Recycling just a big waste

By: Cody Bozarth

Posted: 9/8/04

It almost seems recycling would be farthest from the word "wasteful," but in fact recycling has proven itself to be just that. The bottom line is, it's cheaper to make, say, a plastic bottle than to recycle one.

It's true that recycling has its place and time, but the cheapest way to get rid of mass amounts of garbage is to use an environmentally-safe landfill.

Landfills are not humongous piles of garbage sitting on the earth's surface. They are carefully researched, operated and maintained sites where trash does not decompose but is buried underground in a very effective and safe manner. Not only this, but landfills make life better by paying compensation to the communities they are in. The money that counties receive is mostly used to fund schools. So are landfills so awful?

One of the biggest reasons that recycling is a legal obligation in some parts of the country was because of a scare in 1987 that the landfills were overflowing. In fact, there was (and still is) enough landfill space to last thousands of years.

The scare occurred when some bureaucrat published a pamphlet predicting an immediate overflow of garbage and urging recycling. This propaganda worked so well because of a certain guilt people feel about creating trash. This guilt can make people forget or just not care about the cost of recycling.

Of course, Styrofoam packaging from fast-food restaurants under went scrutiny because the material does not decompose. Does anyone know that hardly anything decomposes in a landfill, including paper? Or that a meal made at home generates more garbage than one meal at a fast-food restaurant?

Recycling makes people feel good, but is that any reason to waste tax dollars? So what makes recycling so bad for both the environment and the economy?

Consider this: one truck, usually an exhaust-spewing, diesel monstrosity, comes to your house to pick up your garbage. Has anyone noticed the second truck that picks up your recycling? Twice as many trucks mean burning twice as much gas and billowing out twice as much exhaust. But the pollution that recycling causes doesn't stop there.

Recycling plants have large machines (which also pollute) to break down materials before they can be reused. For example, to recycle paper, inks have to be taken out. People are paid to separate plastic from paper from tin, etc. which isn't necessary to do at landfills.

A great deal of money is spent to keep recycling plants operating. Recycling has to pay for more administrators and public relation officials to sort out what can or can't be recycled. Parts of our nation where recycling is mandatory have enforcement officials who inspect trash and fine for anything that could be recycled. At what cost? When compared to the cost of sending garbage to landfills, recycling wastes $50 to $100 million dollars every year.

The costs of natural resources are on a continual decline. New technologies are continually making non-renewable resources unnecessary. Most telephone calls use fiber-optic cables made from glass instead of copper wire. New supplies of nonrenewable resources are constantly being discovered. Sure, trees were cut down to make this issue of the Western Courier, but trees are being grown in their place specifically to make paper.

Everyone loves to recycle. It just seems so honest and good that everyone eats it right up without a second thought. Why can't we admit we made a mistake? Many

people will simply refuse to believe that this act of separating garbage in labeled bins has been pointless. Try to understand. As for me, I'm throwing my plastic bottles, cans and newspapers in with the rest of the rubbish.