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My city, like many, has a recycling program, which I believe is supposed to reduce pollution and create some positive economic activity. But I've heard many people argue that recycling programs are a waste in and of themselves. Essentially that most recycling programs are having the opposite effect than they were intended to have. Not only are they bad for the economy, they are also bad for the environment.

Recycling on Conservapedia contends:

Critics dispute the net economic and environmental benefits of recycling over its costs, and suggest that proponents of recycling often make matters worse and suffer from confirmation bias. Specifically, critics argue that the costs and energy used in collection and transportation detract from (and outweigh) the costs and energy saved in the production process;

Are critics of recycling correct?

Do recycling programs usually have a net negative effect on the environment and the economy?

Mark Rogers
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    I am actually banned from Conservapedia and don't know why! – Sklivvz Apr 08 '11 at 22:41
  • @Sklivvz: Aren't we all? – Borror0 Apr 08 '11 at 23:17
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    Not Mark, apparently :-) – Sklivvz Apr 08 '11 at 23:29
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    it depends whats being recycled. Recycling paper is,imho, not worth the effort. we farm trees for paper. recycling gold or copper is probably a net gain. – justin cress Apr 09 '11 at 05:58
  • I think the terms and context need to be more clearly defined to be very productive. What if it is sub-optimal in efficiency/effectiveness now, but not in the future, for some X in Y? (Where x and y are neighborhoods, cities, companies, high-rises, schools, etc.). What if it will become a net positive only if money is spent on refining technologies (based on market forces?) based on widespread but suboptimal programs? And/or if habits must be reinforced over a decade or more for some necessary rate of recycling adoption, to ensure a net positive (according to whatever defined parameters)? – belacqua Apr 10 '11 at 05:26
  • Penn and Teller broke it down pretty well on their show. – Monkey Tuesday Apr 11 '11 at 00:43
  • I've always heard this as a criticism of a city *maintaining a fleet of trucks that do curb-side recycling pick-up*, in favor of having centralized neighborhood recycling drop-off bins. It probably depends highly on the details of the recycling program. – BradC Apr 11 '11 at 13:45
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    There's another concern that doesn't seem to be addressed here: the space occupied by landfills with otherwise recyclable materials. Though paper may be more cost effective to downcycle, isn't there also a benefit from keeping unnecessary materials from entering landfills? – JYelton Apr 15 '11 at 20:43
  • From what I've heard recycling used to be a net loss, but more recent improvements in recycling technology have changed the game. I have no citation, so not putting this as a real answer. – Apreche Apr 18 '11 at 11:47
  • Should we take negative externalities into account? Turning a mountain into a pit for its boxites is a net loss. – Job Apr 27 '11 at 17:06
  • Rated a ["bad" website by WOT](http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/conservapedia.com/comment#comment). (You shouldn't believe everything on there.) – Mateen Ulhaq May 07 '11 at 20:31
  • Glass is the silliest of all things to recycle. It is made from the most abundant element on earth and due to the complexities of sorting and processing it, the return is negligible. – JohnFx Jun 04 '11 at 20:24
  • @muntoo make that everything an anything and i agree ;) – Stefan Oct 11 '12 at 16:03
  • Appropriately named "oddthinking", who I guess didn't read your final question, deleted my answer, and there's no direct way to dispute or respond to that, so I'll have to summarize here: Your final question asks if there's a net negative effect on the economy. Free recycling in my town definitely shifts substantial amounts of paid-for garbage to free garbage, thereby reducing utility bills for large numbers of customers. I don't know if that's an overall positive or negative economic effect, I just know I'm not being charged for all my garbage. – Witness Protection ID 44583292 Mar 07 '14 at 17:16
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    @WitnessProtectionID44583292 not to mention that it costs money to cart off the recyclables either way (in the trash truck or the recycle truck); it might be more efficient to carry them on the same truck but only in certain situations depending on the distribution of trash/recyclables across a route. – Michael Jun 03 '14 at 16:12

2 Answers2

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According to Popular Mechanics, who I assume probably did their homework, it's worthwhile recycling newspaper and a couple of types of plastic in addition to aluminum (that aluminum recycling is wise should be utterly uncontroversial--aluminum refining is amazing, but not a low-energy process!). There was an article in the Economist a few years ago that also supports the idea that recycling (at least of most things) is a net win (it also adds steel to the "good idea" category). Even if you assume that not all factors have been taken into account (e.g. carbon produced by people working at the recycling plant who otherwise could do something else productive), the fraction of energy saved and large amounts of CO2 saved strongly suggest that recycling is a net positive.

Whether any individual recycling program is worthwhile is harder to judge, but see the article in The Economist for a suggestion of an affirmative answer (actually, an answer of "usually", 83% net positive).

Rex Kerr
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    Right, and we have to remember that the purpose of recycling is to conserve resources, not to save energy even though sometimes it does. – Gabriel Fair Feb 09 '12 at 19:41
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    @GabrielFair - Energy and resources are pretty interconvertible in most cases. Some things are sufficiently rare (copper, lithium, gold, etc.) that this is not true, but for the most part you can get more of whichever resource you want as long as you have enough energy (certainly true for glass, steel, aluminum, plastic; paper is a little bit tighter in supply but not that much). – Rex Kerr Feb 09 '12 at 19:45
  • @RexKerr not so in the minds of many of the greenies. They measure everything in tons of CO2 produced in the process, an utter falsehood but that's what's often meant when people claim something is "cleaner" or whatever the reason they want to promote it (more often than not the real reason is social control, not any economic or environmental benefit). – jwenting Oct 10 '12 at 14:48
  • @jwenting - Well, it depends what your concern is. If you are worried about ocean acidification, then CO2 is the _only_ thing worth caring about. With climate change, you want to know the balance of all greenhouse gases. If you want to know whether we are living on the planet sustainably, the answer is simply "Ha, no way, not now!" If you want to know exactly how bad we're doing, the answer is complicated. People who don't like complicated answers may prefer to stick with CO2. (There are people who dislike complicated answers on all sides of an issue.) – Rex Kerr Oct 10 '12 at 17:59
  • @RexKerr I'd care far more about SO2 than CO2... And no, "climate change" doesn't rely on "greenhouse gasses", or not to any great degree. It relies far more heavily on external factors, like the amount of incoming energy from the sun. But you don't seem to get my point, which is that any one factor is not the sole thing to use to determine whether something is harmful or not, and doing so is fraud perpetrated either because of idiocy or deliberately in order to enrich yourself. – jwenting Oct 11 '12 at 03:26
  • Well, any anti-climate-change opinions aside, it is just not true to say that 'you can get more of whichever resource you want as long as you have enough energy'. Plastic, as you may know, is created from Oil, which is a resource bound to run out in the next 100 or so years - so recycling plastic bottles is a very valid undertaking. – fgysin Oct 11 '12 at 09:33
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    @jwenting - Fair enough; I was assuming we'd gotten SO2 under control now. Maybe that's not true in developing countries. Variations in solar input are small compared to forcing via greenhouse gases: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NASAdata1979to2009.jpg for example. Looking at one factor alone is indeed unwise. I agreed with you there already. – Rex Kerr Oct 11 '12 at 14:39
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    @fgysin - Oil is just a particular mix of long-chain hydrocarbons, which can be created (given adequate energy) from e.g. plants. Also, there are bioplastics that achieve similar properties with different starting material: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioplastic – Rex Kerr Oct 11 '12 at 14:46
  • @RexKerr that document is a known fraud, as there is no forcing via "greenhouse gasses", or at the very least no positive feedback. – jwenting Oct 12 '12 at 06:05
  • @jwenting - Source? – Rex Kerr Oct 12 '12 at 06:43
  • @RexKerr posted reputable sources many times, only to have them removed by moderators because they conflict with the party line. So much for skepticism. – jwenting Oct 12 '12 at 14:18
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    @jwenting - You have posted sources (here in this comment thread after my query) many times, yet they have been removed before I saw them, and somehow I only got one comment notification? Let's try again: source? – Rex Kerr Oct 12 '12 at 15:46
  • @RexKerr True enough, but would we be trying to substitute all oil products with bioplastics or chemically re-engineered hydrocarbons there would be _serious_ problems in terms of production capacity... After all, it is theoretically (and in a lot of cases also practically) possible to create any chemical element through sub-atomar modification. But while its possible to create gold from lead this way this does not mean that it is in any way feasible. :) – fgysin Oct 15 '12 at 13:16
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    @jwenting I'd also appreciate some scientific sources please. – fgysin Oct 15 '12 at 13:20
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Aluminum recycling is an enormous net win, because a used aluminum can is very nearly the same thing as the output of an aluminum smelter, which consumes huge amounts of irreplaceable fossil fuels. Plastic and paper are not typically recycled at all - they are downcycled into coarser forms.

The best kind of recycling is when the original user of the product finds multiple uses for a product before disposing of it. For example, a glass pickle jar can be washed and reused for food storage practically indefinitely. This is a big win over recycling the glass and buying a brand-new plastic food container.

It is also a big win to rescue useful items that other people would have thrown away. Used appliances and food containers from yard sales are cheap and often perfectly functional.