The Recycling Industrial Complex

A common theme of opportunity cost:  if you use more resources to "save" something than it takes to throw it away, that's not saving.

In the North State Journal, my piece claiming that mandatory recycling is a violation of the separation of church and state....here.  It's gated, but you can register for free.

Garbage and Class

Interesting.  Is recycling a luxury good?

A response to the exchange at Cato Unbound.

Recycling Anecdote

News from the front: ...about five or six years ago while in Greensboro I took the garbage to the curb [regular and recycle]. This was around 5 am in the morning.  Around 8 am went back out to throw another item in the can when I see a Ford parked by my curb and a lady with yellow gloves going through my garbage. Yep! The garbage police. 

Well, she is going to write me a warning citation. How so? I threw an empty dried out paint can in the garbage. I said what the devil I'm suppose to do with the paint can? Well, she says on certain dates and times I can take such can to a particular address across town where they handle paint cans. 

So being the professional smart a*s that I am, I tell her go ahead and write the citation and I'll put it in the recycle can and they can recycle it. Apparently garbage police have no sense of humor. She goes over to the Ford gets on the radio and calls in the garbage SWAT. 

Not a minute goes by and her supervisor shows up in another Ford. He reads me the riot act. I couldn't stop laughing at these two and they were getting more and more angry. They asked me to take them seriously and that this was a serious issue. Told them when they finally get around to getting a real job I'd take them seriously. Turned around, and went back inside the house. Never did see those two nor the garbage police again...BUT...the lady did leave a warning citation tucked under the lid of the garbage can which was recycled as I had promised. 

Nod to WH.

Now, I understand that actual paint, liquid paint, is a problem.  It's hazardous waste, in fact.  But DRIED paint?  I'm pretty sure that there was dried paint on that broken pot I threw out last week.  And if it's the can that's valuable, we face again the problem that cleaning and transporting this garbage dwarfs whatever small value the material might have.

Partly Empty, Partly Narrow

Following up the discussion over on Cato Unbound....

Garbage inspectors!  Who can count the human cost...

A Parable on Environmental Zeal

An email from BW in Logan Utah, reproduced in its entirety...


Issac Hammon’s restaurant wasn’t doing well. People in the community had many dining-out options and business volume at Issac’s restaurant was insufficient to break even, let alone earn a profit. 

But Issac had friends in local government, so approached them with a proposal. “Let’s mandate that every household in the community eat at my restaurant at least twice each month. With increased volume, I can cover my costs while keeping meal prices reasonable. This will benefit the community by creating more jobs and adding to tax revenues."  (More below the jump)

Something New, Under the Sun

This makes perfect sense.  But it never occurred to me that it would be true.  Very interesting.  People feel bad about "wasting" resources (killing trees) when they use paper.  Of course, that's like feeling bad about eating corn, or beets, or squash, or (fill in other plants here), since trees are just plants and we can grow more.  So the whole "don't kill trees" thing is pretty dumb.

Nonetheless, to continue.  SINCE people (rightly or wrongly) feel bad about wasting trees, they self-control their actions, and conserve.

But....if the opportunity to recycle presents itself--given that the market to recycle used paper towels is so efficient--not--people drop the self-regulation and use lots more paper!  It's as if they say to themselves, "Since I'm recycling it, I'm not really wasting it, and I can use all I want!"  (MORE AFTER THE BREAK!!)

I only speak da troof! I only speak da troof!

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net Read more at http://www.explosm.net/comics/2932/#XqiIOjGDsd14YalZ.99

title of the post comes from Moulin Rouge, as you may remember...

With thanks to Michael McC, who had BETTER get back to reading Mankiw.

Santiago Recycling

I have expressed my views on recycling in the past, here for written, here for a podcast.

Nonetheless, we are avid recyclers chez Maison de Mungowitz, I was interested in how (if?) Chileans do it. The reason that question is interesting has to do with basic economics: if recycling saves money and resources, then the first people to recycle would be relatively poor. Poor people can't afford to throw valuable stuff away, right? Whereas rich folks can afford to be profligate. So if recycling saves money, you would expect poor countries to recycle first, and most, yes?

I could not immediately find a source on this, but here is what I did find. First, here are the "top 7 countries" according to the BBC:

On the other hand, Korea apparently recycles 50%, and Japan 40%, with more than 80% of glass being recycled in those countries. Not sure why they didn't make the list, unless they didn't fill out the proper forms to get apparatchiks at BBC to let them into the club.

Lowest recycling rates: Yemen. Pakistan. Basically all of Africa, outside of South Africa, which has a rate of 18%, and climbing.

Now, my mental regression line calculator is flawed, but I'm pretty sure that these rates do NOT indicate that poor countries recycle first, and more. To the contrary, rich countries recycle first. That means, friends, that recycling emphatically does NOT save money. Instead, recycling lets rich people feel good about themselves, and perhaps does some good for the environment, as a public good reducing pollution and use of landfill space. BUT. IT. DOES. NOT. SAVE. MONEY. (Hey, kids, it might be fun to collect the data and do an actual analysis of the relation between recycling rates and wealth! You could even do it just for US states, or cities!) (UPDATE: A commenter notes I naively reversed the causal arrow. Recycling CAUSES economic development. +1, commenter!)

Anyway, Chile (recycling rate 2%, with a goal of 10%) has a program (here is rather sad web site) for recycling. I'm not making this up. You have to drive (!) to the sites, and wait in line, with your car motor running (see line of cars, at least 200 meters long, out into street, at top left):

Here is a woman, with a baby. I watched. She waited in line, more than five minutes, car motor running, for a spot. She got out, put baby in pack. Went to trunk, got out TWO CARDBOARD BOXES, and put them into containter:

And then when one of the vats is full they pull it out:

And then they put all this valuable material on a truck:

So...why? If recycling does not save money, or resources, and in fact is a big net waste of resources....why?

It is worship, of the secular god Gaia, the Earth Mother. Like any sacrifice, it should be costly. It MUST be costly, in fact, to count as a sacrifice. That's not a recycling facility, it's a church. Once you understand that, it all makes sense.

I just someone would explain it to ME.

The Onion as Truth

This is uncomfortably true, though from the Onion.

What Man Thinks Is Recycling Takes City Workers 2 Hours A Day To Sort
October 1, 2011 | ISSUE 47•40

NEW YORK—City sanitation experts confirmed yesterday that the supposed “recycling” of Manhattan resident Ron Klauff was in fact a conglomeration of various recyclable and nonrecyclable refuse that takes city workers an average of two hours and 288 gallons of water to sort and clean each week. “These days, being eco-aware is more important than ever,” said Klauff, filling a plastic shopping bag with a mixture of yogurt containers, wire hangers, and broken electronics that a civil servant will later have to sift through in the middle of the night. “You have to do your part, even if that means gathering all of your soda cans and stacking them neatly inside your pizza boxes.” Because Klauff is the only New York resident who does not carefully sort and separate his recyclables, officials are considering just tossing everything he throws out into a landfill

Yup, the "only one."

Recycling Fail

Ann pretty much nails this, I'd say. Nice. On Wisconsin.

Some stuff I have done on recycling, verbally and written.

Recycling is Fake

Recycling is simply a fake, and recycling zealots are shameless mountebanks.

In Raleigh, if you follow the "recycling" trucks, you will see that they mostly take the stuff to the landfill. Recycling is too expensive. Rather than saving money, it costs MORE to recycle. And, friends, "costs" means that it uses more resources.

In Toronto, the mayor promised that "Toronto will never burn what you put in the bins." Toronto was so proud of its recycling bins. And composting produces black gold.

But....
1. The "black gold" that was supposed to be compost is actually toxic. That would be fine in a modern landfill, because landfills have to have an impermeable layer, and a thick layer of material to capture and confine the leachate. But since these con artists don't care about the environment, focusing only as symbolic religious ceremonies, they conceal the fact that the "compost" has to be disposed of as if it were hazmat!
2. Toronto, remarkably, tells people to put plastic diapers into the RECYCLING/ORGANIC WASTE stream. There is absolutely no current technology, zero, for composting diapers. They know for a fact it is a lie. This is not a grey area, people.
3. Glass recycling? A sham. An amazingly expensive sham. Listen to what the guy at the facility in charge of "recycling" glass in Colorado has to say.

Oh, and a tasty lagniappe: Toronto kept its word about never burning the material. They send it to... MICHIGAN, and Michigan burns it. They say they will stop doing that at the end of this year. They lie.

(Nod to Pelsmin)

Starbucks: Recycle no can do...

Jacob "Coffee Boy" Grier has an interesting piece on recycling.

If this stuff is so valuable, why do I have to pay so much to get it taken away? And if YOU think it's valuable then YOU *&%*%g take it.

Which reminds me of Dan's revised piece, also.

Recycle Me This

Kento sends two funny links about recycling, reusing, and using public transport. Not sure the authors thought they were funny. But they are.

Link the first

Link the second

I especially like the response by David Bain in the WAPO article. The reporter asserts that he is a hypocrite. Mr. Bain's defense is that no, he's an idiot.

.

Just So You See What I'm Dealin' With Here

The LMM comes out of our bedroom at the beach condo, wearing the gauzy little things that women wear in summer. She sidles up to me, and I catch a hint of sultry perfume.

She puts her arms around me, and says, "I was thinkin'."

Me: "Really? Thinking what?

LMM: "We might get really crazy tonight."

Me: (speechless, amazed, etc.)

LMM: "Yeah, I was thinking we could lock the doors, have a few beers...."

Me: (!!!!!YEAH? YEAH?!!!! still can't speak)

LMM: "And then we could have some more beers, and then get totally kinky, and NOT RECYCLE THE BEER BOTTLES!"

Sigh. She was just messing with me. I am, in spite of my complaints about the system, pretty serious about recycling.

England is SO SCREWED

Sorry to have been so obsessed about England lately.

But what a seriously messed up place.

Here is a guy who is being fined (a LOT) for....not producing enough garbage! I have blogged before about the government claiming to own your garbage, but....wow!

(Nod to Reason Daily Brickbats)

That just ain't right!

It seems like the "helmet" is designed to prevent the kid from breathing, but I wonder what was the intent?

Is it supposed to protect the lil fella from rain? fumes? from hurting his head in an accident?

epic fail

Hey, Joker: Recycle Me THIS

In which I enter the cubicles of recycling worshippers, and do battle.

Not sure I'll be able to go back to Canada, now.

Just like I can't go back to Australia.

The original provocation, a while back now....