The Establishment media, being strong advocates of Messianic state worship, self-censor critical research on the environmentalism. Anything that challenges the credibility of this state-ist ideology is suppressed. But once in a while, real science and research-based analysis appears in the media. Such is the case with a worthwhile article on the environmentally and economically destructive eco-symbol of (Blue Box) recycling that appeared in the National Post Friday:
National Post – Dec. 5, 2009
Blue Bin Blues; Recycling may have negative effect on the environment: expert
By Kevin Libin
… Before this year, Calgary was already diverting more than 20% of city waste from landfills through private arrangements. In terms of making an environmental difference, that’s getting close to what cities should aim for, says J. Winston Porter, who, as former assistant administrator for America’s Environmental Protection Agency, was the first to establish nationwide recycling targets in the United States in the 1980s. His target then was 25%, and it’s a number he largely sticks by. Diverting 35% of waste into recycling is about as a high as any city can justify, he says. Trying to recycle more can be wasteful, if not harmful, he says, even though many major cities are setting targets at 70% or higher. “People say you can’t recycle too much. It turns out you can,” says Mr. Porter, president of the environmental consulting firm, the Waste Policy Center, near Washington, D.C.
“If you spend enough money, you can recycle anything. That doesn’t mean you should.”
While a blue bin out front makes us feel we’re helping the planet, recycling most household materials has either minimal environmental impact, or even a negative one. Homeowners dutifully put out their glass, plastic, steel and aluminum packaging. But the only really valuable item, Mr. Porter says, is the metal. That sounds like an economic assessment, but it’s a key environmental measure: resources to make metal are at a premium, and production is energy intensive. Recycling metal pays because it saves on limited resources and energy – in other words, it’s better for the environment. The trouble is that in the typical North American city’s solid waste stream (including trash and recyclables) aluminum and steel generally account for just 2% by weight. Glass sent to recycling facilities is heavier, making up 3% to 5% of typical city waste by weight. But although it demands more energy, there isn’t much use for it.
All the glass collected this year by Calgary’s new program ended up at the East Calgary Landfill, where it is piling up for want of a buyer. “It’s a product that there just isn’t any demand for,” Bill Stitt, general manager of Metro Waste Paper Recovery Inc., the city’s recycling contractor, told a local paper. Edmonton is stockpiling, too, as are a number of other Canadian cities. The price of sand is simply too cheap, and the impracticality of reusing bottles of varying quality and colour is too big a headache to make it marketable.
Glass is a “red herring when talking about recyclables,” a Recycling Council of B.C. spokeswoman conceded to the CBC this year; since it doesn’t break down, there’s no effect on air or water when it’s buried in landfills. A 2003 study by Enviros Environmental Consultants UK found that “from a global warming perspective, there is limited environmental benefit to using recycled glass” but continuing with the exercise of recycling was “an important part of the U.K. meeting its overall glass recycling targets.” That is, so politicians could meet their set goals, even if there was no environmental point to it.
Unfortunately, recycling plastic often doesn’t make much more sense. Germany has stockpiled millions of tonnes of recyclable plastics in rural fields, like above-ground dumps. “These cheap plastic bottles, it depends on the price of oil, but the market is not worth much,” says Daniel Benjamin, an economist at South Carolina’s Clemson University who studies recycling. Though it makes up roughly 5%, by weight, of a typical North American garbage stream, applications for used, mixed plastic are limited. “We’re talking about a few dollars a tonne,” Professor Benjamin says.
Read the complete article here.
A report has also just been released by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy on the absurdity of salvation-by-recycling. “The near bottomless virtue of recycling has become an article of faith amongst environmental activists and a whole generation of children in their tutelage,” writes David Seymour, author of the report. “In today’s world, recycling is supposed to be atonement for the sin of consumption, the difference between being a parasite on the earth or a custodian saving future generations. This Salvationist aura makes it all the more interesting to look at some basic numbers behind recycling and see just how different they are from the imagery some promote.”
The Executive Summary of the report includes the following:
Environmental concern is a powerful political motivator that influences public policy, and recycling is often presented as a solution to some environmental concerns. It is important, therefore, to use logical processes with quantitative data to evaluate the reality of these concerns and the effectiveness of recycling at addressing them;
. Recycling must be put into perspective with the other two R’s-reducing and reusing. In contrast, these two waste reduction strategies highlight the fact that recycling is actually an industrial process. It may or may not yield a net saving of resources, but it always consumes some resources in the course of saving others;
. The decision to recycle more or less material ultimately depends on the values placed on different types of resources, including land for landfills, people’s time, and energy and commodities.
. The best guide to the most valuable combinations of resources, and therefore optimal recycling, is to acknowledge the prices that people put on different goods. If recycling is profitable because the resources it consumes are worth less than the landfill space and new materials it saves, more recycling should be done. If not, less should be done.
Public date: December 8th, 2009Categories: News
Tags: blue boxes, David Seymour, environmentalism, Frontier Centre for Public Policy, garbage, land fills, recycling, waste
