Swedes Say Recycling Wastes Time And Money

Rob Parkhill writes "The London Daily Telegraph is reporting that a group of Swedish environmentalists are claiming that recycling is a waste of time and money, and most houshold waste should be burned instead."

Comments

Not a new insight

[Otter]

The problem is that recyling has taken on a near-religious quality, where as long as you toss something in a recycling bin, it's mgically like it never existed. It would make much more sense to introduce a market-based scheme where a cost is assigned to generating trash and people could use their judgement, and the real economic benefits of recycling to decide what to throw out, what to recycle and what to not buy in the first place.

I think any environmentalist would agree that not generating waste in the first place is always preferable to recylcling. Encouraging people to think that tossing a half-full Starbucks cup into a bin is an environmental victory is counterproductive.

(Out of curiosity, why is it that questioning environmentalist dogma is only valid coming from Scandinavians?)

Recycling Considered Harmful

[the eric conspiracy]

Not only is it a waste of time and money, but in many cases the waste products from recycling are more harmful to the environment than the thing being recycled.

In many cases there are health concerns - for example would you want recycled plastic of dubious heritage showing up in plastic sode pop bottles?

Recycling today is really driven by municipalities who are having trouble siting new landfills due to NIMBY. In reality there is no shortage of land for landfills - just plenty of politics arount their siting.

There are a few things that are being recycled sucessfully - corrugated cardboard and aluminum. However most of the rest is driven by politics rather than sound science and economics.

Recycling Centers are the problem

[bill_mcgonigle]

On a bi-weekly basis, I have to load up my truck and drive about 8 miles to the recycling center, to deposit about 20 pounds of mixed paper (mostly junk mail) and four or five cardboard boxes. Sometimes I do it monthly but SWMBO doesn't let it accumulate any longer than that.

So, I've burned one gallon of gasoline and, if the IRS is to be believed, it cost me $5.60 for mileage.

Hundreds of other families in town are doing the same thing. So, that's about two barrels of oil, and about $500 out of our pockets.

Tell me again how this is cost effective and good for the environment?

Now, for the more valuable recycleables, a truck drives down the road and picks them up from the curb. The incremental cost of getting from my neighbor's driveway to my driveway is probably $0.10, a much more reasonable solution.

Who has comments about good home incinerators?

Re:Sure and Global Warming is Good For You

[neocon]

Do you have any evidence for your claim that some of the most established figures in the Swedish environment movement are actually working for `the corporations'? (Which corporations? Since when? What evidence contradicts their conclusions?)

Did it cross your mind that someone could wish to preserve the environment, but not agree that current attempts to do so are the right way to go?

Or do you automatically consider someone to be in ill will if they don't agree with you one hundred percent?

Trueness

[Apreche]

Of course, we've known this for years. Anyone who tells you otherwise is an environmentalist who refuses to accept the facts. The amount of money it costs to take a piece of plastic, paper, glass or whatever and recycle it into another one is more than the cost to create that item from unrecycled material.

In Bridgeport, CT there is a plant called the RESCO, I toured it when I was in elementary/middle school (I forget). They take trash and burn it in a giant furnace, which in turn generates electricity. And the only thing you see coming out of their "smoke" stacks is steam. Very environmentally friendly, profitable and it works on almost anything that burns.

Recycling is a waste of time effort and money. The benefits to the environment from using a trash power plant vs. a fossil fuel or nuclear power plant are far greater than the benefits of say recycling paper vs. trashing paper.

Catch-22

[Strange Ranger]

There is an age-old argument that most littering is actually better for the environment than contributing to land fills. The logic behind it is that most litter biodegrades relatively quickly, whereas we have 80 year old meat being dug out of landfills that still show marbling and what kind of cut they were. So if you want that milk carton to biodegrade this decade, litter it. (Yes I know we have better landfill tech now, but the same logic still holds true to a lesser degree.)

So should we all start littering? No because the litter will just pile up, we make it much faster than it would decompose. In the same light I think several hundred million people's piles of trash being perpetually burned would have the Global Warming people throwing fits. We make it faster than the atmosphere can reasonably take it in. That's a heck of a lot of CO2. A volcanic eruption of extremely fine particulate matter that never ceases. El Nino Grande anyone? Don't mess with the weather.

Their argument seems logical, but so can littering seem logical. In the end it really is a Zero-Sum game. There are only so many atoms on the planet (don't pick the metiorite type nits). In the long run, reducing, reusing and recycling are the only weapons that can work in this game.

Environmentalists never wanted recycling

[GuyMannDude]

(Out of curiosity, why is it that questioning environmentalist dogma is only valid coming from Scandinavians?)

The "recycling saves Mother Earth" viewpoint was never really from the environmentalists. I remember back when recycling was first being considered in America -- the environmentalists were the only group opposed to the idea. The reason is simply that they wanted the responsibility for trash to be imposed on the corporations producing the junk rather than relying on the volunteer efforts of consumers. For the politicians, the recycling plan was absolutely brilliant. By passing it, they could convince the masses that they were doing the environment a favor. Passing the bill also kept their corporate campaign contributors very happy. And most of all, people could get a warm, fuzzy feeling inside everytime they went to the recycling center, knowing that they were doing something good, all thanks to Senator Whatshisface.

Recycling was never part of "environmentalist dogma". It was simply a very clever trick cooked up by politicans.

GMD

Who ever claimed otherwise?

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

I don't recall anyone claiming that recycling saved time or saved money.
The claim that I've always heard (and happen to believe) is that recycling lowers the rate at which we burn through resources while reducing the volume of crap that we bury each year.
Yes, that costs more money. Yes, that takes more time. This surprises you?

spin

[zenyu]

Look, they are not saying we shouldn't be recycling. Recycling metals, especially aluminum, makes a lot of sense. Recycling paper from offices, where lots is generated, saves energy and resources.

But, sometimes the cost of sorting is greater than the savings. This is the case with mixed packaging (paper & plastic), and mixed color glass, and sometimes household paper. This is all they are saying. The Telegraph is trying to say they don't want you to recycle, this is not the case.

Mixed glass could be easily delt with by just recycling clear glass, and levying a $10 per lb tax on the non-recycled glass. This would encourage beer makers to use clear glass on their new brands and properly account for the added costs of the non-recycled stuff. Same thing could be done with plastics, just recycle one type, and levy a sin/sorting tax on the other stuff. And it's also not a huge loss to just burn plastics, most of it is non-toxic if burned at a high enough temperature. Those that aren't like epoxy, bakelite, teflon, etc have specialized uses (make at home, high temperature, good sealing properties and non-stick in these examples). An extra levy on these wouldn't hurt the producers unless they could be using the non-toxic stuff, in which case the levy would encourage the users to use the non-toxic stuff. Sure these taxes would hit the lower middle class disproportionately, but we could just adjust for that by raising the income tax exemption to 30 or 40 k and/or eliminating sales taxes, there is plenty of room for use taxes. Hell, you could have a $50/gallon gas tax and still make it revenue neutral by simply killing the payroll tax and raising the income tax exemption. (Not that I'm recommending such a high gas tax, that would distort the market in the other way. My point is simply that you could do it without lowering people's after tax income.)

Finally some stuff just doesn't make sense to reuse, this you can either burn or ship to a landfill in Virginia. Plastic still has a lot of hydrocarbon chains you can suck energy out of, and even household waste if properly aerated produces some methane you can combust.

Aluminum!!!

[Unknown Poltroon]

Aluminum is hideoulsy energy intensive to purify, but once its refined, its dirt cheap to remelt. ALuminum recycling is one of the few things i believe in.

This is just business rubbish.

[Nathan Ramella]

They include Valfrid Paulsson, a former director-general of the government's environmental protection agency, Soren Norrby, the former campaign manager for Keep Sweden Tidy, and the former managing directors of three waste-collection companies.

None of these people are environmentalists. One is an Ex-Government mouthpiece, a former campaign manager for Keep Sweden Tidy (former is the key word here), present occupation sounds like Waste-Management Lobbist and a bunch of waste collection companies. And their argument is purely money oriented. Waste-Collection companies find that it's unprofitable to recycle. This isn't about what's really good for the environment.

What would be best? Using less! But people won't do that. They like the convienence. They don't want to have to remember to bring a Nalgene bottle with them everywhere they go. They want to say 'Ah, I'm thirsty, and only poor people drink out of drinking fountians, and there isn't one around here anyway, so I'll plunk another dollar down for a bottle which I'll promptly throw away.

The truth of this is, recycling in the long run probably isn't cheaper, but it is better for the environment. By recycling, we keep our finite resources circulating rather than throwing things away.

So, boohoo if the waste management companies don't want to recycle. If the government is forcing these programs on waste-management, voters should support subsidies to waste-management to ensure that recycling continues.

So while it's about profit, sometimes you have to pay more to do the right thing.

The gluttony of resources at rock-bottom prices is just unrealistic. Nobody wants to pay the true price now. They just want discounted convienence by making future generations pay the price. The headline on this story is misleading.

Reduce, Re-use, Recycle

[geoswan]

Real environmentalist have always pointed out that recycling is their third choice. Reusing is their second choice. Not requiring the product in the first place is the first choice in a Conserver Society.

Re:reminds me of one of my housemates

[Johnny Mnemonic]

I guess I've come to the conclusion that most so called "environmentalists" are really about "feel good" solutions, and not ones that actually work.

Based on a sample of one? So you would say that it's fair to assume that Minnesotans who live with female roomates should have nothing to do with a field that involves statistics?