into a landfill 100 yards high and 35 miles square (Bandow, 1997).” Currently, there is not a problem relating to gross space requirements. Most landfills are small and designed for about ten years of operation and that is why environmentalists dwell on the horrors of antiquated landfills. The relevant consideration is new landfill capacity, rather than the number (Wiseman, 1997). “If landfills were truly in short supply, then the cost of dumping waste would quickly rise. I would then see the financial benefit to reducing my waste volume (Fedako, 2005).”
Have you ever compared the amount of trash of a “home prepared meal” versus a “fast food” one? You’ll find that fast food meals generate less trash per person then do home-cooked meals due to packaging (Bandow, 1997). A study from the Reason Foundation, “Packaging, Recycling, and Solid Waste,” concludes that recycling, though sometimes beneficial, all too often wastes resources. For instance, producing paperboard burger containers yields more air and water pollution and consumes more energy than manufacturing the polystyrene clamshells that most fast food restaurants used to use. “Polystyrene items are cheap because they require so little energy and material to manufacture-without reading a chemist's analysis, you could deduce from the cup's low price that it's an efficient use of natural resources (Tierney, 1996).” While fast food changes are complying to offer consumers a “green” meal, they do so simply because of the society mindset that green is better (Bandow, 1997).
What John Tierney wrote in the New York Times nearly 10 years ago is still true: "Recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern America." Is “going green” just another marketing ploy? Recycling costs money. In fact, it costs New York City $200 more per ton to collect recyclables than it would to just bury them and another $40 per ton to pay a company to process them. Think of the time it takes to rinse, take off labels and sort your own recyclables. That time would also add to the cost of about one hundred more dollars per ton (Bandow, 1997). While the Natural Resources Defense Council believes we should recycle as much as possible, there are anti-environmental interests that believe recycling is not “saving” resources. When people say that one management option is more costly than another, we are saying that it uses more resources than the other. One must weigh in the cost of human resources when considering landfills versus recycling (Wiseman, 1997). The dollar signs are telling us that recycling is an inefficient and wasteful activity and that it makes no sense for either the waste worker, or the homeowner. It’s as if time, our most precious resource, the thing we cannot make more of, has no value whatsoever. I have actually witnessed family and friends place glass and plastic containers into the dishwasher before placing them into the recycling bin. This cannot be an efficient use of resources. Disguising the costs by forcing citizens to do the labor changes nothing, it just reduces the explicit budget of the recycling program, and raises implicit taxes on the people (Munger, 2007).
Society is obsessed with “going green” and the manufacturer marketers see this opportunity to create “green” products and offer them at an increased price. They should be creating these products green in the first place. I’ve noticed that “green” products cost me more than their original predecessors, why do consumers still choose to pay more for these products? It’s because we believe that we are helping save the planet and to feel good about their “green” purchase. We consumers have our hearts in the right place. We want to be good people, but are we being brainwashed? We are being trained to believe that recycling is the reward for over consuming (Lilienfeld & Rathje, 1998).
Consumers such as myself have little interest in learning about local recycling restrictions. I do want to save the Earth and recycle, but I’m the one that ends up paying for it. I pay for the product, I pay for the disposal and I pay for the time it takes me to sort my garbage. I pay for the weekly garbage pickup, I pay more for “green” products and I pay gas to transport recyclable goods to a center. I’m not seeing any fiscal benefits for me to recycle. While fiscal downfalls may just be one negative reason to recycle, it’s an important one as the country is in a recession. If it came down to saving money and making sure I buy “green” products, I’ll end up buying cheaper, non- “green” ones.
We need to give more incentives to the consumer for their money, time and effort spent on the recycling process. If the process were less complicated, less incentive would be expected. If batteries in the garbage hurts the environment there should be an easy dispense method offered, free of confusion and that is immediate. I don’t call hoarding hazardous waste inside your home until a twice a year collection date a viable nor healthy solution. Consumers get paid when they recycle cans because metal is worth a lot more than plastic and it’s simpler to sort and recycle. If we were to focus on plastic recycling methods, we could expect significant increase in recycling participation. Saving and making money is something that everyone likes to do. Recycling starts and ends with the producers and manufacturers. Producers should encourage recycling by giving us, the consumers, more incentives for time, resources and good faith to return their materials to be reused once again.
So, what is wrong with recycling? The answer is simple; it does not pay. In addition, since it does not pay, it is an inefficient use of the time, money, and scarce resources. Let’s fix recycling so that we will all enjoy feeling good about ourselves and padding our wallets at the same time.
Works Cited
Bandow, D. (1997) Mandatory Recycling Wastes Resources. In H. Cothran (ed.), Garabage and Recycling: Opposing Viewpoints Series (P.91-92). New York: Greenhaven Press, 2003.
Fedako, J. (2005, September 22). Recycling: What a Waste! Retrieved from http://mises.org/daily/1911
Grossman, E. (2006) Electronic Waste Is a Major Recycling Problem. In H. Cothran (ed.), Garabage and Recycling: Opposing Viewpoints Series (P.42-43). New York: Greenhaven Press, 2003.
Lilienfeld, R. & Rathje, W. (1998) Recycling Does Not Solve Environmental Problems. In H. Cothran (ed.), Garabage and Recycling: Opposing Viewpoints Series (P.78). New York: Greenhaven Press, 2003.
Munger, M. (2007). The Costs of Recycling Outweigh the Benefits. In E. Des Chenes (ed.), Recycling: Issues that Concern You (P. 28). Michigan: Greenhaven Press, 2009.
Tierney, J. (1996, June 30). New York Times. Recycling is Garbage .
Wiseman, C. (1997) Current Recycling Programs Are Too Expensive. In H. Cothran (ed.), Garabage and Recycling: Opposing Viewpoints Series (P.87-88). New York: Greenhaven Press, 2003.
