Cato claims recycling is bad.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

Apparently, recycling is bad, wasteful, and an evil tree hugging plot. What do you think? I don't see how any of this is reliable, but they are claiming something that's so completely against all the ecology I have been taught that it's mindboggling--resources aren't scarce, recycling is worse for the planet than it is good, and it's wasteful.

Hmmmm. Smells like bullshit to me, but I am no expert.

Eeeeeeeeevil

[Edi]

Anyone who argues against resources being scarce with current consumption rates is full of shit. It takes less resources to recycle scrap metal than to dig new metal out of the ground and refine it, for example.

I have heard the argument that in the US the yearly forest growth is more than what is uded for paper production and dthus paper should not be recycled, but that argument ignores the problem that afaik the forests being cut down for paper mills are medium to old growth (30-100+ years old) while most of the new growth is obviously going to be on very young trees thatgrow more quickly and only slow down the rate of growth once they reach a certain size.

I'm also not impressed by the article's complete sidestepping of where the replacements for recycled stuff comes from and how much making the new stuf costs. If recycling material costs $240 more per ton than burying it in the ground, how the fuck is that relevant in the first place unless we know how much manufacturing the replacements from scratch costs?

Whoever wrote that article is a fucking idiot, but I wouldn't expect much more from the Cato Institute, which is nothing more than a megaphone for ultracapitalist ideas and neocon stuipidity a lot of the time.

Edi

[Straha]

Apparently, recycling is bad, wasteful, and an evil tree hugging plot. What do you think? I don't see how any of this is reliable, but they are claiming something that's so completely against all the ecology I have been taught that it's mindboggling--resources aren't scarce, recycling is worse for the planet than it is good, and it's wasteful.

Long story short, it is. Subsidized paper recycling has reduced the amount of trees planted in the recent past (Julian Simon's book the ULtimate Resource has a bunch of data and nifty graphs about this in it, I know it's available without the graphs online but you should really see if you can buy the book) futher the paper recycling process itself is inefficient (hence why it has to be subsidied, which hurts the consumer and taxpayer doubly and hurts private buisness) and involves a lot of waste which isn't pretty. I don't recall the numbers on plastic recycling but it's similar to that (efficiency wise) if I remember correctly (I'll search through the online thing for it tommorow, I left my hard copy at home.) Metal recycling is economically feasible in some areas, I.E. ALuminum (which is why homeless people tote about bags full of empty soda and beer cans in urban centers.) As for the article itself, it's not arguing against recycling per se, it's arguing against self-destructive recycling, like paper recycling as I said which makes it so that less trees are planted (half-relevant side note, there were [and still are] more trees in the United STates in the 1960s then there were in the 1700s) at cost to cities which pay for the seperation of paper from garbage, to the tax-payer who has to pay for the costs of recycling the paper, and to the enviroment because the old paper-mill companies are out of buisness and are no longer planting trees where they once did.

[Molyneux]

Apparently, recycling is bad, wasteful, and an evil tree hugging plot. What do you think? I don't see how any of this is reliable, but they are claiming something that's so completely against all the ecology I have been taught that it's mindboggling--resources aren't scarce, recycling is worse for the planet than it is good, and it's wasteful.

(half-relevant side note, there were [and still are] more trees in the United STates in the 1960s then there were in the 1700s)

I find that very hard to believe; please, could you provide numbers?
(I would go look for them myself, but I'm leaving for the first day of classes in ~10 minutes)

[RedImperator]

Paper companies maintain their own plantations for production, and replant what they cut. They're large enough that by the time they cycle through the entire plantation, the trees they planted at the starting point are mature enough for paper production. They're not marching off into virgin forests and chasing the spotted owls out of their homes so the American consumer can read the National Enquirer. There's also the issue of the amount of toxic pollution paper recycling generates, which, though I don't recall the exact number, is substantial. I've heard 40 tons of toxic waste for every 100 tons of recycled paper, but don't quote me on that.

[Sriad]

I'm also not impressed by the article's complete sidestepping of where the replacements for recycled stuff comes from and how much making the new stuf costs. If recycling material costs $240 more per ton than burying it in the ground, how the fuck is that relevant in the first place unless we know how much manufacturing the replacements from scratch costs?

It's even better than that: the cost of not recycling would be the cost of burying the old material PLUS the cost of manufacturing replacement goods.

It's a no brainer. Is it cheaper to make cans out of ore, or cans out of cans? Cato is jousting at windmills.

[RedImperator]

Cato is guilty of a lack of rigor in language in that article, but they do concede some recycling--the profitable kind--is good, and that would include metal recycling, especially aluminum. Aluminum needs a lot of electricity to be separated from bauxite, using considerably more energy than it takes to just melt down refined aluminum. No such luck for paper or plastic, which can't be just melted down; there are complex and expensive chemical process which much be done. If you want to recycle them, you'd be better off dumping them into a thermal depolymerization plant and turning them into diesel.