We were watching Penn and Teller’s Bull**** last night and the Recycling episode (season 2).
For the basis of their argument against recycling, they relied on Daniel K Benjamin’s Eight Great Myths of Recycling. I now found a rebuttal to this Anti-Recycling Myths Commentary on “Recycling is Garbage” (John Tierney, New York Times Magazine, June 30, 1996) (Penn and Teller seemed to be positing that except for aluminum, recycling wasn’t worth it).
So, what’s the Straight Dope on recycling?
Cecil has written about this (hopefully not too dated)
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/000804.html
As an aside, I wouldn’t trust Penn and Teller’s opinions on anything. I’ve seen any number of shows where their “research” involves talking with organizations with hidden agendas and political biases-- not to mention their ridiculous intellectual bullying tactics, which involve them just saying “BULLSHIT” a lot.
Is recycling BS WHAT? …a good form of increased plant yield? …an alternative energy source? Well?
A moment’s thought tells you that recycling is not BS. The Earth only has a finite supply of stuff, and we’re doing a good job of turning it all into disposable shit and burying it in landfill.
You neglect to consider the energy costs involved in the recycling infrastructure. Sure, there’s a finite amount of petroleum in the world, but what if it costs substantially less in fuel and energy to throw out plastic bottles instead of recycling them into more plastic? What should be our priority?
I am not well-enough informed to argue the point one way or the other, but there are two sides to the point you’re making. Yes, it must be true that there is a finite amount of resources, but finite can be a very large number and there are those who say (see Myths linked by OP) that free-market price is the best indicator of whether we are running out and there are no signs of running out (the recent jump in oil prices is not due to the fact that humans are coming close to using up all the world’s oil).
If it costs me the same amount of money to recycle as it does to throw something away, what is the benefit in recycling? It will make sense when the economics say that the cost of recovering and recycling finished goods is cheaper than getting more raw materials, because that means that the market confirms that we are starting run out of raw materials.
The benefit is that you can keep doing it indefinitely, as long as you have an energy source – and energy, whatever our current crises, is going to keep coming at us a lot faster than we can use it thanks to the sun. If you don’t recycle, then you are constantly using up raw materials, of which there is a finite supply. Sure, they might not run out for a long while yet, but it’s a pretty short-term view to keep using them up and ensuring they cannot be used again without major landfill-mining operations in generations to come.
What I’m saying is that “making financial sense TODAY” is not the same thing as “making sense in the long long term”.
Well, note a couple of things:
They admitted that aluminum was worthwhile to recycle. It’s even more valuable now.
They are a bit out of date (2004 and maybe relying on older material)- glass was marginal then- but better now, and plastics were a clear loss leader, but are marginal now.
Certainly, there are Bullshit aspects to recyling, but no, overall it’s worthwhile.
The thing is, maybe landfill mining is more energy efficient. Supposedly we have “mandatory recycling” (I’ve never been cited for not participating). The idea is that we have to separate all order of things into discrete piles for separate collection. We pay the same garbage bill regardless. In return for the need to have multiple piles of trash in my house, we get nothing. Perhaps we’re losing 1/1000¢ in increased consumers costs per year, but that’s nothing compared to the trouble of just not playing the recycling game. On the other hand, instead of a weekly truck route for garbage, we have three routes for collecting the various odds and ends. What are we wasting on fuel and unneeded union wages to pay for this “benefit”? Two guys, equipment, and gasoline have to cost at least $200/hour. Are we recovering that value with the pennies of value at every stop? What if we just mined the good stuff at a point when we need it and it makes more economic sense?
(We do compost. We do reduce and reuse. We have a green HVAC system. I sold my Expedition. I keep my speed under 80. We just don’t make an extra effort to do something for which there is no need.)
But the question is whether it is economically feasible to recycle versus production from raw materials and disposal. For aluminum, this is a no brainer; the amount of energy required to refine bauxite ore makes it much more profitable to recycle finished aluminum. Iron is somewhat of a toss up; recovery and reprocessing costs of iron and steel scrap are roughly comparable to production from iron ores, and we are in no way close to running out of iron. On the other hand, known and speculative copper reserves give only 60 years before depletion at current rates. Fortunately, pure copper is a rather easy metal to recycle, and one of the traditional industrial uses of copper–communications medium–is rapidly being replaced by silicate fiber optics. However, the need for copper for power distribution, stator windings, alloying components, and other industrial applications will continue to expand. Paper and cardboard are also relatively easily processed, although paper production is mostly a byproduct of structural wood production.
Two of the major classes of recyclable materials–glass and plastic–make relatively little sense to recycle at all on a fiscal or energy basis. Solid glass actually requires considerably more energy to process into material suitable for glass manufacture as compared with using raw silicates, and sand is hardly a scarce resource. Plastics are primarily manufactured from the residue of raw petroleum refining, turning a nasty useless goo into a consumer packaging product. Some classes of plastic can be reprocessed with a reasonable degree of cost-effectiveness as a replacement of supplement of other materials (i.e. plastic lumber, fiber-reinforced building materials, polymer textiles, et cetera) but you’re not really saving a scarce resource. The primary reason for recycling these materials isn’t that you are prevention depletion as much as reducing bulky, non-degradable landfill waste, and while it is a common meme among the environ-set that we are going to “fill up all the landfills,” there is really no practical limit to landfill space for inert solid waste.
The free market price is not always a great indicator of scarcity and the necessity or value of recycling or alternate use. Until the last few years the price of raw petroleum has been at near record lows when corrected for global inflation. The cost of refinable-grade uranium has also held pretty steady even though there is a definite limit on the availability of fissile materials for power generation, which has retarded development and acceptance of fuel reuse, breeding, and reprocessing technologies in the nuclear power industry.
There is, of course, a virtually incalculable amount of metallic resources all around us, vastly more than can be mined from Earth’s crust (and without the environmental impact); however, it would require the capability of economically viable space transportation and habitation.
Stranger
I think a lot of the push for recycling is that people hate the concept of throwing stuff away and landfills. It’s kind of OCD-like. The fact that it’s there, in the earth, pisses them off.
The Phoenix New Times, our local radical rag, had a recent series, Green Fatigue, on just this subject.
Environmental engineer here with extensive experience in the solid waste industry.
I’ll throw out some quick notes. Other than aluminum, you don’t recycle to make make money. You recycle to reduce landfill usage. While there may be plenty of room in some parts of the country, it’s very difficult to site a new landfill here in the Northeast, and the old ones are filling up fast.
Here in Connecticut, the old Hartford Landfill is getting ready to close, as it has reached its permitted capacity. There is no replacement on the horizon. When the landfill closes, much of the municipal solid waste in the state is going to have to be hauled out of state, at great expense. As a consequence, much of the waste in the state is incinerated, with the resultant volume reduction to the residual ash. Of course, incineration has its own environmental problems.
This discussion omits a key point, though. It’s not just finding the space for a landfill. Modern landfills are much more costly to install than the old unlined “dump” people may be thinking of.
Typical landfill construction costs range from $300,000 to $800,000 per acre for the initial construction, not including ancillary structures and facilities, or access roads. When the landfill closes, it has to be capped (approximately half the cost of initial construction), and the groundwater has to be monitored for decades.
The initial cost of construction (not including ancillary structures and facilities) for the 10-mile by 10-mile landfill (64,000 acres) mentioned in the “Eight Great Myths of Recycling” would be in the range of $20 billion to $50 billion (2005 dollars). The 35 miles square landfill (784,000 acres) mentioned in Cecil’s column would cost between $235 billion and $630 billion.
In short, modern landfills are not cheap. And with the rising cost of oil, the less solid waste we have to haul around, the better.
In short, REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE! My family does–we have one bin for newspapers, and one bin for cans and plastic bottles. And I use a mulching mower, too. In the fall, I mow my leaves with the mulching mower.
Recycling has to do some good, so it would seem obvious we should all be doing it. Still, it may not be worth it either for you, or for the planet, in some cases.
Apartment and condo buildings in L.A., as far as I know, don’t provide separate bins for different kinds of trash–unlike for detached houses, for which the City does. Our building has a single chute and bin; the trash removal company may or may not recycle, but I don’t know.
The recycling depository at the supermarket, about a block away is open, like, 10am to 2pm weekdays. Other times, the receptacles are locked and shut.
What are people supposed to do? Drive miles to find a place to recycle? It didn’t use to be so bad, and there were more places to drop your stuff off. But I think what happened was that local residents didn’t like scavengers coming to the bins at all hours, so they were either locked most of the time, or simply removed.
What about plasma gasification? I understand that these plants produce about 1/3 again more electricity than they consume and reduce the waste to a form suitable for road surfacing. I further understand they can handle any waste that isn’t radioactive. The article I read about them stated that a plant that can handle about 2000 tons of waste per day runs about $250 million. It seems to me that it might still make sense to separate out some of the metals like aluminum and copper from the waste stream.
Thanks,
Rob
Not using plastic bottles at all. In fact, not buying bottled drinks at all would be a great start.
It is cost-efficient to recycle, at least where I live because the cost of recycling has been built into the local taxes here. I can go to the Environmental Services Office and get the bins and a pamphlet with routes and times for free. Then because I recycle some of the household waste I can get away with a smaller trashcan and a cheaper rate from the garbage company. Obviously my local taxes are higher to offset the cost but they’re that high regardless of whether I use the program or not, so might as well.
True. “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” is in order of importance. The best way to reduce waste is to not consume as much to begin with, and then to get as much use as possible out of what we do consume before discarding it. Recycling is more of a last resort than a cure-all.
A lot of good answers have been made already. Having looked at various studies over the years and even written one myself. It seems to me that not all recycling projects are worthwile, neither from a business sense nor environmentally.
Quite often the costs of recycling are forgotten, especially the extra labour put in by households is often valued at $0/hour. Sometimes the extra energy used in transportation and sorting cancels out environmental benefits gained from saving materials.
Some of them are really good like recycling aluminum cans both from an economic perspective and environmentally. Another one that makes sense (at least when I did my study 10 years ago) is recycling of PET soft drink bottles. But the reason that worked in Sweden is because of the deposit-refund system on bottles that made collection easier and also produced a clean mix with only the right type of plastic. Material recycling from other plastic recycling can be trickier since you have lots of different types of plastics and the containers themselves may be polluted (by their contents) making it less attractive.
Whether recycling makes sense also seems to be affected by local conditions such as transportation, garbage collection, what the alternative disposal options are etc.
What is often not discussed is energy recycling or incineration as a solution. If waste is incinerated and the energy used for heating and/or electricity production it can both reduce the need for landfilling and reduce the amount of oil or coal you need.
Also with landfills- isn’t there a by product of methane production to offset the maintenance costs?